To stop a conversation about race, just call someone a racist.
That’s the phrase we hear when people want the conversation to end, when they lack empathy to understand your feelings, and when they don’t want to hear anything more from you, but don’t have the guts to just say, “shut up.” It’s a way of dismissing you out of hand and shutting down the discussion with just three little words.
That’s why I was thrilled when Starbucks pulled its ridiculously disastrous campaign “Race Together” a few weeks ago.
I never intended to start talking about anything more than the weather with the teenager behind the counter who resembles a barnyard animal sporting one of those horrendous rings through their noses, other than to ask them whether they ever get the urge to run with the bulls in Pamplona.
These kinds of discussions will never end well. Try getting into a discussion around the dinner table with your family about politics and religion – unless, of course, everyone shares the same view.
Emotions about some topics run deep and feelings about some issues are not going to be adequately communicated through a five minute “conversation” waiting for your coffee at Starbucks.
Here’s an example. If you question anything the President does, immediately you’re called a racist even though it’s a legitimate question to ask. For example, why is a poverty pimp like Al Sharpton given access to the President of the United States on, God only knows, how many occasions at the White House. The Tawana Brawley scandal alone should bar Sharpton from society, and, yet, he’s got his own show on MSNBC and is the self-appointed spokesman for all black people when he has the ear of the President! The guy should be hiding under a rock.
If you think that a major problem in the black community is the fact that 72% of babies are born out of wedlock with no man in sight after the insemination, you’re definitely a racist.
If you believe that marriage is between a man and a woman and oppose gay marriage, you’re a homophobe. I don’t remember anyone calling Obama a homophobe when he ran on a platform for traditional marriage in 2008. Of course he didn’t “evolve” over the course of his Presidency – he always supported gay marriage but knew he couldn’t get elected. I never hear any of news reporters asking a liberal to defend their support for gay marriage yet, the 2016 Republican Presidential hopefuls, like Marco Rubio, are asked ridiculous questions like “would you go to a gay wedding?” Yet, Obama wasn’t asked that in 2008.
If you think that something should be done about Iranto prevent it from ever attaining nuclear weapons, you’re a warmonger.
If you don’t believe Al Gore’s theory about global warming, you’re an idiot.
If you don’t want to pay for Sandra Fluke’s birth control, you hate women.
If you’re pro-life, you really hate women.
If you think people who receive food stamps should be drug tested or be required to do some type of community service in exchange, you want to starve children.
If you don’t like Obamacare, you’re both a racist because it’s Obama’s legacy and you hate the poor.
If you think the rich already pay their fair share of taxes, you hate the poor.
If you think the earned income tax credit (which everyone who receives it seems to consider it a “tax refund” instead of “welfare”) should be repealed, you really hate the poor.
If you don’t want open borders and think the federal government should enforce its own immigration laws, you’re a hateful bigot.
So, where’s the conversation? How do you respond when someone shuts down the conversation by calling you a racist, homophobe, warmonger and bigot? Like I said, it’s dismissive and it’s the same as if you’re discussing something and the other person says, “get over it.” You’re stopped dead in your tracks – there’s no place to go with the conversation.
I think I may have a solution. To everyone who’s been dismissed and shut down because of their politically incorrect viewpoint, the next time one of these name-calling far left liberals wants to have a conversation, ask them, “so, tell me, what exactly has Hillary Clinton achieved?” That’ll shut them up.