Silence is Violence A phrase caught my attention this morning:...

Silence is Violence 

A phrase caught my attention this morning: silence is violence. Violence often stuns us into silence. Is our silence complicity? Over the past years when I’ve read calls to speak out, unless I have something specific to add, my reaction was I want to listen, carefully. It seems every version of every opinion has already been written on the internet. Why add mine? We have a similar excuse in photography, when we say every photograph has already been taken. Yes, but.

A paradox of this country is we’re encouraged to think like white people instead of like Americans. The short-term reward is comfort, avoidance of embarrassment and the illusion of security. Many of us have experienced this at one time or another. White people thinking compartmentalizes the individual guman, or the “bad cop,” allowing us to distance ourselves. American thinking recognizes a pattern of massacres, which would be considered terrorism in any other country. White people thinking maintains that there’s little we can do. American thinking considers the sweeping changes to norms and laws that have happened in the past and understands our government has the authority and resources to protect citizens. White people thinking downplays the racism inherent in so many acts of violence, but especially this particular atrocity. Thinking as Americans, we know our history, of so many churches attacked, of so many innocent people killed, of a past not yet the past. 

 If you haven’t read already:

• “Terrorism in Charleston” 
• “Take down the Confederate Flag Now”
• “Thugs and Terrorists Have Attacked Black Churches for Generations” 
• “A Living Landmark” 
  

Walker Evans, Negro Church, South Carolina, March 1936