I don’t think you were being a pedantic dork or whitesplaining to Ray. Simply having a different opinion on what methods are moral and effective to dismantle racism to a particular black person doesn’t mean you’re whitesplaining. And given your reasonable comment about cycles of violence resulted in Ray assuming that you don’t know that the prison system in the US is a form of state sanctioned slavery and thus are OK with slavery, explaining yourself and showing that you knew what you were talking about wasn’t pedantic at all in my view.

And this still doesn’t explain the Hectoring White Moderate self-insult. How is one to interpret that other than white guilt? Would your comment have been different if you had had the exact same opinion and been a person of colour? Because there are black people with the exact same opinion on this as you, even in this comments section. Steve QJ is an example of a prominent black writer with similar views as you.

If you had just genuinely changed your mind because someone educated you, there would be no need to call yourself a Hectoring White Moderate. That part of the conversation is the sign of white guilt, the implication that your opinion was wrong because you were white and thus shouldn’t have been voiced.

But your opinion was a valid one. And you weren’t even disagreeing with a black person in your OP. You were disagreeing with a white person who makes a living and sells books telling other white people that they’re racist. Someone whose job incentivises them to deepen the divide they allegedly want to heal. You’re not wrong for disagreeing with that for fucks sake.