"When Nice People Are Dangerous: The Soft Violence of the Well-Meaning"

I used to think the worst harm came from people who were loud about their hate. The red-faced screamers, the slur-throwers, the ones who burned flags and broke windows. The ones whose violence made the news.

But I was wrong.

The most dangerous people I’ve encountered were the soft-spoken ones. The hand-on-your-shoulder kind. The ones who start their sentences with “I just think…” or “Well, to play devil’s advocate…”

They smile as they hurt you. They believe they're helping.

I met one of them when I was sixteen. She was a teacher. A “cool” one, by school standards. Wore yoga pants to class, played indie music while we worked. Everyone liked her. She brought snacks to exams. She also believed poor kids just needed to work harder and that racism was “mostly a thing of the past.”

She called herself “colorblind.” And expected us to clap for that.

I had tried, naively, to bring up the disparities I saw between how the white kids were treated and how the Black and brown kids were punished. I mentioned how certain kids—my friends—were followed around in the hallways or sent to the office for being “disruptive,” even when they were just laughing. How some of us never got picked for the “fun” leadership roles or recognized for our work. I thought she’d understand. She was “nice,” after all.

She smiled at me and said, “I think your imagination may be getting the best of you.”

I didn’t have the language then, but I felt it deep in my chest: what she really meant was don’t challenge the way things are. Her smile was a velvet glove wrapped around a cold steel bat.

She wasn’t stupid. Just uninterested. She had the privilege of not needing to know better.

Later, when a queer student in our school died by suicide—after coming out and being kicked out of his home—I remember wondering if he had ever tried to come to her for help. If she had smiled at him too, nodded blankly, offered some empty platitude while pushing his pain off her desk.

When someone dies, people love to say “they seemed fine.” They want to believe that harm only counts when it comes with bruises and blood. But the kind of violence that kills slowly—the kind that comes from being erased, ignored, invalidated—is just as real.

Death by a thousand dismissals.

After that, I started paying attention. I started noticing the other “nice” people. The ones who say they “don’t see race,” but still lock their car doors in certain neighborhoods. The ones who support LGBTQ+ rights “as long as they don’t shove it in my face.” The ones who are “not political” because the system already works for them.

They aren’t loud. They don’t need to be. The system speaks for them. Protects them. Rewards them for their silence.

They are the counselors who tell trans kids to “wait until college to be themselves.” The employers who say, “We just didn’t think you were the right fit.” The professors who smile when your hand goes up but never call on you.

Nice people. Well-meaning people. People who would never throw the first stone, but who keep rebuilding the structure that lets others keep throwing them.

And the wildest part?

They genuinely believe they're good.

They donate to food drives. They rescue dogs. They’re kind to their barista.

But when the conversation turns to equity, identity, or liberation—they vanish. Or worse, they smile and say, “It’s not that deep.”

But it is that deep. And that shallow smile? That willful ignorance?

That’s what buries people.

So, no—I don’t trust nice anymore. Not without action. Not without accountability.

Don’t show me your bumper stickers or Instagram bio. Show me who you listen to when it's uncomfortable. Show me what you protect when it costs you something.

Because the worst violence I’ve seen didn’t come from people who hated me.

It came from people who claimed to love everyone.

And didn’t mean it.