As a white man, I have to agree as I’ve seen a bunch of these comments and false narratives, but far more on YouTube and the like. One of the narratives I actually spent time dissecting was the one you mention about slavery being everywhere because I hadn’t heard it before and because it was a black male intellectual promoting it, Dr. Sowell. While some of these tropes are utter nonsense, this one has a grain of truth in it and on the surface seems to make sense, so I felt I had to take time to negate it, especially because who it was coming from. White men, especially conservatives who are mild and educated, would listen to this reasonable smart black man and nod their heads and say, ‘Ahh, I hadn’t thought of that, he’s right.’ He in particular has been used to ‘recruit’ black men, and Trump did see a gain among black men voting for him, from 8 to 15 percent. Voting for Trump to me was like for white supremacy, not against it.
But the other tropes leveled against you are rote and nonsense. They are easy to negate with a small bit of data and research. The truth is that black women have had it “the worst” in America in terms of feeling the effects of systemic racism, repugnant indignity— I don’t think I can adequately describe the horrors and certainly have no idea of experiencing any daily “micro-aggressions.” Black men did have it incredibly bad as well, and I’m only starting to understand it. Also, there is no such thing as reverse racism in America. There is angry backlash at whites, but it is anger that is well deserved thanks to the atrocity of white supremacy rampant in American history.
I’m often “worried” about doing the work to write on Black Lives Matter issues and this part of American history, because I’m not an expert and am just trying to learn. I’m not a black American and I know I don’t experience racist stares, “ridicule,” slurs or worse. But I have to try. The damage has been vast against the black Americans. In fact, there really is no other racism in America that is deep and systemic. Chinese Americans, Latino Americans, and others do not have any history of slavery, and accompanying routine and political lynchings, beating, rapes against them, nor the hundreds of years of laws continually made against just them, starting before 1676 when Bacon’s Rebellion happened, but that year kicked of 300 plus years of laws and codes meant to structurally demean and repress.
We can’t thus do enough to help, to understand and change that legal system, along with recognizing the contributions and struggle black Americans had been forced to make to survive and to change. I just finished reading the shirt but powerful booklet, “Southern Horrors” by Ida B. Wells and highly recommend it. It reflects not just the horrific past around 1890s, it explains much of the hatred and Insurrectionist times we live in still. This should be standard 8th grade reading,and white boys should be stand and tole to read the parts Ms. Wells reprints of white white men from the op-eds columns of mainstream white newspapers. These mantras and arguments against black Americans and for lynching were mainstream and truly shocking, and resulted in racial murders involving white cops hunting down blacks or releasing them to white mobs from the jails to be hung outside. They will no longer wonder after that where the racial power abuses of police that result in black men being shot or killed like George Floyd came from. It came from the “leaders” like those newspapers and writers. It came from them, from their “heritage” (my white self included). But I won’t be separated or move away from my research or support; because how we treat and have treated the “lowest” members of society says everything about the “highest” members and reflects on their “character” and beliefs most of all.
In short, these false racist tropes are not just meant to degrade and diminish you, they are meant to make white men and white women “soccer moms” *feel* like they are siding with “complainers” and “nasty” people. These negative tropes act as a quick visceral gut punch to make whites to emotionally deduce: “Are these the kind of people [blacks] you want to associate with?” They are used to drive moderate whites anxiously away from “siding” with liberals and progressives. You however shouldn’t have to tolerate them and put up with them above all. Thank you.