‘Polite White People are Useless,’ Black Writer Says

“They ultimately just get in the way.”

8.30.2017

Whatever you do, white people, don’t be polite to GQ columnist Damon Young. Otherwise, he’ll think you’re “useless.”

Young said so in his latest piece at The Root titled, “Polite White People are Useless.” He begins talking about a scene from the Civil War movie Glory, starring Morgan Freeman and Matthew Broderick, in which the all-black 54th regiment passes an all-white Union regiment after they lost a battle:

Words are exchanged, and a small skirmish begins. During the altercation, Morgan Freeman’s Sgt. Maj. John Rawlins attempts to break up a couple of fights. One of the white solders notices the stripes on Rawlins’ uniform—indicating that he’s an officer—and quips, “Stripes on a nigger? That’s like tits on a bull.”

That’s going to come up again, so, keep that in the back of your mind. But on to the useless white people:

Polite white people—specifically, polite white people who call for decorum instead of disruption when attempting to battle and defeat bias and hate—aren’t as paradoxical as tits on a bull. But they’re just as useless. They provide no value, they move no needles, they carry no weight (metaphysically and literally) and they ultimately just get in the way. They’re humanity’s tourists: the 54-mile-per-hour drivers in the left lane refusing to get the f**k out of the way so others can pass. And if you get enough of them in one place, they cause accidents.

Young complained that these kinds of white folks are “every-f***ing-where” and only try and “defeat violence with the devil’s advocacy and danishes:”

They’re just so g**damn inert, and that inertia is dangerous. It’s unwise to mistake their lack of movement with futility. Because this type of idling does make a difference. Just the wrong kind of difference. It can be seductive and sublime. Who doesn’t want to believe that love bombs are enough to devastate hate? Who wouldn’t want to know that good manners win if the manners are good enough? Think about how much less stress battling white supremacy and police brutality would induce if all you needed to do to defeat it was drink a bottle of Pepsi.

The politeness of white people, Young believes, boils down to them “policing behavior." It's something he finds to be “a privilege exclusive.” (Would he rather white people trash a city alongside Black Lives Matter?)

“They just don’t have as much to lose if everyone stays polite and kind and sober,” Young continues. “If things happen to change while we’re nice as f**k to each other, great! If not, well, great, too. It’ll still be Wednesday. And bulls still won’t have tits.”

And his commenters feelings about white people are all the same:

“Ugh, ‘hate is hate’ is my least favorite phrase this week.”

“I can count the amount of white people I trust on one hand,” someone wrote.

Another added, “I don’t need the whole hand.”

Of course, this is from The Root, which just published a story about troublesome white women some in the black community like to call “Becky.” They actually dissected “The 5 Types of ‘Becky’” and compared them with celebrities, including Taylor Swift, Amy Schumer, Tomi Lahren, Kim Kardashian, and even Hillary Clinton. The magazine has a lot of nerve calling something useless.