Our silence speaks volumes

On Sunday, racial, homophobic and anti-semitic slurs were found spray-painted under the East Campus Bridge where Duke’s NAACP, Mi Gente and the Asian Student Alliance planned to host an event. In light of the exhausting regularity with which these hate-driven actions occur, as students, we cannot remain complicit in our approach to hate speech. Today, we urge our community to reject our complacency and push against problematic speech.

Because these events do not occur in a vacuum, we must question what spurs these incidences of hate. It is locker-room talk, using sexual orientation as an insult and demeaning women through casual or convenient curse words. It is us. It is not a black problem, a Jewish problem or an LGBTQ+ problem. It is our problem. Callously thrown around words and flippant gestures enable hateful actions. Locker-room talk enables sexual assault. Misusing the word gay enables homophobia, and the colloquialization of words historicized in inequality and oppression enables hate, in speech and in action. When it is commonplace and passable to joke, to make light of political correctness or to repudiate the reality of microaggressions, in public or in private, it is passable to rationalize prejudicial thoughts, discriminatory words and, consequently, racist actions. These events are not random or unrelated: our passivity normalizes glib expression and cultivates the environment from which these intentional expressions of hate manifest, time and time again.

Many may wonder how they contribute to the manifestation of these extreme expressions. While most do not intend to perpetuate discriminatory acts, few question the effect of the words they say and the words they hear. We are all complicit. Among us, the most uncommon and extreme contributors are the perpetrators, those who commit acts of hate and hate speech, such as the slurs painted under the bridge. Fueling these perpetrators is a larger cadre of facilitators, those who openly voice their prejudices. However, most importantly and most prevalently, there are the bystanders, each of us, who choose to remain silent. The onus is on each of us to actively push against the hate speech we hear, and we must reflect on what we say and how we conduct ourselves. Words matter and whether implicitly or explicitly hateful, enable hateful actions. When confronted with a situation in which we overhear something harmful, we have the choice to remain complicit or to stop bias in its tracks. Remaining silent lends a sense comfort to those who speak these words and takes comfort away from those who are marginalized by these words.

The responsibility to stop these actions falls on each of us. Working to build a healthier environment takes courage and effort, but is not an overburdening effort to bear. When someone plays music loudly in the library, it is not abnormal, and is perhaps expected, to politely ask them to turn it down. Currently, it is not the expectation of our community to respond to problematic speech and dissonant reverberations of hate in a similar way.

However, it is our imperative to reject a community of complicity and perpetuate a community of inclusivity. With silence or action, a statement is made, and it is our choice to either silently allow injustice or to actively create a community that is anti-racist, anti-sexist and anti-hate. We cannot truly condemn hate speech until we have fully rejected our own silence.