I think this article “Sensible Responses to White Nonsense,” by Mary C. Joyce is kind of awesome.

Let me explain: Sometimes, I post something on Facebook about race. Sometimes it is someone else’s writing; sometimes it is my own; sometimes a combination. I seem to have the awesomest friends in the world, because when I do share about my feelings and experience about race, my awesome friends (including a high percentage of white friends) seem to listen hard, communicate respectfully, affirm my sharing of my experience or my sharing of the information I’m sharing, add in a useful way to the conversation, and sometimes share what I’ve shared with their friends.

That’s where something strange sometimes happens. I go to their pages where they have shared the same things I have just shared and sometimes I read the most hateful, racist responses to it from their Facebook friends.

I am promptly horrified, super grateful for my own awesome extended community, and unsure what to do next. I really don’t want to engage personally (because, really, racism and toxic racial ignorance is pretty upsetting for me to engage with directly), yet I want the person to be engaged with, rather than censured. Largely, I see my awesome friends engaging with the person far more patiently than I would in that situation.

I then maybe thank the friend for the hard work they’re doing and the friend shrugs it off, like it ain’t nothing and they don’t need a cookie.

Because I have ridiculously awesome friends.

So, this article: provides cogent, clear answers to common comments made by less racially savvy white people. These are generally for white people talking to white people about racism, but could be adapted for the use of POC when talking to white people.

The article uses the term “White nonsense,” as almost a technical term. I like it. It’ll work when calling it typical white supremacist racist bull$&@% won’t help your case.

We need to have ways of talking back, articulately, to the standard white nonsense when we encounter it. But, especially white people talking to other white people. Because white folks aren’t saying to me what they say to other white folks. On the whole, white folks with less racial savvy are more likely to express their white nonsense to their (sometimes secretly more racially savvy) white friends than to me. For which, I am grateful. I’d rather be talking to my white friends than my white friends’ white friends. But, I also kinda feel we need to adopt a no-ignorant-white-person left behind approach to educating our racist friends (and friends of friends).

So, anyway, here’s some talking points. This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the greatest hits of white nonsense. There is a near-infinite supply of white nonsense and this only covers a few common themes. Please feel free to share more or better articles on this with me or in the comments or on your own blogs and facebook walls and twitter feeds and community forums.