reddit comment on racism

[cos]

A comment I wrote on reddit got posted to "bestof", for the first time (after I mentioned the idea, in response to a commenter who said it was one of the best comments they'd ever read o reddit). Based on some of the responses it got, I feel like I really succeeded in what I was trying to say, and I'd like to get it out to a wider audience. To make sense of the comment, though, it helps if you first read the original post I was responding to: Someone confessing a blatantly racist outburst.

Comments

[cos]

>> I don't think the OP deserves to be sent to the Island of Racist Assholes. I think he was just someone who got really mad and landed a couple of punches below the belt. Not okay, but totally understandable and forgivable. <<

I agree, and I also think that statement is incomplete. Racism's pervasiveness lent some extra punches to what he did, and that's a big part of why I wrote my comment: it's the way racism sneaks in, with its unfortunate extra context, to change the effects of actions that might've happened without racism. Sometimes even perfectly innocent or well-meaning actions, or ones that would be neutral outside this context. Which is another angle on some of the same things you said earlier in your comment. I think the way it applies to this last bit, though, is that even though he was in one sense "just" someone who happened to get mad and lash out inappropriately, the fact that when *he* does it to *that* kid it takes on this extra context, shows why he has an extra responsibility to learn about that context and to take some other actions to counteract it.

Here's what I said to him.