“One of the really unique pains of being a person of color – specifically a black woman – around a group of white people is feeling like if you are trying to name a dynamic or identify something that has a really weighted racist history when someone is saying ‘You’re making everything about race.’ That’s just such a weird deflection. Actually, she’s just making one thing about race. That’s not everything. It’s just one thing. You are counting wrong.”
“It is okay for you to say it. You are not making ‘Everything about race.’ Which is such a weird racist deflection that white people, we sometimes do when somebody says ‘I don’t like this’ The conversation becomes this white fear about being called racist. As if ‘I can’t be racist, that’s what bad people are.’ As if it’s no longer about one thing I did, it’s about whether I’m a categorically ‘good person.’ I have to defend myself so I will ignore, demean, justify myself. Discredit that person until they drop the subject. And that’s a really bad response.”
– Mallory Ortberg
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