It is very difficult for a person who believes in white supremacy to have an honest, open and intellectual conversation about race. Because the contradictions and hypocrisy of white supremacy can be easily pointed out. And once those discrepancies are acknowledged, any refusal to rectify the injustices will make a person appear to be actively complicit in the non-justice of racism.

So most white supremacists (and suspected white supremacists) will utilize the tactic of deflecting away from a serious dialog about race by engaging in jokes and trolling behavior. This tactic will excuse them from acknowledging the injustices of systematic white supremacy, and assist them in the maintenance of that system without admitting any wrongdoing.

Also the white supremacists use  racialized jokes as a way to lower the defenses of their victims. When the white supremacists pass off their behavior as just “jokes” and “clowning around”, this causes people to dismiss their behavior and not take it as seriously as they should. This has proven to be a major mistake on behalf of the victims of white supremacy. Because most white supremacist policies and institutions started off a “jokes” at first.

The Ku Klux Klan started off as a joke and a prank. A few former Confederate officers in Pulaski, TN. thought it would be a funny prank to dress up as ghosts and scare the Black people in town.  In 1907, author Albert Stevens wrote this about the Ku Klux Klan: “ludicrous initiations, the baffling of public curiosity, and the amusement for members were the only objects of the Klan”.  And now the KKK is one of the mosts dangerous terroristic organizations in the United States.

In the 1800’s a white actor named Thomas D. Rice used to perform a derogatory African American caricature in blackface. He would perform around the country doing the Jim Crow dance in this comedy routine. His Jim Crow character was a “joke” at first. And then states all over the country started to create Jim Crow laws that terrorized the lives of Black Americans openly until the 1960’s.

Recently the website Vox did an interview with author Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, who explained how people searching for  racists jokes on google, helped some experts predict the election of Trump. The article states:

As a barometer of our national consciousness, Google is as accurate (and predictive) as it gets. In 2016, when the Republican primaries were just beginning, most pundits and pollsters did not believe Trump could win. After all, he had insulted veterans, women, minorities, and countless other constituencies.

But Stephens-Davidowitz saw clues in his Google research that suggested Trump was far more serious than many supposed. Searches containing racist epithets and jokes were spiking across the country during Trump’s primary run, and not merely in the South but in upstate New York, Western Pennsylvania, Eastern Ohio, rural Illinois, West Virginia, and industrial Michigan.

Stephens-Davidowitz is the author the best-selling book “Everybody Lies”, an inside look at how mining data from the internet can give a better understanding on the public psyche. According to Stephens-Davidowitz:

“People tell Google things that they don’t tell to possibly anybody else, things they might not tell to family members, friends, anonymous surveys, doctors. People feel very comfortable confessing things to Google. In general, Google tells us that people are different than they present themselves. One way they’re different, I have to say, is that they’re nastier and meaner than they often present themselves.

I’ve done a lot of research on racism, for example, and I was shocked by how frequently people make racist searches, particularly for jokes mocking African Americans. This concealed ugliness can predict a lot of behaviors, particularly in the political realm.”

 

So Melanoid people must understand, no matter how much the white supremacists try to get you to lower your defenses and dismiss them when they pass off their dangerous rhetoric as “jokes”, you must always take them seriously. Because white supremacists will joke and troll one day, and then commit cold blooded murder the next.