Years ago, I wrote a lengthy essay for the Washington Post in which I explained that I see no value in expending even a drop of energy or emotional/ intellectual labor on arguing with wilfully obtuse white people about systemic racism, Black Lives Matter or literally anything else related to social justice. Nearly every day since that piece was published, Iβve witnessed at least oneβbut usually severalβexchanges between white people and the Blacks they love to pretend they donβt hate that reaffirms every single thought I wrote down. Even an online argument is worth the time of zero Black anti-racism advocates, so I canβt even imagine the frustration of people who take the time out of their day to argue with these idiots in person.
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Of course, sometimes you just fall into the argument over something as mundane as a Black Lives Matter face mask.
A white man who the Daily Dot identified as the owner of 76 Arms & Ammunition, a gun store in Harrison, Arkansas, was captured via Instagram video arguing with two peopleβat least one of whom is Blackβabout how BLM is comparable to Nazis in World War II Germany. The episode of White Fragility Owns a Gun Store reportedly began because the woman holding the camera was wearing a BLM face mask.
The video opens with the store owner in the midst of a white-splanation on how the swastika was a symbol of peace before it went on to become a symbol of hatred and genocide saying, βthe Nazi symbol, in India, is a good luck symbol.β The Daily Dot noted that βIndeed, the swastika was known as a symbol of well-being and good fortune and used for millennia by Hindus, Buddhists, and Jains,β but that doesnβt matter because this manβs remedial-ass history lesson is really just part of a reaching-ass display of laughable false equivalency and a picture-perfect example of why arguing with white people is useless.
βYouβre telling me that equality is the same as fascism?β the woman filming the interaction asks as the below-mediocre white man is struggling to articulate to the astonishingly patient Black man that BLM is an organization of fascism, Marxism and whatever other isms he learned from his favorite Republican porn sites like Fox News, Newsmax or right-winger YouTube.
βBlack Lives Matter, the organization, is a fascist, Marxist organization,β he said before reaching to the peak of Mt. Caucasity for his next bit of unsolicited advice. βYou need to change your symbolism and create another group.β
If the store owner cared to know, heβd educate himself on what BLM actually is before speaking on it. If he did that heβd know that the BLM organizationβcalled the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation (BLMGNF)βdoesnβt even organize protests much anymore and that it exists mostly as an organizer and fundraiser for Black agenda things aimed at serving underserved Black communities. Heβd also know that while some protests do turn violent, the vast majority do not.
But none of that matters because the owner of 76 Arms & Ammunition isnβt even educated enough to understand that he is comparing to Nazis an organization that has not, even during the worst moments of civil unrest, murdered more than 6 million people and rounded up millions more to place in concentration camps.
βWe need to say something other than Black Lives Matter because that offends you,β the woman can be heard saying just before the store owner ordered her to take her not-so-Nazi mask and leave.
After the video of his snowflakes-with-guns display went viral on social media, 76 A&A released a defensive Facebook post explaining that it isnβt racist, it just hates the negro groups.
βToday we asked a young lady to change her mask because we felt it represented a hate group,β the post reads. βShe got offended and started to call us racist. Anyone who knows us, knows that we are not. So when you see that the owners of 76 Arms & Ammunition are racist, please take it with a grain of salt. All are welcome, but we do not want hate in our shop.β
βShe got offendedβ is quite the statement coming from someone who just got his camouflage boxer-briefs in a bunch over a BLM mask, but OK.
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