Life is easier if you acquiesce: you are lauded as "grownup", "mature", "nuanced".
Progress shouldn't be measured by what another [white] culture is doing – 'cause then you acquiesce to the fact that they're better".
"Either that 'something' is where you acquiesce to the world around you and you conform, or you sort of defiantly break whatever remaining bonds connect you to that world and create for yourself a different set of values".
When you didn't say "no," did you acquiesce because you thought it would bring valuable experiences into your life — experiences that might fuel your creativity and make you a more valuable, productive member of society?
"In order that England may live in comparative comfort, a hundred million Indians must live on the verge of starvation — an evil state of affairs, but you acquiesce in it every time you step into a taxi or eat a plate of strawberries and cream," he wrote in "The Road to Wigan Pier".
"Okay, fine," you acquiesce, "that's a nice victory for the quantum Universe.
Where does this infection come from?" You sit back, you acquiesce, you do what you need to do so that they can do their jobs.
Most of this abhorrent harassment is transient in the sense that if you acquiesce to their demands to be silent, it will eventually stop.
Stay silent and you have acquiesced to whatever happened.
But the rap sheet of his crimes against diversity hardly needs much of a recap: he's a noted bigot; he's acquiesced, however you paint recent disavowals, to the support of David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan; he's stoked the passions of the mob to get a string of Black Lives Matter protesters kicked out of his rallies; the Confederate flag is a fixture at Trump events.
