"This reluctance to acknowledge and use power comes up in the simplest everyday situations, as when a group of friends starts laughing at a racist or sexist joke and you have to decide whether to go along. It’s just a moment among countless such moments that constitute the fabric of all kinds of oppressive systems. But it’s a crucial moment, because the group’s seamless response to the joke affirms the normalcy and unproblematic nature of it in a system of privilege, it takes only one person to tear the fabric of collusion and apparent consensus.
On some level, each of us knows that we have this potential, and this knowledge can empower us to scare us into silence. We can change the course of the moment with something as simple as visibly not joining in the laughter, or saying “I don’t think that’s funny.” We know how uncomfortable this can make the group feel and how they may ward off their discomfort by dismissing, excluding, or even attacking us as bearers of bad news. Our silence, then, isn’t because nothing we do will matter. Our silence is our not daring to matter."
— Allan G. Johnson, Privilege, Power, and Difference (via wretchedoftheearth)
(via neoliberalismkills)
