There’s a moment in the first “Spider-Man’’ movie when milquetoast high school student Peter Parker realizes that, after being bitten by a radioactive spider, he now possesses superhuman powers. With his new strength, he sends a bully careening through the air with a single punch. He finds that he can scale walls, and with his web-shooting ability, he swings high above the cacophony of the city’s streets.

Just as he believes he has mastered it, he crashes into a brick wall.

I often think of that scene when I hear about protests on college campuses pitting students against right-wing speakers. When you are a young person, perhaps finding your voice for the first time, protesting is like discovering your own superpower. And like the tough lesson Parker gains from his face-plant, students need to learn how best to harness their power so that things don’t go horribly awry.

That’s what happened recently at Middlebury College in Vermont when protests against Charles Murray, coauthor of “The Bell Curve,’’ a repulsive 1994 book that pushed white supremacist junk science about the intellectual inferiority of African-Americans, was invited to speak on campus by the American Enterprise Club, a conservative group. Students first drowned him out with chants and later attacked a car in which he and Allison Stanger, a political economist well versed on inequity, were seated. Violence also erupted in February at the University of California Berkeley when students shut down a speech by racist provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos.

It’s doubtful that these students were seeking headline-grabbing results, and unlikely that these were “outside agitators’’ as some like to claim whenever there’s a political protest. In truth, these are women, people of color, members of the LGBT community, and their allies smitten with the power of their own voices. In these disturbing times, they feel compelled to speak and act and are still grappling with the best ways to foster diversity and achieve their goals. Where some see an unruly mob aching for violence, I see students finding their potency and not always understanding their own strength.

I once worked with a woman who was so upset about a sexist remark made by a male co-worker that she reported him to their supervisor. He was briefly suspended, and some men were resentful that this woman dared to complain at all. While discussing the issue, a male colleague said to me, “God, remember the days when you could just say anything?’’

Without hesitation, I said, “No.’’

I had never known a time when I could just say anything, not as a black woman in a world I saw as predominately white and male. My opinion was rarely solicited and certainly not valued, so I kept it to myself. After years of both implicit and explicit silencing, when I finally found the confidence to speak my mind, that liberation overwhelmed me. Yet initially I only understood that I had a voice; how to use it effectively came later through writing, debates, and peaceful protests.

In the streets and on college campuses, students are recognizing their power and demanding to be heard. They will learn that a strong voice is not merely there to drown out dissenting opinions, but to garner attention for what is right and true. In these uneasy times, the protests will certainly continue; the violence that allows those who spew hate speech to claim a moral high ground as aggrieved and oppressed must not. Let them have their free speech, but dissect it with unassailable facts to destroy their skewed racist theories.

In his book of essays, “Why Black People Tend to Shout,’’ Ralph Wiley, an African-American sportswriter who died too early and was forgotten too soon, wrote, “Black people are too happy just being able to shout not to take advantage of the luxury. When you have read that bits were put in some of your ancestors’ mouths, you tend to shout.’’

Wiley could well have been speaking about student protesters, their tongues untied, on our campuses. If you’ve always been able to speak your mind without repercussions, and if society has always made space for your thoughts and opinions, you can’t understand how shouting truth to power becomes as necessary as breathing.

Renée Graham can be reached at renee.graham@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @reneeygraham.