*Bad language warning*

This is a conversation between myself and someone I was friends with when I was a teenager. I often see them post things from Britain First, and other prejudiced and racist memes, so I would class them as racist. Normally I just ‘angry face’ them, or occasionally give a laughing face when they are totally ridiculous (anyone remember the ridiculous/clearly false meme about muslims being offended by sniffer dogs?!). I have no intention of falling out with them over this, because I don’t believe that they’re truly a bad person, I’ll just continue to help them to understand that the things they say are racist, and are wrong.

Anyway, this time I decided to find out exactly what they meant by re-posting this particular meme - because to me it says that they will never support BLM, and by association, black lives? Being mixed race, obviously I was mildly offended by this but I wanted to see whether they considered themselves to be racist? In short, I was testing their level of ignorance to the fact that the things they post are racist.

This is how that conversation went… (note, ‘today’ refers to Saturday 13th June - when BLM protests in London were cancelled because EDL and football hooligans went to ‘protect’ the Churchill statue)

How do we recognise that this is someone who is in denial about being racist?

Note how many times they try to deflect from the conversation, and pick out the parts that they want to respond to, whilst ignoring the rest.

This is also a great example of how racist content spreads inadvertently - apparently the poster was trying to express their disdain for violence - but is that what their post actually says?!

Note how by using a picture of Her Majesty, it automatically draws in anyone who supports the Queen so has the potential to cause division based on his.

When people repost this meme, what are they actually saying?

#denial #racistfriend #queen #kneel #knee #meme