"I don't really talk to him about his political views so I don't really understand what the rally was about or anything," she told the Associated Press, referring to the Unite the Right march of white nationalists and Nazis. "He did mention all bright? What is it?"

Hours after her son, 20-year-old James Alex Fields, allegedly rammed his car into a crowd of anti-racist protesters in Charlottesville Saturday, killing one of them, Samantha Bloom told reporters she "tried to stay out of his political views."

Though we've heard the calls to collect our racist family members and friends—to challenge people on their bigoted views—how do you do that in a way that's effective as opposed to just hostile?

When tragedies like Charlottesville happen, it's natural for people to reflect on what they could or should have done. While most of us (hopefully) don't have people in our lives who would pick up a torch, openly chant "Jews will not replace us!" and defend the confederacy, we all observe casual and overt racism, sometimes within our very own social circles and families. Frequently, we fail to call it out.

"We have been silent up until now, but now we see that this was a mistake. It was the silence of good people that allowed the Nazis to flourish the first time around, and it is the silence of good people that is allowing them to flourish now," Pierce Tefft wrote .

Meanwhile, in the aftermath of the ugly attacks, the father of Peter Tefft—one of the white supremacists pictured at the rally—penned an open letter disowning his son and expressing remorse for his own inaction.

Later, reports revealed that Fields had openly expressed admiration for Hitler in high school. The protester he allegedly murdered, Heather Heyer, was a 32-year-old paralegal and vocal critic of inequality.

When the journalist corrected her and described the alt-right as "ultra conservative, white supremacist organizations," Bloom replied, "I didn't know it was white supremacist, I thought it had something to do with Trump. Trump's not a supremacist."

It's an issue with which I've struggled. In the last year, I've cut off ties with good friend and a family member after getting into explosive arguments over race. My tendency, by nature of my job and my blunt personality, is to call out racists aggressively.

An article published by Vox last year said calling a racist "racist" is not helpful when it comes to enlightening them. The article cites a Stanford/Berkeley study on transphobia that found having short, frank conversations asking people to put themselves in the shoes of a trans person, is a more effective way of gaining empathy. Moreover, it said calling a person racist may cause them to double down on their problematic beliefs.

Akwasi Owusu-Bempah, an assistant sociology professor at the University of Toronto's Mississauga campus has these discussions all the time. Owusu-Bempah told VICE between growing up in a mixed-race family in rural Ontario and researching race relations, he's learned to put his emotions aside when necessary.

"Do I get extremely angry over what I read and write? Of course," he said. But, "when I have these discussions about race and social inequality, I try to have them in the least emotionally charged way as possible."

Owusu-Bempah reiterated the findings of the aforementioned study.