White Silence

For me, it is easy to look at the lynchings of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Tony McDade and say this is White Supremacy. 

It is simple enough to look at angry White men marching with guns and tiki-torches, or others in white robes and conical hats, and say this is White Supremacy. 

And it is blatantly obvious to look at the rise of Trumpism after the nation’s first Black president and say this is White Supremacy. 

It is harder for me to look at the times when people don’t say anything, and say this too is White Supremacy. 

Silence can be as deafening as the roar of a mob. 

I live in Wicomico County, which is on the lower eastern shore of Maryland. The work I do concerns the role that White Supremacy continues to play in our community, especially with regards to the racial terror lynchings of Garfield King, Matthew Williams, and a third man whose name remains unknown. 

I believe that we cannot understand where we are—and where we are meant to go—until we understand where we have been. 

One thing that I have learned from diving deep into the history of these acts of violence is that there is a trauma experienced by all concerned that results in and is perpetuated by silence. 

Silence in the black community, often out of fear of reprisal (lynchings were “message” crimes, designed to suppress and remind black Americans of their place in the racial hierarchy). But silence reigned as well in the white community. 

It is estimated that anywhere from one to two thousand people, mostly residents of Salisbury and Wicomico, witnessed the lynching of Matthew Williams in 1931. Even at the lower end, this is still a significant percentage of the population at the time. And despite investigations it was determined that Matthew Williams was lynched by “persons unknown.” 

We can guess at the motivations of those who remained silent. Perhaps they were related to members of the lynch mob. Perhaps they were employees. Perhaps they feared reprisal as well. But what matters is they were silent, and they stayed silent. 

Though I am writing this in the midst of national uprisings calling for a reckoning with American racism, and though I am heartened by the number of people who seem to be truly waking up to the reality of what America has always been... silence is still the most common reaction. 

As James Baldwin once put it: 

“I know what the world has done to my brother and how narrowly he has survived it. And I know, which is much worse, and this is the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen, and for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them, that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not  know it and do not want to know it.” 

There remains a vast section of white Americans who remain silent on injustices beyond denying that they themselves are racist, by saying they are “colorblind” or have black friends, or mostly by saying nothing at all. As if by saying nothing they can continue to feign “innocence” of the great crime which Baldwin and history attests to. But as he goes on to say, it is the “innocence which constitutes the crime.” 

But what makes that crime worse, so hard to look at... is that somewhere inside of me, I understand it. 

There was a time when I did not speak out on matters concerning race. Not because I didn’t have an opinion, but because I either thought it didn’t affect me or I didn’t want to draw attention to myself or that it wouldn’t change anything even if I did speak out. 

I’m not even going to say that there was a moment where my perspective changed and I suddenly could remain silent no longer. The truth is, there isn’t a day that goes by that it wouldn’t be easier to fall back into that silence. 

I can imagine the people in the crowd watching Matthew Williams being lynched and having the same choice, and I could imagine myself making the same choice they did. 

Handwritten note and rope used to lynch Matthew Williams, December 1931.

Courtesy of National Museum of African American History and Culture

I can imagine feeling shock and disgust, and choosing to say nothing. 

I can imagine feeling the words come up from my gut, the words screaming at me to try and stop what was happening in front of me and hundreds of others, and I can imagine pushing it down again until I could no longer hear it. 

The reason I, and perhaps many others, often remain silent is because we assume that we would never be standing in the mob watching a person’s life be taken and yet do nothing to stop it. 

I can be “woke” and aware of the history. 

I can donate to the right causes and march in the right protests. 

I can change my profile picture and share the right quotes. 

I can blame the people that were silent then. 

And I can blame the people who are silent now. 

I can blame the people who shout #AllLivesMatter as a response to #BlackLivesMatter. 

I can blame the people who take the side of the police and ensure their proximity to “whiteness”. 

But if our common humanity binds us together for better, it also binds us together for worse. 

I choose not to be silent, because I know that I can choose silence. 

I choose to shout #BlackLivesMatter, because I could see myself shouting #AllLivesMatter. 

I say their names... Trayvon... Tamir... Sandra... Matthew... Garfield ... Ahmaud... Breonna... George... not because it will ever bring them back, but because I know how easy it would be to forget them, to forget that most of White Supremacy happens in silence, in the space between words. It is in that space that we choose whether we spend our life fighting back against it, or spend our soul trying to justify our place in it.