Already suffering from white privilege and white fragility, some of America’s 260 million white people picked up The Wall St. Journal yesterday and discovered they were suffering from yet another unsuspected ailment—civility. As explained in a Journal op-ed by journalism professor Steve Salerno, “whiteness informed civility” gives whites the impression that they can conduct conversations with black people without confessing that whites are agents of oppression and patriarchal power.

As Salerno tells it, “whiteness informed civility” is affecting college debates, leading some debaters to challenge the rules and format of debates and even to change the topics of debates to talk about race instead of the agreed-upon subject. Salerno says a few of the debates result in profane outbursts and thrown furniture.