While the NAWP claim might sound like defensiveness, the real purpose is aggressive — to limit or shut down discourse.

In a similar fashion, the purpose of the self-righteously indignant counterclaim that “All Lives Matter” is to undercut the “Black Lives Matter” movement by implying that Black people don’t care about white lives, and that the person who pretends to support the non-existent ALM movement is not racist, whereas the BLM supporters are racist.

“Reverse Racism” is another popular response whenever a Black person criticizes certain (not all) White people for racism. You may expect to find yourself accused of reverse racism in the comments here.

Yet another specious counterclaim is “Why are Black people always condemning White-on-Black crime and saying nothing about Black-on-Black crime?” as though Black people don’t mind being victimized as long as the victimizer is Black, and as though White racism isn’t frequently the catalyst for Black-on-Black crime.

If White people truly want to advance the notion that they aren’t racist, they should get busy doing something to combat racism in the real world. That’s the kind of discourse we would all benefit from. Well, not all of us — everybody but the racists.