My personal experience is different from that described in the OP.
From a very young age (and I'm pretty damn old) I saw political hard lefties playing the race card--saying racism was the reason black people had so many problems, and blaming white people for EVERYTHING. As a kid, my logic in reply was pretty simple: "that's bullshit because I never owned a slave". Year after year, it was the same: "it's the fault of white people", and as I got older and more cynical, my mind went "fuck you" with more and more force.
Then I started seeing them pull the "institutional power" angle. That's the one where they say it's okay to be racist AGAINST white people, because white people have all the money and they're CEO's and they run everything and own the whole planet. As soon as I first saw that trick, I saw what they were really doing: the race card was their favorite public policy weapon, and they were trying to un-level the field so they could keep that weapon in play.
Basically, I have been trained my entire life to just automatically and categorically dismiss hard-left racial arguments. I never extended my hand to them in friendship, and they never will get a chance to sucker-punch me because I'm always watching them like a hawk with one hand close to my personal concealed-carry civil-defense device.
They can't be my friend, and my personal identity was always firmly in place.
My personal experience is different from that described in the OP.
From a very young age (and I'm pretty damn old) I saw political hard lefties playing the race card--saying racism was the reason black people had so many problems, and blaming white people for EVERYTHING. As a kid, my logic in reply was pretty simple: "that's bullshit because I never owned a slave". Year after year, it was the same: "it's the fault of white people", and as I got older and more cynical, my mind went "fuck you" with more and more force.
Then I started seeing them pull the "institutional power" angle. That's the one where they say it's okay to be racist AGAINST white people, because white people have all the money and they're CEO's and they run everything and own the whole planet. As soon as I first saw that trick, I saw what they were really doing: the race card was their favorite public policy weapon, and they were trying to un-level the field so they could keep that weapon in play.
Basically, I have been trained my entire life to just automatically and categorically dismiss hard-left racial arguments. I never extended my hand to them in friendship, and they never will get a chance to sucker-punch me because I'm always watching them like a hawk with one hand close to my personal concealed-carry civil-defense device.
They can't be my friend, and my personal identity was always firmly in place.
That’s a great response thank you