African American

I have to say I completely agree with it, and I think that the willingness to completely ostracize someone is important for some things. For me, that thing was racism, long before the age of trump. When I was a teenager, one of my grandmothers was on a racist tirade, on Christmas day, and when I politely asked if we could change the subject since it was making me very angry, she called me a "n-lover" and went on about how it was her damn house and she could talk however she damn well pleased.

To which I replied basically that yes it is her house, and she can talk however she pleases, but that does not mean that I have to stay there and tolerate it, and I never set foot in that house again, or even spoke another word to her until a couple of decades later, after Alzheimer's had relieved her of her racism. That was something of an interesting experience for me, in that I observed first-hand the spectrum of racism/prejudice. My grandfather would use the n-word too, but I remember that when he used it, it carried the same significance as "bluejay"... just the name he had been taught for a thing, whereas with his wife, you could feel the resentment-bordering-on-hatred.

I think that's part of what is needed, is for a broader segment of society to simply not tolerate such open racism, from anyone for any reason. As it happened for me, my father took in a gay black kid who was disowned by his own family when I was very young. Didn't seem strange to me at all, he was just my darker-skinned brother. So I had the benefit of a familial relationship that made racism and homophobia both personally offensive to me. That, in fact, is why my grandmother's tirade was pissing me off so bad.

I think all of this nuance ties into why I have such an appreciation for the difference between being racist and being an inadequately aware opponent of racism, since I myself have been accused of being a racist, despite having actually disowned my own family members precisely because they actually were. It really made me evaluate the difference between racism and prejudice.