And on and on. In the past, I would actually respond defensively to those statements. However, I think the better response would be something like this:<\/p>\n

\n
• Why do you think that would upset someone?<\/li>\n
• Have you had someone insult you like that before? Tell me about it. (That worked really well when it was #MeToo and the woman was going on about women whining. Turns out this woman had a very similar story, so perhaps a bit of deflection?)<\/li>\n
• Do you suppose they’re frustrated because no one is paying attention?<\/li>\n
• I guess I remember when that manager of mine would call the Hispanic man names behind his back. Can’t be fun being someone’s verbal punching bag.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

  One person responded really well when I turned it from a black person to a Jewish person. “I cannot fathom why anyone would hate a Jewish person,” they said. My response was, “Yes, I agree. I don’t see how anyone can hate another human.”<\/p>\n

  I guess the point is that in personal conversations, you’ll never win the battle by direct combat. For me, I’ve made some inroads with the questions based on the person’s hateful words. But when it’s a community-wide issue, that’s when the gloves come off. Everyone who lives in a community should feel safe and welcome. Anything less won’t do for any of us.<\/p>\n

  What can we do as writers?<\/p>\n

  \n
  • Raise awareness<\/strong> through blogs, articles, social media and personal interactions<\/li>\n
  • Call out<\/strong> racist corporations, statements, actions and people<\/li>\n
  • Reframe<\/strong> the conversation to draw people to your side<\/li>\n
  • Use our skills<\/strong> to inform and educate<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    Writers, what are you doing to combat racism? Have you ever witnessed or experienced racism? Please share what you can.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    My friend related this story to me a while ago. It bears repeating. She was driving home from her sister’s and was within a mile of her house when she saw the lights flashing behind her. She pulled over, trying to figure out what she’d done wrong. The officer approached her car window and asked…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[630],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anti-racism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordsonpageblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordsonpageblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordsonpageblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordsonpageblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordsonpageblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8519"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wordsonpageblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8521,"href":"https:\/\/wordsonpageblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8519\/revisions\/8521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordsonpageblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordsonpageblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordsonpageblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}