Responsibility & Action

“The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil…”

-Hannah Arendt

In a world of total moral collapse there was a small minority who mustered extraordinary courage to uphold human values…. They stand in stark contrast to the mainstream of indifference and hostility that prevailed during the Holocaust. Contrary to the general trend, these rescuers regarded the Jews as fellow human beings who came within the bounds of their universe of obligation.

These words are pulled from the Yad Vashem (Holocaust Remembrance Center) website. The Jewish community holds a special place of honor for non Jews who have, in our time of need, when we were the targets of violence and systemic oppression, chosen to put their lives on the line to stand alongside us and stand up to injustice on our behalf. We call them the Righteous among Nations, and we hold them in the highest regard.

I think often of these people, the ones there are books and movies about, but also the ones whose names will never be known, sometimes not even to the people they stood alongside of. I think most often of the ones who helped my grandparents; who gave them money, a place to stay, who got them papers, and eventually helped them make their way to safety and freedom. 

When I think of these people I think about their courage, I think about their strength. These people were able to transcend the conditioning of their oppressive society, they were able to stand as their sovereign selves and take moral action inside of an immoral social norm. And that is why they are held in such high regard.

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There is an evil which most of us condone and are even guilty of: indifference to evil. We remain neutral, impartial, and not easily moved by the wrongs done unto other people. Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself; it is more universal, more contagious, more dangerous. A silent justification, it makes possible an evil erupting as an exception becoming the rule and being in turn accepted. 

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel spoke these words in a 1963 speech, just three paragraphs before his famous phrase, “some are guilty, but all are responsible”. But he was not talking about the holocaust or referencing antisemitism, he was speaking about racism in America. He was speaking about the need for all of us, no matter how pure we judge our own hearts, no matter how much we trust our own intentions, to recognize that our hearts cannot in fact be pure, our intentions cannot in fact be trusted unless we are actively taking responsibility for the ills and evils of the society in which we live. 

… an honest estimation of the moral state of our society will disclose: Some are guilty, but all are responsible. If we admit that the individual is in some measure conditioned or affected by the public climate of opinion, an individual’s crime discloses society’s corruption. In a community not indifferent to suffering, uncompromisingly impatient with cruelty and falsehood, racial discrimination would be infrequent rather than common…

This past memorial day a police officer in the city called Minneapolis brutally murdered George Floyd, a forty-six year old Black man in the middle of the street, in the middle of the day. Three other police officers stood by and let it happen, choosing to yell at the people filming the murder rather than intervene to stop it. Who was guilty? Who is responsible?

Two weeks earlier police officers in the city called Louisville shot and killed Breonna Taylor, a twenty-six year old Black woman in her bed after breaking into her apartment in the middle of the night. A local judge had signed a “no knock” warrant, giving police “permission” to break into her apartment. Who was guilty? Who is responsible?

For the last ten years stories and videos of law enforcement (or white people who’ve taken it upon themselves to “enforce” the laws of white supremacy) killing, murdering, lynching Black people have filled media and social media platforms across this country. We, all of us who live in the land that is now called America, but specifically those of us who are not Black, those of us who are not Indigenous, those of us with white skin, those of us who are not constantly living in fear that our bodies will be destroyed by the very people society claims are there to protect us, have stood by and watched it happened. Some of us, every few years, have taken to the streets to demonstrate our grief, our rage, our disapproval of this system of white supremacist violence. Some of us do more, some of us do less. And the killings continue, the lynching, the murder, the racial terror continues… Who is guilty? Who is responsible? 

The same year Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel gave that speech, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in his now famous letter from a Birmingham Jail: 

I MUST make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time; and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection”.

There are many people today, in this moment, as cities around this land burn, as populations of Black and Indigenous communities are dying at alarming rates, who are using Dr. King’s own words and image to do the very thing that he, in this letter, condemns. They say, of course I am upset by the police killings, but meeting violence with violence is not the answer. They say, of course racism is wrong, but burning down your own communities is not the way to bring about change. They say, I want to support you, but why can’t you protest peacefully, like Dr. King did? In essence they are saying, “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action.” 

There are many things I could say to these people. I could point out that in every case, in every city where the demonstrations are turning into violent confrontations, the cause of the aggression, the instigators of the violence, have been the police. And in every place where we have seen demonstrations remain peaceful, it is because the police chose not to engage with force. I could point out that the destruction of property, primarily owned by faceless corporations who have been actively destroying locally owned small businesses for decades, should not be considered in the same category as the ongoing murder of citizens by agents of their government, not to mention the fact that much of the property destruction and looting is being instigated by white nationalist terrorists or undercover state agents themselves. And, I could point out that many of the “peaceful protests” that Dr. King led followed the same exact patterns of the protests today – non-violent demonstrators being met with extreme violence by agents of the state. 

But these points only scratch the surface. These arguments are the beginning of a way out. The most important point goes a lot deeper and requires a fundamental shift in one’s understanding of this country in which we live. 

This country is on fire. It is not a new fire. This country has been on fire since before it was a country, since the first European settlers began murdering Indigenous communities and stealing their land, since those same settlers began kidnapping people from Africa, forcing them into bondage, and murdering them to “maintain order”. There has never been a time in the last five hundred years that the white supremacist power structure in this land that is now called America has stopped murdering Indigenous people and stealing their land. There has never been a time in the last four hundred years that the white supremacist power structure in this land that is now called America has stopped murdering and brutalizing Black people to “maintain order”. 

This country is long past the moment where the eruption of evil has gone from being the exception to being the rule. We were, all of us who are alive today, born into a world in which the evils of anti-black racism and the erasure of Indigenous peoples have long since become accepted. Neutrality, which was never a real thing, is now, in this moment, an active condoning of anti-black racist violence. 

So to the moderate white bodied people who may or may not consider ourselves moderate, to the people who are enraged in this moment and the people who are scared in this moment, there is a question I want to ask each of us: what is it going to take for you to make up your mind to be good?

What is it going to take for you to make up your mind to be good, to actively choose good over evil? What fundamental change are you going to make to the way you have been living your life? Not just today, not just this week, not just when it is convenient, not just when it is visible.

None of us who are alive today came up with the idea of a racial hierarchy. None of us chose to build a country on stolen lands and the backs of stolen people. None of us invented this system that offers safety and comfort to some at the direct expense of the safety of others. But it is the system we live in. White Supremacy has been stitched into every fabric of this society. Every second we are not actively working to undo it, to challenge it, to rip it from our assumptions and unconscious habits, we are letting it sink deeper into us. 

Professor Ibram X. Kendi teaches that there is no such thing as “not racist”; that a person, an action, a policy, within the context of a white supremacist society, like this country we call America, cannot be “not racist”. It can be racist or it can be antiracist. There are no neutral acts, there is no passive way to combat racism. If a person, an action, or a policy is not explicitly antiracist, then by default it will perpetuate the racist status quo, it will be racist. 

While it may be true that none of us who are alive today are guilty of creating the white supremacist power structure that set into motion this society we are living in, each of us, especially those of us in white bodies, those of us who benefit from this power structure, are responsible for choosing to either go along with it, or actively fight against it. For if we do not actively choose to be good, to be antiracist in our thoughts and actions, then we will surely find ourselves participating in and perpetuating racist evil. 

So I ask myself and I ask you one more time: What does it look like in your life to choose being actively good over being passively evil? What fundamental change are you going to make to the way you have been living your life? Not just today, not just this week, not just when it is convenient, not just when it is visible. What are you going to do today, tomorrow, next week, on a daily basis to combat the white supremacy you have inherited, to stand up to evil and the indifference to evil, to center antiracist thought and take antiracist action in your life?