It is not easy to discuss publicly. I have read some books on racism that encourage white people to try to frustrate and challenge the racist actions, sensibilities, and comments of other white people. For years I have been convinced of this and have wanted to make the locker room talk unwelcome.

But here are the problem I find, many of these are laid out in literature,but are no less difficult to deal with.

No one knows what racism is. Colloquial racism functions to obfuscate racism as a system and boils it down to a moral failing and thus a perceived lack of racism as moral capital. Basically, talking about racism seems to function as an avenue for ethical posturing or promoting liberal dogma.

No one believes they are racist or reproduce racism. The whole classic racism without racists thing. It’s only blatant bigotry or voting republican that can make someone racist, not the history of colonialism and class society that define whiteness.

Everyone in my work environment is white. Also communist spaces I’ve been in are all but exclusively white. It’s only in a few academic and some other spaces I’m in that aren’t this way, but its in the exclusively white spaces like my workplace what racism is discussed most.

I am constantly fielding comments about my birthplace, the southern US, or Osage country if you are based. “Oh they must be really racist there.” Like holy shit as if the west coast isn’t? There were multiple Trails of Tears here. Black people were banned from living here entirely. Miners would just murder Chinese people. This history has hardly been reversed.

Many comminsts I meet get too riled up about “Black capitalism,” have awful ideas about Land Back, and too quickly go off about how white people are basically not inherently racist or “inherently evil” as they frame it. While they are forced to sit and listen to my rebuttals because of certain communist procedures it’s clear to me my positions on this keep me on the periphery in these spaces.

So I say all this to say that my intuition is now quite loudly signaling to me that anytime racism comes up when it is an exclusively white environment to just leave and not engage. But this is the opposite of what I have learned. I am coming to the conclusion that it does not work to rhetorically intervene, especially when it comes to this very heavy topic as well as others.

So I am asking for advice, encouragement, or constructive criticism that anyone might have on my thoughts here because I feel very lost and alone about how racism seems to manifest around me these days. Simultaneously I feel a responsibly to challenge whiteness in myself and my community.