DC Deep,
Perhaps if you were a member of a group of people who have been oppressed for over 300 years, you wouldn't see reactions to such things as "knee jerk". I suspect you are a white man. I am a white woman, and just like I don't think men have any business telling me what it's like to live as a woman, and to define my experiences for me as either acceptable or unacceptable, I don't think white people have any business telling African-Americans what it's like to live as a black person.
That's like telling someone with appendicitis that he or she is not really in pain because you've never had appendicitis and don't know what it feels like.