Has anyone ever had anything good to come of calling-out racists?

I keep reading on social media, calls from Black folks to white folks saying that we need to call out racists because silence is violence. I don't usually do this because it seems counterproductive, so I decided I'd better answer the call at the next opportunity. An opportunity came yesterday at drum circle.

We meet in the park on Sunday afternoons to drum. Yesterday we had a small and somewhat diverse group. A Black lady, a Chicano guy, a Native couple, and 4 white folks, old punks and hippies. I'm in that last set, a (mostly) white gender-queer female with a visible touch of Native heritage. (Names are omitted to protect people's privacy.) We were taking a breather in between sets, chatting and chilling. That was when a young white guy in dirty ragged clothes came up on a beat-up old stingray bicycle and shouted, "I got a great idea for Halloween! You can all dress up like Indians on the warpath ..."

"Excuse me," I cut in. "That sort of talk is not acceptable ..."

"What? Indians?" He shot back, and tapped his mouth while making that obnoxious woo-woo-woo sound.

"No, that's not acceptable," I said again.

"How about a war dance?" he offered, straddling his bike and wagging his feet in an awkward jig.

"What's your problem, man?" I said.

"You're my problem!" He replied. "Too many liberals stinking up the place! And your problem is you take things personally."

"Well, your problem is that you don't realize that other people are human beings."

"Right-O!" he said. "None of you are real. You're all puppets. That's why I love president donald trump. With him in charge, I can tell it like it is!"

I'd had enough. "Get out of here you nasty little troll," I said.

"I'm not going anywhere, this is getting fun!"

I stood up, my hands balled at my sides, forgetting my lifelong commitment to non-violence. At that point, the lead drummer gave us both a sharp look, and the guy on the bike turned away, shouting as he left "trump loves you!" I noticed that his rhythm and tone were the dead-on same as in the Southern blessing, "Jesus loves you!" only he substituted TFG's name for the name of the popular deity. Creepy.

As I watched him roll away, memories came flooding back. I grew up with a lot of domestic violence, and spent a lot of time dissociated. So I don't remember much of my childhood, but I do have vague memories of talking with my father and he hit me on the head a lot. In that moment, I re-lived times when I'd called-out his racism, and he'd hit me on the head when I did so.

Well done, little troll. You honest to G-d triggered a lib. In the clinical sense of the t-word.

"Did ya'll see that?" I said, loudly addressing the circle. "Did ya'll see what a$$#013$ these MAGA folks can be?"

Crickets. Have you ever had the feeling that you're moving your mouth and working your throat but no sound is coming out?

I sat down and stroked my drum while singing a banishing and blessing chant that I'd learned from a Rabbi on YouTube. (Cultural appropriation? Maybe, but he shared it because nowadays we all need all the prayers we can get!) My eyes burned and my throat felt tight, singing eased the pain. The Natives, sitting beside me on the right, were looking at the ground. I looked around, everyone was quiet, looking at the ground. I looked at the Black lady sitting at left. She looked at me and said, "I was laughing. You need to learn to laugh at stuff like that." Her eyes were hard and her mouth was tight. She didn't look to me like she was laughing.

I saw an elder punk watching, the one who'd been dancing with flags, she had some nice moves like a street busker. So I walked over to her next. "Did you see that?" I said. "I wasn't paying attention," she replied. So I related in brief what had happened, and she started playing with her flags. The old hippie guy beside her tapped out a fancy rhythm on his congas and chanted "just let it go, let it go."

The lead drummer walked over and spoke up. "It's best to ignore stuff like that."

"I usually do," I replied. "But I've been asked to call-out racism, so I did."

"Who asked you?" he said.

"Various people on social media."

The big drum guy nodded and muttered, "Don't believe everything you read."

So silence is violence. On the other hand, calling-out racism just seems to make it worse. The MAGA-troll was probably recording all that, it's probably all over 8chan now, with little troll minions loving on themselves and laughing at the old hippie b!+ch losing her $#!+ over a joke.

Usually I do my bit by sharing my talents and resources with BIPOC folks, and by educating and encouraging allies. This seems to help. That time I tried to do my bit by taking a troll's bait. It didn't seem to help.

So ... has anyone ever had anything good come of calling-out racists? If so, please share what you did, how you did it, and what came of it.

I'm all ears.