Thread by @PortiaMcGonagal

Happy Friday peeps. I'm tired. Exhausted, as I know so many are. In addition to midterm stress, I have #notallwhitewomen fatigue. It's a chronic condition. The last thing I planned to do today was another thread but...let's talk about niceness & some other things. 1/

Specifically, weaponized niceness and silencing tactics. I've said before that white women want to be liked. Black women want to be respected. Yes I'm prepared for the inevitable replies 😬. The discussion of "niceness" goes hand in hand with this. Consistently, 2/

replies to posts by BW and those who stand with us when we speak out are met with accusations of being "mean" when we are candid; being "angry" when we are firm; being hostile for speaking to other adults as adults. Inevitably the white fragility comes out. Demands 3/

to be "nicer" or "we're all in this together" or "stop being divisive" etc. These are all silencing tactics. For centuries, WW, whose agency and power so many want to erase or insist is doled out to them parsimoniously by the men in their lives, have held power 4/

over Black and other women of color. In parallel, they were praised for their femininity, treated as the idealized version of womanhood, and above all, expected to be nice, well-mannered, polite etc. There were "just things" that "weren't done" in polite company. 5/

Anger, justified, righteous, EARNED, from the same centuries of being dehumanized, belittled, discriminated against, de facto and de jure, is a normal human emotion, yet despite that, Black and other people of color have had to manage and contain it lest there be6/

actual life or death consequences. I've been done with that for a while. But what happens when we point to truths, share the frustration that our lived experiences continue to be dismissed, and call out the root cause of current political realities? For Black women, 7/

here comes the Angry Black Woman express. It's the caboose to the Not All White Woman train. Always on time. Speaking for myself, I frankly work triple overtime to be dispassionate in most of my posts, exactly for this reason. Been there. Done that. Through school, 8/

social situations, my career. Expressly because I don't want to give white fragility any room to lob that accusation. Well, that ends now. I am angry. I will state that I'm angry. IDGAF if you think I'm angry. My question to WW who enable their DEMOGRAPHIC to keep 9/

holding ALL women back and creeping us closer to what the white male nationalists openly state they want to do to the country is, why aren't you angry? Instead, it reverts to "nice" or "kind" in these discussions. We see it every day. How is it weaponized? 10/

It's the Southern "bless your heart" while meaning "eff you". It's the erasure of the reasons for our anger. It's the "Fiddle Dee Dee" mentality of WW's favorite movie. It's ultimately, "hush now" and conditional allyship predicated on WWs egos and feelings being assuaged.11/

It's a silencing tactic because if we persist, then we're the villains. And IDGAF. We're talking survival here. I'll fight for mine. The WW who do this sh*t? You're on your own. 12/12