Our guest Cathy Buerger told us about the genesis of the twitter handle, “Yes, you’re racist”--a great example of counter speech. It was started by Logan Smith after searching for posts that started with “I’m not racist but” which, inevitably, WERE followed by something very racist. So he started retweeting such posts under the “Yes, you’re racist” handle. And the account now has 350K followers.
Smith’s goal is not to change the minds of the original posters--he’s pretty aware the public shaming isn’t a way to change people’s beliefs. But it IS a good way to raise awareness that this racism and these attitudes exist online.
