Perhaps it happened in the SDMB, or somewhere out in the real world.
Someone says "You’re racist"
It’s happened to me before, for quite silly reasons actually. I’ve found that defending yourself against such an accusation is nearly impossible; it’s the equivalent of a question like “When was the last time youi beat yur wife?” Saying that you have minority friends or support minority causes only makes it look worse.
So, how do you adequately defend yourself against a false accusation of racism?
Grab the nearest same-sex person of a different race and kiss him/her full on the lips?
Invent a grandparent, fast.
“Yes. But only against the human race.”
Well, you could ask them what evidence they have, or what line of reasoning, to support such a claim. Then (presuming you’re not a racist), you could point out that their evidence is untrue, their reasoning flawed, or that their evidence or reasoning don’t actually support the claim that you’re a racist. Probably you want to start with a simple, calm denial:
“You’re a racist!”
“No I’m not. What makes you say that I am?”
Strange, it has never happened to me. I suppose I would ask why the person thought so.
Really, it doesn’t seem to me the occassion for “defending” so much as the occassion for “understanding”.
So, how do you adequately defend yourself against a false accusation of racism?
You can answer: “At least I am not into kiddie porn, like yourself”
Tried that one time I was accused of it.
Silence in response.
Not that many others present would have thought it true. (I’ve been accused of it twice…the other time the person who thought it realised I was just extremely shy and quiet around new people, and it wasn’t because she was black that I barely acknowledged her presence at first. We became friends, eventually. She was cool.)
I have had this happen. Asked the nearest person next to me to help me pull out a cart on the 747 we were on (I was a flight attendant at the time). The first person happen to be a black female; I didn’t know or really care. Anyway, she went ballistic, insisting that I never would have asked a white girl to help. I couldn’t get it, and said so. She simply fumed the whole day.
That night at dinner, she was wearing a ‘Black Pride’ T-shirt. Now, second thoughts are rare and wonderous things for me, and that would have been a good time to have one - but no, I shoot of my mouth and mention that sometimes you ‘find’ what you are looking for, and (playing the devils advocate), why was it OK for her to wear a Black Pride shirt, but if I wore a White Pride shirt I would be crucified as a ‘racist pig’?
Believe it or not, she actually settled down, but it still took her a good hour to admit that ‘racism’ was not simply a one-way street (she initially insisted that, by definition, minoriites couldn’t be racist’).
It is very hard to disprove something like this. At one of my previous companies a guy was fired for sheer incompetence, but he sued the company claiming he was fired because he was gay - which was news to the rest of us. Seems some people will look for any excuse to blame things on instead of looking inside - same for everybody to some extent; the ‘racism/prejudice’ card is just another option available in certain circumstances.
A bit off topic, but here’s my litmus test for determining a rascist.
You are a rascist if you believe that the things you don’t like about a particular people are inherently qualities of those people, as opposed to a result of the environment.
( someone smarter than I please put this more eloquently for me )
In other words…you observe that blacks commit more crimes than whites and conclude that blacks will always commit more crimes because it’s part of their “nature”.
The best response possible tends to be simply remaining calm and reasonable. Calm and reasonable goes a long way in the face of hysteria–it will very rarely change the hysterical person’s view, but if you’re consistent onlookers will be able to see.
It does kill discussion pretty quickly, but frankly when someone’s interested in immediately accusing others of indefensible things, there’s not much point to having a discussion with them in the first place. Racism and homophobia are hateful things, and it’s a very natural reaction to get riled when you’re accused of them–that’s pretty much usually the intention, to piss you off and have you make yourself look bad by a hysterical reaction to it. It’s a “good” tactic to “win” a debate, unfortunately.
I once had a guy call me a racist because I wouldn’t play pool with his drunken self. It would not have been honourable to deprive him of his money.
I merely pointed to Lola and said “Do you see that woman? She’s my girlfriend”.
I asked him to repeat the question which he wisely declined to do.
For those who don’t know, Lola is a stunning mocha coloured angel whom I am fortunate to be consort to.
So many people throw around the “racist” term without really knowing what it means. Bluntly put–if you don’t believe that your race makes you superior, you are not racist.
For example: I am very proud of my Irish heritage. I keep the Erin Go Bragh flag next to the US flag on my patio; I keep St. Patrick’s Day, etc. However, I don’t believe my Irish heritage to make me superior to those who don’t share it.
Being called a “racist” by the proven liar Al Sharpton (I refuse to call that slime “Reverend”) is like being called a “Communist” by Joe McCarthy or a “liberal” by Rush Limbaugh. It’s just political posturing. In some cases, false accusations can destroy lives–just ask Steve Pagones.
Not good enough.
Several years ago, a close relative said that Texax congressman Dick Armey was a racist. I pointed out that he was married to a woman of another race (Asian). My relative said, “He could still be bigoted against Blacks!”
december, Feynn: Sacre bleu, you didn’t take me seriously, did you? Just wanted to get the first wisecrack in. And get immediately trumped by matt_mcl.
Dec. is right about that not being “good enough,” so I was mystified by Feynn’s comment…I had a three-year relationship with an Af-Am female whilst in college, and it seemed to generate a response of “He is exploiting her…she should only be balling Black Men” from certain segregationist types of color on campus.
This was the standard defence of segregation in the USA and Apartheid in South Africa: they were not racist policies because they were based on the differences between, or separateness of, races rather than the superiority of one race over another.
If that’s true, then this charge is like the nuclear weapon of accusations, in which case you should rely on what we do in real life to handle a nuclear threat: Mutually Assured Destruction, in this case, some variation of “I know you are but what am I?”
That is, until we develop some kind of conversational SDI defense 
Damn, you beat me to it! 
This is the funny part. I’ve never been accused of this while in Mississippi. When I’ve been up on trips into “Yankeeland” and other states, usually I’ve gotten strange looks when people find out where I’m from, but it’s mostly curosity, nothing malevolent.
But when I got on the internet, sheesh. I’ve been accused of it a few times in person (the person just got ignored), but on the net? Wow. Those people get ignored too.
Many years ago, when I was moving to Mississippi, a moving company from Booneville, MS sent a truck to Cincinnati to pick up our office equipmentl. I had told them that we had a big safe, but when they got there they were totally unprepared. So the black driver and his black helper asked me if there was some place we could go and hire some help. I took them where I thought they would be most successful (anyone from Cincinnati, this was close to Vine St.). Anyways, they told me that whoever they would talk to that they planned to say they were from Memphis, because blacks from the north would look down on blacks from Mississippi.
When we got the helpers and everybody got to know each other I don’t think there was any problem. However, that was the feeling beforehand.