Hey, so I appreciate you calling out the problem and potential impacts of systemic racism, but I’m going to call you out for how you did this.

You implied that this person intentionally did that. But you have no way of knowing this. There’s also an implication that anyone who does this is a horrible person, and that’s not always true or helpful.

I think it brings up an important question when we are talking about racism in the US. And that is: once we call it out, what are we trying to accomplish?

Is it: 1) racism is horrible and anyone who promotes it (intentionally or otherwise) is a terrible person.

2) Racism causes harm and how do we reduce it?

Aiming at someone’s identity (correctly or incorrectly) can provoke shame and defensiveness which might kill future discussions where they can explore and address WHAT, WHY, and HOW they did a certain action. Usually they will just avoid it or will be too scared to learn more.

TLDR; when calling someone out for being racist, it’s often much more useful to only focus on the action; defining it and exploring remedies. If you also imply that action makes them a horrible person, they (usually the unintentional racists) are less likely to understand racial issues because they’re ashamed or scared of being called a horrible person.

IMO, racism in very damaging, dangerous, and everyone is racist at some point in their lives. But it’s hard to solve and address something you’re too scared to talk about long enough to understand more.