About silence.

Photo by Andraz Lazic on Unsplash

With the riots and protests ongoing in the wake of George Floyds tragic death, the need for so many of us to break out from under the rock of silence is profound and hopeful. Our humanity is at stake, not only for us today, but for the generation that is our children and we must teach them that silence is being a bystander, that silence is being at the party even if you weren’t drinking, that silence is complicity. The future of our multi-colored humanity depends on this, that everyone deserves fair and equal treatment independent of the color of one’s skin. That, yes, black lives do matter. 

But let’s talk more about silence. Silence doesn’t always imply that someone doesn’t care or doesn’t understand or disagrees with the issues at hand. Instead, silence comes from a place of fear and exposure. We are afraid that we will expose our ignorance on hard topics like race, especially to people whose life experience make them more fluent on this topic.

As children, we are taught that some topics are taboo.  You’ve heard it before “don’t ever talk about race, politics, or religion if you ever want to be invited back”. We are taught NOT to talk about hard topics from an early age. So, as we grow older, these topics make some of us uncomfortable and silence becomes a default mechanism – even if we support and believe in the social issues and problems on hand.

So today, in the wake of George Floyd, more white people than ever before are taking their first baby steps towards undoing decades of learned silence in support of Black Lives Matter. These are the first steps towards de-stigmatizing topics that have been historically taboo for many and the first steps to building a world where its ok to talk about race, religion, and politics. 

And why now? Because we’ve hit our breaking point. Because enough is enough. Because we understand that deliberate avoidance, silence, is far deadlier to our humanity than speaking up and asking the questions even if our ignorance is exposed. That is such a small price to pay for all the lives lost.

So, when we invite everyone to sit at the table, black and white and brown, we need to understand that everyone is coming into the dialogue from different starting points, with different learnings, and different languages. Together, we need to build a common language so that we and our children can talk about these topics from a place of security, not fear. And that they understand that race is a huge influencing factor in our identities but that it’s important and safe to talk about it and to acknowledge that our experiences are different from one another. It is our human duty to be open and seek understanding of one another, to embrace differences and work to build a world that is socially just and does not default to silence. 

Black Lives Matter.

First Published by Kristi Rible at www.thehuumangroup.com