A WORD ON NiceNess and Violence

FEBRUARY 2021

It’s a weird thing when being forthcoming makes folks view you as aggressive, having an attitude, and not being a team player.

Let me explain. The culture of whiteness ascertains that one should be “nice.” Nice is in quotations here because the “niceness” that is underscored by white supremacy is that of not challenging the status quo and not challenging what whiteness upholds as true—even when those truths are harmful to others.

“Niceness” is the opposite of keeping it 100, the African-American vernacular for telling the no-holds-barred truth.

For me, “niceness” in the context of working in corporate America meant staying silent about the racism that I regularly faced, engaging in trivial conversations about last night’s latest episode of “insert recent popular show”, ignoring the most recent travesty that had been inflicted on a BIPOC person, and minimizing how painful it was whenever an assumption was made that I had a “tone” in my emails because I went directly to the point in lieu of dancing around the thing.

I’ve learned that being “nice” can be synonymous with being violent in words and actions and having no one hold you accountable. This was a lesson I picked up on slowly but when I did, it made everything else come into clear view.

My desire is always to be honest and kind—i.e., loving and speaking truth to power without ignoring my lived experience. As I talked about here , the desire to be “nice” should not supersede one's ability to be honest about their actions and how said actions are harmful to others. We can’t expect anything to change if we aren’t naming things and taking responsibility for them.

with love,

Sinikiwe