Without going into Kyle's article (which is a pretty good read) I'm might share some of my own experiences. I consider myself a somewhat democratic socialist, I also work in a job where on a daily basis I use force on people. I'm accused on a weekly basis of being a racist, my interactions with "consumers" generally follow a fairly well rehearsed script, I have certain legal obligations that i have to satisfy and our consumers have certain legal boundaries they have to transgress before things are escalated to a physical confrontation. This will normally happen at least once a shift, more regularly multiple times over the course of a shift, of the 70 or so incidents I go to each week, 50 to 70 percent will be physical. Only a small number of our consumers are non whites, however almost all will accuse us of racism, even when my colleagues are African or Pacific Islanders. Almost with monotonous regularity the first reaction at an adverse outcome is to accuse us or somebody in the organisation of racism, I realise that these people like most of the people i deal with have likely spent a lot of time interacting with law enforcement and various social services however shouting racism is just another way to avoid self reflection and personal responsibility. Its another way to make your circumstances somebody else's fault, you know calling the nurse a slut and spitting on her is not my fault cause they're all racists, it really gets my goat.
It like the boy who cried wolf, I actually wrote up a staff member not long ago for what I characterised as a long and demonstrable record of racism toward non white consumers, she was and is a racist, the problem is that everybody is accused of it, she left the organisation shortly after I put my report in but i doubt it would have made much of a difference anyway.
