Silence
Silence has always seemed to devastate our world today. Being aware of the power silence can hold over us is a step towards an ultimate goal - speaking up.
Throughout this post, I have started out with "Silent Stories", or real-world events where silence was dominant. As you reach the end, I have placed in "Speaker's Stories", or real-world events where speaking up changed the world as we know it.
Silent Stories
The Holocaust
With silence, comes great responsibility. Elie Wiesel, a man who went through the Holocaust as a prisoner once said that,
What hurts the victim most is not the cruelty of the oppressor, but the silence of the bystander.
If we were to have a minute of silence for all the deaths of the Holocaust, we would remain silent for more than 30 years. According to the Holocaust Encyclopedia, this includes the death of 17.8 million Jews, Soviets, Poles, Serbians, the list goes on and on - and those... are just the deaths: what about the victims that survived with a tragic story to tell? A story where the world stayed silent as people were deported and taken from their homes, separated from their families. While people were transported in cattle wagons with no food, water, or a ventilation system for up to 18 days, and while almost everyone perished. Where the world stayed silent as books and people alike were cremated, while babies and toddlers were thrown into the furnace in front of crying mothers and desperate fathers. The US and parts of Europe stayed silent, especially when first given the chance to receive these hopeless refugees who had their lives taken away. This silent world allowed an injustice to happen. Elie Wiesel, at the end of his autobiography Night, wrote,
I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
Kevin Carter
Kevin Carter was a photographer stationed in Sudan to take photos of the famine. Worn out after a day's work of taking photos, he heard a slight whimper in the small bushes, only to discover a starving, haggard toddler, collapsed on the way to a feeding center. A rather ample vulture landed next to the toddler, waiting for him to die. Carter decided to wait 20 minutes for the vulture to spread its wings to capture a "perfect picture". When the vulture remained still and the child struggled to regain strength, Carter quickly took a photo, scared the vulture away, and watched as the child continued struggling towards the feeding center, dragging himself painfully across the rough desert floor. He turned around, lit a cigarette, prayed, and wept.
As a photographer in Sudan, he had practiced this silence - this inability to intervene in that world of famine, disease, and pain. Carter was encouraged to keep to himself to prevent being diseased. Although he won a Pulitzer Prize for that image, he later took his own life. Reported by Time, Carter wrote in his suicide note that he took his own life because he
was haunted by the vivid memories of killing and corpses and anger and pain.
or was it the guilt that he carried from never making a difference?
Sexual Abuse
For victims of sexual abuse, immediately speaking up after the abuse is unusual. In fact, it is more common for children who are victims of sexual abuse to delay talking about it or to simply never report it. The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry made a study with adults from Quebec who were sexually abused as children. Only one fifth reported the abuse within a month, while 58% took 5 or more years to report it, and one fifth didn't tell anyone. Silence is integrated into our society - where even the youngest generations, children, don't know when to be silent or when to speak up. Psychologist Dr. Courtney Ahrens in her report about sexual abuse and rape, Being Silenced, stated that,
For privilege and oppression, to speak and be heard is to have power over one's life. To be silenced is to have that power denied. Silence is thus emblematic of powerlessness in our society."
Speaker's Stories
Claudette Colvin
In 1955, a 15-year-old girl silently entered a bus. The signs told her to sit in the back - they read "This Part of Bus for Colored Race." She stopped for a moment - remembering Harriet Tubman, a runaway slave who led more than 70 slaves to freedom, and Sojourner Truth, a former slave who later became an abolitionist and women's rights activist. As she slowly continued walking into the bus, she thought of their brave defiance, their quiet strength, and their strong personalities. On an impulse, she stopped, turned around, and sat in one of the front seats. If Tubman and Sojourner Truth could fight for their own freedoms - then she could too. She waited for the sounds of the bus doors to slam shut, and the whirring of the wheels - but she was met by silence. The bus driver walked up to her after a white woman entered, surprised rather than angry, going through the routine of telling her to sit where she was meant to sit - in the back of the bus. The 15-year-old girl calmly refused - she had paid her fare, and that seat was her constitutional right.
It's my constitutional right to sit here as much as that lady. I paid my fare, it's my constitutional right.
That same day, Claudette Colvin was handcuffed, and placed in the county jail. Nine months later, a hero you have heard of, Rosa Parks, was inspired to take action by refusing to give up her seat as well, because of the simple words of this young girl. Claudette's former attorney, Fred Gray, told Newsweek:
Claudette gave all of us moral courage. If she had not done what she did, I am not sure that we would have been able to mount the support for Mrs. Parks.
The story of Claudette and her impact on Rosa Parks is a picture of the power of using one's voice. This simple story is a picture of a much larger truth - that someone who seems to have no voice can make the biggest difference simply by raising it.
The Woman
I was able to talk to a remarkable woman, who told me a fascinating story. When this woman was a little girl in 1959, her mother sat her down in a stuffy car and told her to look out the window. She saw someone out the window that she didn't know at the time, but soon the whole world would know him - Martin Luther King Jr. Her mother told her it was too dangerous to get out of the car - the danger and hate that existed outside of their car were just too great for a mother raising her child in that discriminating society. But the little girl listened to his voice. Her mother then told her something she would never forget -
You listen to this man - he will change the world as we know it - he will change the dynamic of our society to a loving place - to a place where you can feel safe. Remember this man. Because he will change the world with his voice."
This woman told me that our voices can change what seems unchangeable. She told me that as a young girl, she would never have imagined the world to be how it is today - she remembered it like it was yesterday. How she was told by the street signs what to do, and how she was told by the bus signs where to sit. She never imagined a world where she could just talk to me, a white person, and she never imagined a world where she could experience the freedom of using her voice to share her story.
Speaking Up
What To Do
Using our voices requires grit. It requires energy and effort. It requires bravery in a society that is strikingly comfortable with awkward silence about difficult topics.
Having a voice means you have a responsibility because there are people in this world who don't have voices. There are people whose voices have been silenced - by themselves or by others. And regardless of how their voices came to be silent, they need a voice. Having the ability to speak, having anyone who will listen to you, having any sort of platform, having any sort of voice that can be raised, means that you have a responsibility to use that for good. The fact that you have the ability to make a difference means that you have some level of moral responsibility to make a difference. If every one of us were to step up and be the voice for those who are silent, then everyone would have a voice, and that makes all the difference. Speak up, the world can't afford for you to stay silent.