Silence can be helpful or harmful.
Many years ago, I wrote about the power of “avoidance”—the way not talking politics can be helpful in bridging divides. Sometimes, it’s okay and even healing to give it a rest. We can avoid the tough topics till we build more trust.
Likewise, I’ve written often about the power of listening: the better we understand and respect our political opposites, the more functional our democracy will be.
And yet, in my last post, I said it can also be harmful to stay quiet about our own stances. In the face of racial oppression, for instance, too many of us have sought politeness and peace, and thus shut down conversations that challenged the status quo. I wrote that “civility” is ideally active, not passive—that it requires speaking up, albeit respectfully.
So, which is it? When are silence and politeness useful, and when are they passive and harmful? When is it best to speak up for our beliefs, and when is it best to simmer down?
Two stories might help us find answers.
James and the Racist Barber
A man I know named James was getting a haircut. The barber chatted with a colleague while trimming James’s hair—the barber was looking for assistants, and the colleague offered to bring in some prospective employees.
“That’s great,” the barber agreed. “Just don’t send any black guys.”
James was startled and angry at the man’s casual racism. The colleague soon departed, leaving James stewing while the barber finished the cut.
At the end of the appointment, as he paid the barber, James said, “I want you to know that your comment about black people was really offensive. You’ve lost my business. I’ll never come back here again.”
James’s response illustrates what I’ve called active civility. He spoke up. He was angry but kept things civil, refraining from shouting or name-calling.
It would have been much easier to stay silent—he could have taken his business elsewhere without letting the barber know why. But the barber’s words had been doubly harmful, not only expressing racism in a public setting, but also excluding black people from employment in his business. James needed to tell the barber this was not okay.
When someone’s words inflict harm, it’s often necessary to speak up in protest.
Biting the Tongue to Be Heard
Here’s another story, very different from James’s.
It was told to me by a friend who’d gone to our very first Reach Out Wisconsin forum in 2011. The forum was on concealed carry of firearms, and after listening to our two speakers, the thirty-odd attendees had split into groups of three or four to meet and mingle. My friend wound up at a table of four: herself, another liberal woman, and two people who identified themselves as conservative on this issue.
Soon after sitting down, my friend became frustrated with one of the conservatives, a woman who quickly began dominating the discussion. The woman just kept talking. What’s more, she seemed totally oblivious to the purpose of the evening, which was to try to respect and understand what the other side had to say. She seemed only interested in spouting off her own strong convictions about the folly of gun control laws.
My friend’s heart sank as she and the others at the table just kept listening and nodding. But finally, the other liberal woman at the table was able to gently break into the monologue. “So… I’m just wondering… Can you think of any good reasons why a person might want to have stronger regulations of guns?”
The conservative woman paused. It seemed as though the question had surprised her—as though she sincerely hadn’t considered that other side might have valid points.
After thinking a moment, she began speaking again, this time more slowly. To my friend’s surprise, she named several reasons someone might want stricter gun control laws. The others at the table received these ideas thoughtfully.
“It was amazing,” my friend concluded after telling me this story. “That one question totally turned the conversation around.”
The tone at the table had changed. The conservative woman became softer and less defensive, and a more productive conversation became possible.
This story illustrates a potential benefit of tongue-biting. It is sometimes best to be silent and just listen. True communication is often only possible once trust has been built, and trust-building takes time.
If the liberals in my friend’s group had interrupted the conservative woman to speak up sooner, she probably would have just grown more defensive. By letting her feel heard, they made it more possible for her to eventually hear them, too.
What’s the difference between “active” silence and “passive” tolerance?
In these two stories, both James and my friend chose good courses of action—and they were different courses. James spoke up, while my friend stayed silent.
In James’s situation, the barber’s statements were directly harmful to a group of people, and James was paying the barber. James had more urgency. He wasn’t interested in continuing his relationship with the barber—especially because that would have meant continuing to give him business. He needed to communicate more directly and firmly.
In my friend’s story, the conservative woman’s views were more abstract, and my friend was attending a forum for the purpose of relationship-building. My friend’s silence helped her understand the conservative woman’s perspective and build trust so the woman might eventually hear her, too. She didn’t have James’s urgency, so she could be more strategic. She could put more care into making sure she was heard.
I think this difference of urgency is the key. Different people will define urgency differently, but to me, these two stories clearly illustrate that it’s sometimes necessary to speak up and sometimes better to bide our time.
From the outside, it’s hard to tell active and passive silence apart. Especially because building trust often takes far longer than it did in my friend’s story—it can take many conversations over weeks, months, or even years.
We in the civility movement sometimes find ourselves attacked by people who share our own political beliefs; they mistake our quietness for cowardice, or for lack of conviction about our own principles. The willingness to listen to the other side is often mistaken for agreeing with their views.
But the silence of active civility has a very different purpose from that of passive civility. As I wrote in the last post, passive civility is motivated only by the desire for peace—even at the cost of justice. Active civility, in contrast, is motivated by the desire for peace and justice. At times, active civility does mean staying quiet, in the interest of being heard later on.
Silence can harm, if it’s urgent to speak up now. But it can also help, if there’s less urgency and there’s room for trust-building. At different times, both speaking up and silence are part of active civility. It’s up to us to gage how and when to use these tools.
