Y U Mad, Whiteboy?

Anonymous asked: I was wondering, are you suggesting that no one ever gets over emotional during arguments, or suggesting that it is used dismissively by white men when it is not applicable?

The latter. There’s also a big emphasis among middle and upper class educated folks (mostly white but I’ve gotten it from old-school Civil Rights activists as well) on being respectful, polite, tolerant, etc in the face of oppression. I think that there’s a place for that, but white men, especially in leftist organizing circles, have a tendency to use it as a weapon. There’s a lack of recognition that anger is a very real and totally legitimate reaction to oppressive or hurtful behavior. So for example, once a white dude walked into a women’s meeting and wasted ten minutes of our time arguing with us about why he should be allowed to stay. I finally snap and say, “Look I’m not trying to spend our meeting arguing, can you get the fuck out?” He looked at me like I had whipped out a gun or something and said, “You know, if you can’t even be civil, I don’t really think that you guys should be allowed to keep having these closed meetings.” Do you see the problem there?