Don't Double Down!

So you’ve found yourself in a position where something you said on the internet is not being received as you intended. You didn't think you were going to cause a conflict, but now you are being confronted with a negative reaction to something you’ve said in jest, or with good intentions.

At first signs of disagreement, white people tend to go straight into explanation mode. If someone is not happy with something they said, the automatic assumption is that there must have been a misunderstanding or miscommunication. Stop it.

Instead, when you are corrected or confronted by a Black person on the internet, before you do the thing that comes naturally, don’t. Don’t Double Down. In my experience, once a person doubles down on their original point, especially without even considering the criticism, it rarely gets better (for the offender).

If you are truly concerned about the feelings of Black people, feel free to not respond to their criticism at all. Believe me, no one will be upset or harmed to not hear from you. In these “new” discussions about race, silence is your best friend. Seriously.

With time you may even learn something about what I like to call, 'the art of silence'. But let's work on being relatively quiet first ;)

-WWW