Silence lets people go on automatic. Being silent when a person uses group slurs or stereotypes is a bad idea.  That is what I said in my last post (April 19, 2011). Not to put too fine a point on it, but silence lets people go on automatic, never having to consider the ugly, hurtful and divisive impact of their words or the images they send around. 

      In clear evidence of this is the recent episode in which President Obama was depicted as a chimpanzee in an email distributed by an elected representative of the Orange County (California) Republican Central Committee.

 

    In her written apology, Ms. Marilyn Davenport said, “I didn’t stop to think about the historic implications and other examples of how this could be offensive…”

     “I didn’t stop to think…” is the most important part of her statement. No excuse, but that reflects the too often experienced social reality. Some Americans get in their in-groups and talk negatively about other Americans in group terms without ever being challenged about that way of talking. So, when in another social context, having been unchallenged before, those people go on automatic and we get pictures of our President depicted in racially offensive ways. 

     Or as happened in Sanford, NC, we get an email that depicts a lynching.  Why?  To remind the staff of the Department of Social Services to turn off their computers at the end of the day or there would be dire consequences.  For this we get a silhouette of a lynching?  There too someone went on automatic, pulling an image of harsh consequences from our racial history without even considering how that might offend a neo-diversity mix of local citizens.

     We set this up in our everyday interactions when we are silent when someone expresses themselves using racial, gender and other group slurs. We… set this up.

     Being silent when a person uses group slurs or stereotypes is a bad idea. Being silent shows too much tolerance for intolerance. That silence lets people go on automatic, never having to consider how their actions might influence and hurt anyone.

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