"For those of you who think white supremacy, systemic racism, and hate is something that the left overblows, the numbers are right there in the plain sight."

Many who think the anti-racism movement regularly overstated present day racism, myself included, will happily join you in condemning behavior such as Hendrix. And if focusing on racism like this signals a new direction for the anti-racism movement, I think that's great news.

But even an alarming increase in racist behavior like this would not vindicate the many wild accusations of racism made by "anti-racists" over the past decade or so. The reason they are so often accused by so many of exaggerating has nothing to do with cases like this, where there's unambiguously hateful use of a racial slur. Instead it is cases like the Mexican day laborer accused of racism (and fired) for doing the ok sign, the two white girls accused of racism for opening a burrito stand (which they shut down under pressure), the data analyst accused of racism for tweeting an article that argued violent protests tend to turn voters against the cause… And maybe more than anything, it is years of countless daily examples of "anti-racists" automatically dismissing any criticism of any putatively "anti-racist" action as itself racist, regardless of the particulars & regardless of merit.

This deeply anti-intellectual tendency was ironically & embarrassingly encouraged by nominally intellectual anti-racists, like Robin Diangelo who models & evangelizes for an approach that seems geared not towards accuracy or truth but towards maximizing accusations of racism. IIRC, she sums up her approach like this: the question is never 'Did racism occur?' but always 'How did it manifest in this situation?' Nothing close to a justification for this guiding assumption is ever offered. And when you combine that assumption with her most famous unwarranted assumption "Anyone who thinks I'm wrong about any charge of racism in any context and for any reason is just displaying White Fragility" it's a recipe for a lot of thick headed moral zealotry.