Bad Feminist

by Roxane Gay

acknowledgment of my privilege is not a denial of the ways I have been and am marginalized, the ways I have suffered.

It is untenable to go through life as an exposed wound.

Qui tacet consentire videtur is Latin for “Silence gives consent.”

but these leaders traffic in respectability politics—the idea that if black (or other marginalized) people simply behave in “culturally approved” ways, if we mimic the dominant culture, it will be more difficult to suffer the effects of racism.

Respectability politics completely overlook institutional racism and the ways in which the education system, the social welfare system, and the justice system only reinforce many of the problems the black community faces.