Don’t Be Silent
Our nation is controlled by bullies who are looting the wealth produced by others and using State power to instill fear and maintain control. Protest, march, write, call, email, strike. Do whatever you can. Just do not be silent.
I have a visceral reaction to bullies. A few guys in my junior high school found self-worth in demeaning or hurting someone vulnerable. Occasionally, I was the victim. Some joyfully joined in the mocking. Other kids looked on. Some laughed uncomfortably, relieved that it was not them. Others, like me, kept their distance in silence.
We live in a country dominated by institutionalized bullying and too much silence. The police bully Black people, mostly with impunity. The NRA bullies legislators. The uber-wealthy, their legislative enablers, and their current presidential spokesperson intimidate the rest of us into compliance by instilling fear of unemployment, loss of income, discrimination, and even death.
Overwhelmingly, the recipients of the most vicious social, economic, and judicial bullying are people of color and usually poor.
Politically disengaged onlookers behave just like my intimidated classmates did so many years ago, with relief that at least they are not as poor and as victimized by racist police brutality and injustice, housing and employment discrimination, and unequal treatment in health care.
I wish everyone loved or least cared enough about their neighbors to speak up. I wish more people had moral courage. Demonstrably, too few do. Non-slaveholding whites enabled the cruelty and exploitation of slavery. The silence of German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese onlookers enabled the murderous fascist dictatorships. Silent American neighbors enabled lynching. On and on, it continues here and around the world.
“At least someone is worse off than me” morality and “Got to be out for myself” ideology enabled the waning influence of unions, mass organized protest, and the dramatic rise of inequality of the last fifty years.
Periodically, the most oppressed rise up in outrage. Sometimes, the long-simmering fury at piercingly targeted police and corporate terror is unfocused. The response of the empowered is invariably more repression. Still, many stay silent, preferring to maintain their relative, but still precarious comfort. Overwhelmingly, even the more liberal media and politicians qualify their empathy for the most oppressed with a but…. condemnation of their fury. They can do so from their safe distance of relative privilege.
This dynamic permits persistence of the worst of the oppression, enabling continuity of precariousness for everyone but the empowered.
At some point in high school, unable to control my anger at a bully, I overcame my fear and hit back as hard as possible. He stopped picking on me. Of course, I just protected myself but not the overall behavior. My individual act did not change the prevailing power relationships. The most oppressed fighting back in anger is inevitable and necessary but insufficient to change the dynamic.
The American Revolution was justified as a legitimate response to “a long train of abuses and usurpations” after “patient sufferance” and “a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism.” Today, the deniers of human rights are internal rather than a foreign power.
This is not a fanciful or rhetorical call for revolution. It harkens to our founding principles– though flawed in practice– and to the spirit of a united fight for our shared humanity. There were fascists in the United States in the 1930s. Leaders like Henry Ford and Charles Lindberg were fans. People were not silent. Workers built strong unions. Our country took a different direction. Fascism was defeated. It went to sleep but did not die. In the shamed shadow of extermination camps, the civil rights, anti-colonial, and peace movements arose and achieved mighty victories. Then, they too went to sleep.
Fascist thinking and power have arisen from their slumber, once again using fear as their weapon.
Don’t be silent.
Arthur H. Camins is a lifelong educator. He writes about education and social justice. He works part-time with curriculum developers at UC Berkeley as an assessment specialist. He retired recently as Director of the Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education at Stevens Institute of Technology. He has taught and been an administrator in New York City, Massachusetts, and Louisville, Kentucky. The ideas expressed in this article are his alone.
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