@VladmirsPoutine
Or look at the way words to describe groups are called out when there is in fact no consensus within communities about them. I've seen this with several communities where there is significant differences among members about what words to use and which ought to be used
Yes. I'm always suspicious of these people. To simplify it it's like 1000 black people could tell you that non-black people using the n-word is racist. But one black person will tell you their white best friend calls them the n-word all the time and it's a sign of love. Much like Robin DA - there's alot of money to be made for people who position themselves strategically. I don't doubt that there are some Black people who believe racism doesn't exist or that it hasn't had an adverse affect on them - it then however becomes an issue when they invariably get fast tracked to prominent positions and get media slots to proudly proclaim how the UK is a beacon of tolerance. On a side note I have a friend who I went to uni with who's now very popular among certain right-wing circles because she parrots their schtick but more importantly she's a single Black mother so basically their golden goose. Only one of us owns a house, a holiday apartment and 2 range rovers yet we both studied the same thing and had similar career trajectories. I should have been more savvy. I'm going off on a tangent but the problem with doing that is that much like Shaun Bailey found, you'll inevitably be the sacrificial lamb to keep the ship afloat.
I actually don't think the "n-word" and that particular controversy is a very typical example. It is and always has been a slur, even when used commonly or by people who didn't hear other words used much, and it's used in a very specific way within the black community. There are some things that can be discussed, I know plenty of black peopel who don't think it should be used that way, and I think some people find it honestly confusing if they have a fairly simple approach to language. But that's not most people.
What is much more typical are communities like Native Americans, or words like Gypsy, where you have real live discussions and also a wide variety of usages in the community. Or alternately, words that were at one time considered fine or even preferable but which have fallen out of fashion because they were associated with old people.
One of the more bizarre interactions of this type I've witnessed was a group of women determined to call out racism claiming that when elderly people used words that were now archaic but had previously been the preferred language, they needed to be brought up to speed, that once they knew better they should do better. The question of who would actually be harmed, or helped by this in the black community was not part of the question, nor was any historical discussion around why the preferred word had changed (in this case it was mainly something decided by activists and continued to be used by older black Americans for a long time, though in decreasing numbers.)
Or similarly, my neighbour's daughter told she was using a racist word by a teacher for saying Indian, which she had learned from her father, a Native American man, who wasn't especially politically active and really didn't care about that kind of thing.
I don't know if I've personally met anyone who doesn't think racism exists, particularly not anyone black. But I do think there are significant differences in what different people think racism really is, what causes it, whether certain things are examples of it. I used Kendi as an example for a reason, he is typical of the id politics view - every disparity you can show between white and non-white people is racism, in his view. That certainly isn't the view of everyone in the black community but it does not at all mean they think racism doesn't exist.
There can also be such huge differences in views on particular subjects - look at the criticisms Adolph Reed makes about BLM and how they approach police killings in the US - supposedly the whole reason for their existence. What he says, having crunched the numbers, is that their analysis is mostly wrong, and that means that their understanding of why it happens is wrong, and their proposed solutions won't work. That's not a refusal to recognize racism, that's being insistent on actually looking at the specific data and understanding it. Similarly he's published a lot about the question of understanding disparities between groups and how that has to happen for it to give statistically valid information - is that denying racism? It conflicts directly with the id pol view.
Your point about advantage is interesting and I think that happens, but I would argue not only in one direction. That's also one of Reed's arguments - that as the black middle class grew in the US, their interests shifted and became much more closely tied to those of the rest of the middle class, and no longer very attached to those of the poor, of any race. So that's why for example he would say you get middle class activists pushing defunding police while the poor tend to want more but better policing in their communities. But often the voices of black middle class activists are the ones that are platformed as representing teh black perspective.
Anyway - this is the problem with wokeness - it denies the possibility of discussions on topics like this.