Going Beyond the Words : a Question for MLK Day

We love "find your voice in a whisper". Rather, what we love is the sentiment that is associated with these words: the idea to speak up even if you're quiet about it. It's a beautiful thought. Who among us hasn't felt scared to say something at some point? The words resonate with us so we want to share them. But we don’t often hear the first part of the sentence. Here it is:

"Three hundred years of humiliation, abuse and deprivation cannot be expected to find voice in a whisper.”

The sentence is from Dr King's second book, Why We Can't Wait. But if you haven’t read the book*, you wouldn't know the rest of the sentence of a phrase that you appreciate so much. Nor would you have any idea what King really meant. Here’s a bit more:

“Just as lightning makes no sound until it strikes, the Negro Revolution generated quietly. But when it struck, the revealing flash of its power and the impact of its sincerity and fervor displayed a force of a frightening intensity. Three hundred years of humiliation, abuse, and deprivation cannot be expected to find voice in a whisper.”

I have not read Dr King’s work extensively. But it seems to me what Dr King is saying is, “you're going to hear us and it's going to be loud because we’ve been waiting for this moment for 300 years,”. If so, "find voice in a whisper," feels a lot less like what we thought it meant.

As I wonder about this, I am reminded of Audre Lorde’s words to Mary Daly. Daly was a white feminist philosopher who authored a manifesto called Gyn/Ecology. Lorde was concerned that Daly had left out the stories of women of color in her piece which Daly had intended to be a rallying call for a more radical feminism.

"So the question arises, Mary, do you ever really read the works of Black women? Did you ever read my words, or did you merely finger through them for quotations which you thought might valuably support an already conceived idea concerning some old and distorted connection between us?"

Lorde's point matters.

We must demand more of ourselves than regurgitation and attribution. Lorde would say that we have a responsibility to do more. A responsibility to offer better than a pretty quote Canva'd up for the one day a year when we celebrate the birth of the most visible leader of the civil rights movement. We have a responsibility to look at the context of the words that resonate so fiercely and examine their relevance to our lives.

Lorde is right. That responsibility piece is what I put forth today: a call to those who share/reTweet/like inspirational words (especially the words of BIPOC) and invite them to do better. To offer something on the person behind the words or why these words (still) matter. To "engage with the complexity below the surface... (to) say anything new..." paraphrasing Holiday Phillips' words in this important piece . To consider the words in the context of the moment in which we are now living.

We cannot merely spit out bites and bytes. And, we are all guilty of this. I certainly am. But we can be guilty of a quick tap to "send" and also commit to doing better. Will you join me?

*I have not read Why We Can’t Wait. I have it on order from the library but do not have it yet.