Short post today, and one that I’m actually a little frightened to publish. Although I am fairly well anonymized, what I am about to write could, if traced back to me, lead to harassment, violence, and loss of employment. Of course this is why I am a cat. So, here comes a hairball, with the toughest bits below the paywall:
I once had a student tell me that she wasn’t shouting, that that’s just the way she talks. Apparently this is a thing being promulgated by some people about their race/cultural background (and it’s many, not just one or two backgrounds) - Normies should put up with them racking up vocalizations above 75 decibels because it’s ‘their way’.
There’s even a book out there entitled “i’m not yelling” [sic]1 by Elizabeth Leiba, which claims to provide helpful advice to black women about how to achieve advancement in the corporate world. And perhaps it does, but it does so with a healthy dose of victimhood and a significant lack of thought or self-awareness.
The book’s forward provides us with the rationale behind it’s title. It reads: “Why are you yelling? As a Black woman, I have had these words hurled at me more times than I can remember. Most of us have. They are on page one of the ‘Angry Black Woman Trope’ manual. The subtext of this phrase […] is ‘Who do you think you are?’ […] ‘Why are you holding your ground?’ […] ‘How.Dare.You.Be.Uppity.’ And the N-word is silent.”
What we have here is a failure to communicate. If people keep asking you why you are yelling, perhaps you need to consider that perhaps you are, actually, yelling. It doesn’t take 200+ pages to work on that problem. Of course if your unshakable preconception is that you and those who look like you are victims, this kind of self-examination is a challenge.
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