I sometimes confront white hostility to “all that black crap” when discussing race with friends or acquaintances. Their exasperation with what they view as black obsession over victimization or beating the dead horse of slaver is clear. The want to stop the broken record of black complaint.
It’s easy to sympathize with them. I have felt much the same exasperation but with white ignorance, sometimes willful ignorance. When I hear things like, “MLK would never want affirmative action to exist today,” or that Emmett Till was a sexual harasser for whistling at a white woman, I have to hold my tongue and cool my impatience/annoyance. (Affirmative action is a pale ghost [no pun intended] of what MLK advocated for in society and Emmett Till was brutally murdered for simply whistling at a white woman.) It’s a teachable moment and I have to bear the burden of playing the broken record if only in an attempt to dispel ignorance with knowledge.
It doesn’t have to be this way. If black and white would listen to one another with respect and concern, then perhaps we can finally throw away each other’s broken records!