The dis­cur­sive stra­te­gy of appea­ling to safe­ty and inno­cence is also enac­ted on a micro-level when white radi­cals mani­pu­late “safe space” lan­guage to main­tain their power in poli­ti­cal spaces. They do this by silen­cing the cri­ti­cisms of POC under the pre­tense that it makes them feel “unsafe.” This use of safe space lan­guage conflates dis­com­fort and actual immi­nent dan­ger — which is not to say that white people are entit­led to feel safe any­way. The phrase “I don’t feel safe” is easy to mani­pu­late because it frames the situa­tion in terms of the speaker’s per­so­nal fee­lings, making it dif­fi­cult to…