The Next Time Somebody Brings Up The Tone Argument, Check Yourself

Since I have no problem discussing race and class issues and how they affect the trans community, there are times my tell it like it T-I-S is style of talking about it is something that peeps with vanillacentric privilege find hard to take.

They'll sometimes say that my message would go over better if I just 'watched my tone' or wasn't so 'angry' when I write about the microaggressions and daily slights I face as a transwoman of African descent. 

You can check that tone argument based on an interesting post I read by New Black Woman over at Womanist Musings.  It concerns the recent anti-racism campaign being conducted in Duluth, MN that is garnering a highly negative reaction.

Basically all it is doing is repeating some of the same things that I and other POC bloggers have written for years about whiteness, white supremacy, racism = prejudice plus systemic power and the blind spot that white people have when it comes to race because they don't see it.

Naw, you're not going to see it because it doesn't affect you.   As a white person you can blithely go about your day and throughout your life thinking everythang is hunky dory and we POC's are 'whining' when we talk about how whiteness, white supremacy that benefits you deleteriously affect our lives.

And yes, when we African-Americans think about all the microaggressive incidents that have impacted our lives in the micro and macro sense since childhood, it does piss us off.

So the next time someone tries to tell me that talking about these race issues in a less than angry tone will advance the conversation, all I have to do is point to this Duluth, MN campaign as an exclamation point to me and other POC's saying no the hell it won't.