Perpetual silence

This past Friday night doesn’t seem real anymore, one of those hyper-real dreams that you wake up from and question, “Did it really happen that way?” While the events of Friday night seemed like a dream to me, it represented the reality that black and brown bodies have faced historically in this nation. The non-violent protest in Durham that brought police in full-riot gear marching in line with acoustic weapons, batons and brute force at their disposal didn’t seem like Durham. But it is.

Durham is as much Ferguson as Ferguson represents the totality of the American systems of control. To argue against it is simply to disagree with fact. “No, gravity does not exist. We got rid of it 50 years ago.” When all you have is a voice and a body, police with military-grade weapons and armor prove the point for us.

I will always have a voice in this society as a white, straight man. Color-less rhetoric of #AllLivesMatter that asks everyone to just go home and pretend that this white supremacist society built on systemic racism and structural inequality does not exist because “not all cops are racist” breeds perpetual silence. My privilege, specifically my white privilege in a social order built for me, causes oppression. Whiteness constricts and restricts the voice of oppressed and disenfranchised peoples in this nation putting a chokehold on them, while they too gasp, “I can’t breathe.”

White people need to hear the voice of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Martin Luther King Jr. and so many others, but they were gunned down in a white supremacist state and misrepresented in national media to perpetuate the American social order. When white people act irrationally, as masked white anarchists did Friday night shooting fireworks off in the middle of the demonstration then hiding behind their white faces, we endanger vulnerable bodies not protected by our privilege to the force of the state. That type of white voice further perpetuates systems of control on black and brown bodies. It serves as an example of why white people, including myself, need to learn to shut up and start listening.

Ally-ship is about empowerment—not dominating discriminated voices. Our dominion of society cannot be over social movements to reform it. That just leaves us exactly where we were in the first place.

My voice is the not the one you should be hearing today. The silence created by white voices dominating black, brown, queer and trans voices must be recognized. The blank space that follows is the beginning of my listening.

Jay Sullivan is a Trinity junior. This is his final column of the semester.