I’ve been told that the penitent silence is not enough. As cis white able christian men, or whatever it is that brings us closer to the normative center of western society, silence is tacit approval of those who would cleave this society apart with violence from the inside. I’ve been told to speak up, but I haven’t. Everything I thought about saying sounds dumb and hand-wringy, and just generally about hearing my own voice.
There are a lot of good reasons we may feel discouraged from speaking up. for one thing We’ve dominated the conversation for long enough. Nobody asked us to ride in like white knights and attempt to fix everything, but only our way. And the most basic show of understanding and sympathy, “thoughts and prayers”, has almost become a dirty word.
So when I kept trying to write a comment on a friend’s post about the murders in Pittsburgh, all of that kept playing in my head and it all sounded useless. It took me a while to hear why. I can’t fix all the crazy white people who are loading guns and making bombs, and it’s not even fair to ask me that, any more than it was fair to get angry to blame a local mosque for the global extremists. I thought all I could do was feel deeply sorry, and if that wasn’t enough, I should just remain silent and let people be angry. I think I finally understand why that isn’t enough, or what anybody was asking me for.
I believe there will always be bigots among us. I think it’s just human tribalism, something we will always struggle with, some harder than others. And maybe some of them will always harbor violence in their hearts as well, and we may hold them back but we will never fix them with words. This is why we offer useless thoughts and prayers, treating these horrid people as an inevitable part of the human race, and our thoughts and prayers are our way of suggesting we all accept the violence that they inflict on our society. Like a freak hurricane, an act of an unknowable and vengeful god.
I can’t say that, because I’ve seen people stand up to racists, to incorrigible dyed in the wool racists, to terrible people we knew we had to live with. In my case I’m talking about family, people we did not choose. It would be so much easier to shake our heads quietly stay silent to keep the peace. But I’ve watched my mom and my uncle Ken speak up anyways, even though all they could say was, “Don’t say it here.”
Sometimes gently, sometimes angrily, but always firmly, they said do not speak that way about African-Americans, and you will not use certain words in my house. Yes they went home and didn’t think any differently or even speak any differently without a sister or brother-in-law to tell them to shut up. So that stinks but the point wasn’t to open their eyes glued shut by their own bitterness, it was to teach them one thing: this is not normal. You are not normal. You do not speak for anyone else. Everyone else in the room had to pick a side, and in their silence they tacitly agreed to the rules of the house, which were simply that this is not normal.
I truly believe that when we accept it as normal, we embolden those who have always had hate in them. These people believe that they are right and the world is wrong. Maybe they always will, but I have to believe that most of the hateful people lack the courage to take up arms alone against the weight of the entire world. When they find pockets of sympathizers out in the world and on the internet, they can tell themselves they are the normal ones. If we remain silent we give tacit weight to their narrative that we’re all behind them, and they are only lashing out at a tiny minority that has somehow wronged them, not against the overwhelming weight of a civilized society. That’s what I believe.
So don’t let them think this is normal. Don’t give them equal or greater weight than those they would inflict violence upon. Normal is the rich diversity of my neighbors whose collected voices make my city hum, the voices that have always been there, whether we heard them or not. Don’t let normal be this happens every day. What happened to Jamar and Philando was not normal to me. “Good people on both sides” of a Nazi rally is not a normal thing to say and it shouldn’t be said in our house. The incorrigible people are listening to see who will stand up against them, let them know it’s all of us.
It’s worth understanding for people whose identity is safe, whose person is not threatened, this is why the little things matter. The little antisemitic comments, the alienation of African-Americans as “those people”, they matter because they make the gulf normal. When that happens, we can feel bad that Pittsburgh happened to them, to those people, and not to us. But it did happen to us. It happened to me. I’m not Jewish, but if a synagogue is not safe, then neither am I. And every slight hurts more than the words because it carries that threat that this is how we will take away your dignity and eventually your safety, one bit at a time and step by step until somebody feels bold enough to take the next step is to take up the gun.
I’ve been welcomed in synagogues, in museums from Venice to Chicago, in schools and community centers everywhere, by Jewish people who opened their doors to me. I’ve been welcomed, fed, initiated into Jewish traditions, and I grieve that I had to walk through metal detectors first.
I grieve that after the terrorist murders in Pittsburgh we have lost even more of that fundamental human trust in the people around us. That belief that things are headed the right way and that we might someday be able to live together without fear and hatred. And this man with a gun stepped up and said, not today. So what are the rest of us saying back?
May we grieve with you? May we continue to hope? Please don’t disappear into the shadows, into the bathhouses, into the ghettos, all the places where marginalized people may feel safe amongst their own. Somebody is building a fence against our neighbors, with the threat to take away their spaces, their identity unless they hide it, and their very lives. If we don’t speak up they have to assume it’s all of us against them, and the haters will think it’s all of us behind them. So speak up. You won’t change the ghastly people, but if somebody is to be marginalized and pushed into the shadows, let it be them.
I grieve for everyone whose world just got uglier and more dangerous. Including me. Do not let this be normal.
Coq au Vin 