Indeed, Mallory is so confident in her anti-racist bona fides that she finds the charge of anti-Semitism, when leveled against her, to be a slight worth pushing back against. When Mallory asked a Jewish colleague to help her with a financial problem on the predicate that Jews were good with money, the colleague said she was being anti-Semitic. Mallory’s response was to defend herself by explaining her ignorance: “I asked her, ‘Could it possibly be ignorant language?’ I know that it’s ignorant to say that,” she said, but “it sounds really bad” to be accused of anti-Semitism. She continued to Serwer: “When you are labeled an anti-Semite, what follows can be very, very devastating for black leaders. To have someone say that about you, it almost immediately creates a feeling of defensiveness because you know the outcome.”

To be accused of anti-Semitism is to play soccer uphill, Mallory suggests, and it’s not worth engaging when the playing field is so uneven. What might seem bigoted might not always be, and if her accusers want to have a productive conversation with her, they should be careful to try to understand where she’s coming from before making accusations.