It's definitely a lot harder to do that without feeling as if we're debasing ourselves. Black women have egos too, which have often been trod upon by the types of men whose cooperation we're trying to gain.

I have on occasion gotten some white people to open up to me by pretending I didn't know something, (which can sometimes feel pretty degrading) but a lot of the time the assumption that I don't know stuff is already present, which strongly prompts me to show them otherwise.

As long as you're not trying to explain racism to those who directly experience it, then you explaining it to other white people isn't a problem for me. It's only a problem if your explanations to them are wrong, or not informed by our definition of it.