I like him because he’s an independent thinker and an excellent writer. The fact he’s black is neither here nor there in my mind. As soon as I think he’s wrong, I’ll try and nail him down because what I want more than anything else is to be able to debate him. Steve’s work would be good, regardless of the colour of his skin and I would never ever accuse him of ‘knowing his place’ — that’s a massive overreach. He puts ideas out into the world and he defends them.

You completely skipped over Jeanette C Espinoza, probably because it didn’t suit the argument you were making. She doesn’t ‘know her place’ either, has come to the exact opposite conclusions I have, and we regularly critique each other’s work with mutual admiration. She is also one of my favourite writers on the platform. This https://aninjusticemag.com/why-children-who-are-bipoc-must-be-perfect-20b370c84eb9 is one of the best pieces of writing on the platform (and I have said so in the comments, three months ago). You may think I’m looking for writers who agree with me. I respectfully think you’re wrong. I follow you. Why? Because you’re clearly intelligent and will hold me to account and disagree with what I have to say.

I have a bias towards writers who have interesting things to say — and are prepared to say it. I hold the view that continually battering white people, accusing them of being supremacists and racists is perpetuating the problem of racism — and more importantly is a terrible psychological primer for young BIPOC readers. Heads up, if you read this article you’re going to hate it. https://medium.com/lucid-nightmare/how-some-bipoc-writers-uphold-white-supremacy-9c9699e9866b

You can call me a racist if you like — plenty of people believe that to be true; and calling someone a ‘white supremacist’ is a linguistic hedge. You mean racist. It just makes it more palatable for society to hear. Essentially a diluted racist. We can argue the point of your accusation, but let’s be clear what you’re saying in the first instance. And I refute it.

My stance against identity politics isn’t against BIPOC, it’s for BIPOC. It’s not about denigrating voices out of some perverse pleasure I get from seeing people ‘in their place’. I believe that inference to wildly inaccurate. For racism to end, two things have to happen. The US needs to move to a more socialist model of Government, this means the white working class of your country need to move left and vote in more people like A.O.C and Rashida Tlaib or their white equivalents like Bernie Sanders. When identity politics takes over the middle class left, the working class white will move to the right and do something stupid like the Taft-Hartley Act. If you’ve ever wondered why your country finds it so hard to protect workers rights, it’s the conflation of race and communism and appeal to the racist voters of the 1950s. Anyway, more socialists in power — whether they be black, brown, white… whatever. Redistribute the wealth in a universal way to all poor people, offering education subsidies, community projects, free healthcare, free nursing care, more libraries. Anything that takes away the ‘dog-eat-dog’ mindset that allows racism and resentment to breed between communities. When I look at the state of the discourse, this isn’t the argument that’s being made — or perhaps it is being made (reparations would do this) but it’s being made solely for BIPOC and will never be voted in by the working class white. It’s a non-starter. The best thing white elites can do is make BIPOC and white working class people fight amongst themselves.

The second thing that needs to happen is harder, and this is where I think Steve QJ is bang on. We need to move to a post-racial society. That means we need to stop putting race at the centre of every societal ill. We need to move ‘race’ to being a measure of melanin in the skin. Some people are darker than others, some people are lighter. In the same way that some people are shorter and some people are taller. That’s a big ask — particularly given the US history, but I believe it’s the only viable solution. Steve QJ is one of the few writers on this platform that seems to have worked this out. He’s playing a different game to everyone else and it’s a much better game, with much better odds for BIPOC in the long run.

So I don’t think I’ve got supremacist thought patterns — I think you’ve been inculcated into a particular political message, one that appeals to your sense of justice and is likely based on your lived experience and fuelled by confirmation bias. You want to hold white people (and the occasional penguin) to account — and so you throw out Kafka-Traps. Here is my world view, if you agree with me then great, if you don’t agree with me…. you’re a racist/white supremacist. I don’t blame you, to do such a thing would be empowering — but there’s a reason why I’m an Argumentative Penguin, it’s with my ability to argue.

You’re a fun person to debate with. You come in hard and you come in fast and you give zero ground — but the presumption that anyone who disagrees with you is a racist is a simple intuitive knee-jerk thought that needs to come out of your debating arsenal. If ‘questioning’ is an example of unacceptable behaviour and indicative of guilt, what sort of movement have you yoked your world view to? What’s coming down the line? I can see the US heading to a race war within your lifetime if the current demagoguery (on both sides) continues. Given the numbers, I can’t see how that would end well for BIPOC at any level. Society only functions because people can talk to each other and have commonality of perspective — that relies on good faith debate and that relies on careful consideration of the words we use.

So by all means call me out when you think I’m wrong — but be very careful about the labels you throw around. If Penguins are the new face of oppression, we’ve got big problems.