I am afraid Professor Graham is trying to have too many things both ways. For example, his “Allcitiesstrong” analogy makes no sense, because no one believes that all cities are strong. He can dismiss that complaint as finding his analogy “logically flawed,” but in a context in which the analogy is the only argument he is making, debunking that analogy seems as complete an exploration of the subject as the flimsiness of his own suggests it deserves.

Likewise, BLM is a marxist organization. If the KKK renamed itself “Motherhood and Apple Pie, and went around pointedly asking, wink, wink, whether one “likes motherhood and apple pie,” wouldn’t it be ok to duck the question as best you can? Black lives do matter. I can say that because Black lives do matter to me and because I can say it without offering the shibboleth demanded by the question “Do Black lives matter?” Not wanting to parrot the slogan of a Marxist organization, or dance to its tune like some useful idiot, is not fragile or racist.

The heart of the “have it both ways” argument has to do with connotation. The word “racism” has historically had hatred built in as a connotation. Those who wish to appropriate the word to describe something broader make no effort whatsoever to remove or even reduce the taint. If Hitler was a racist and I’m a racist, then I’m going to resist the label. If that makes me “fragile,” so be it; another word appropriated and defanged.

It is a pity that “racism” is already taken as a word, because it might otherwise be an accurate descriptor of the problem Black people face. But the word is taken, and there is no retronym in sight to cover the haters. I believe it is intellectually dishonest to claim that the use of the word is not meant to assign the same moral status to not being properly anti-racist as was once assigned to active hatred. (The same can be said, mutatis mutandis, of “privilege” and “supremacy,” words with pejorative connotations inappropriate to the phenomena they purportedly name.)

Finally, I don’t accept Prof. Graham’s claim that White fragility is not a kafkatrap. Unless “No I am not” is an acceptable response to an accusation, the accusation is a kafkatrap. The rest is details.