Thomas Merton BLM and White Passivity
march 13
2020 briana taylor was shot and killed
inside her apartment by police officers
who had come
to serve a warrant to search for drugs
none of which were later found on the
property
following her deaths protests quickly
spread across her hometown
and later across the country and the
world following the death of george
floyd
protest leaders not only took to the
streets but also to social media to
express their grief
their anger and their frustration and as
a member of a generation which relies
heavily on social media as a source of
news
i was immersed in their words
at the same time i was also taking a
class on the spiritual author
thomas merton who was a trappist monk
at the abbey of near bardstown kentucky
while he’s best known for his
autobiography the seven story mountain
and his writings on contemplation and
interfaith dialogue
he also wrote extensively on social
issues
and specifically on race in response to
the first civil rights movement
of the nineteen sixties it was these
later writings on race which caught my
attention the most
because he so accurately described some
of the current social issues which we
are facing
that there were several times i actually
had to put the book down
just to process what he’d said in many
ways
he was so accurately describing our
situation
that it felt like the black lives matter
protesters were echoing his words
in his most famous piece on race letters
to a white liberal
merton directly addresses this titled
group
who he believed were more harmful to the
movement
than conservatives who openly opposed it
in it he describes white liberals as
those who support the movement because
they feel they have to
to maintain their image of themselves as
a liberal
but who value their material comforts
their security
and their congenial relations with the
establishment
over this volatile idealism
in essence those who say they support
the movement
but who will drop out the moment it
affects them in any way
perhaps the best example of this white
liberalism
in the past year was the trend of the
black squares
on social media in june 2020
for a few days it became the popular
thing to do
to post a black square on your social
media
as a show of support for the black lives
matter movement
and everyone was doing it from kids to
adults to major corporations
so it very quickly devolved from a show
of support
to what was essentially an i’m not
racist sticker
that people were putting on their feed
to make sure
that all the people who followed them
knew that they didn’t
actively oppose the movement
it was a very performative action it
didn’t force
anyone to face their white passivity or
privilege
and certainly didn’t make people fight
against racism
unfortunately in addition to being
performative
the squares actively harmed the blm
movement because they were being posted
using the same hashtags the protesters
were using to communicate
information quite literally blacking out
the voices of the movement
another example of the white liberalism
which merton would have disapproved of
came in the form of the leaders in
louisville and their response
to the protest following brianna
taylor’s death
people like the mayor issued official
statements of support for the movement
but quickly turned around to clarify on
social media that this support
was conditional on the protesters
remaining in certain areas of the city
and staying out of the way in essence
these leaders were asking the protesters
to make themselves ignorable
it is exactly this kind of behavior from
white liberals
which merton condemned because he
believed that it was leading to the
development of a revolution
in our country for as he describes it
revolutions are always the result of
situations in which the drive of an
underprivileged mass of humanity can no
longer be contained by token concessions
taking this to heart means that liberals
can no longer walk the fine line
between appeasing protesters with small
changes
while simultaneously trying to avoid
upset among conservative communities
who have opposed those changes since the
1960s and beyond
justice is long overdue and
african-american communities are getting
tired
tired of reforms like the ones following
brianna taylor’s death
which increased surveillance in their
neighborhoods by moving police officers
in
and tired of receiving government
payouts for their murdered brothers
sons sisters and daughters
when i’ve had the chance to talk to
local protest leaders over the past few
months
they have made it very clear that it is
by the grace
and the patience of african-american
communities alone
that we have not already had a
revolution
in a country which was founded on
slavery
and continues to imprison
disproportionate numbers
of african-american men and women into a
for-profit prison system
which benefits off of their free labor
compounding all of these injustices and
so many more that i don’t have time to
mention
is what merton calls the incredible
inhumanity
of our unwillingness to listen even for
a moment
to what the movement has to say
in brianna taylor’s louisville protests
occurred for hundreds of concurrent
nights following her death
and not much changed except a few token
concessions
so in this increasingly intense
situation
which merton so accurately described
what is the role of the white liberal if
we
actually want to play a part in the
movement and make a difference
martin offers us some solutions to this
question
first he makes it clear that we have to
listen
because if we do not understand why
people are protesting
and we do not know what they are
marching for they will never
believe that we are actually genuine in
our attempts to help
and there’s no excuse not to know
we have access to a larger glut of
resources than
ever known to man at any point in
history
every book and every film ever made on
the subject of racism
and news stories of the injustices in
our streets
crossing our screens every day
but educating ourselves is not enough
as local protest leader and wonderful
poet hannah drake says
white people just need to face
themselves
we aren’t going to study or netflix our
way out of racism
we need to admit and face our way out of
racism
and for white liberals there will be of
a lot of admitting that we
need to do we have to acknowledge
that our privilege comes from the fact
that we are in a society
that is designed for people who look
like me
from what is considered professional
dress and behavior
to what dialects of the english language
are correct
to who gets an entire year for their
history
and whose is relegated to a month and
who gets shot
in the nighttime police raid and who
gets to walk away with their life
once we have listened and admitted our
privilege
the next step merton says is to join
together
and look for a way to reform the social
systems
creating inequality as he wrote
join together in a creative political
experiment
not be alarmed at some of the sacrifices
that would necessarily be involved
ending inequality is going to require
changing the heart
and soul of our nation it will not be
fun
it will not be comfortable and it most
certainly won’t be
easy but as hannah drake reminds us
who said that this was going to feel
good
we have a chance now to actually
acknowledge
our white passivity and privilege
to make the decision to join the
movement
no matter the sacrifices and to heed
merton’s warnings to white liberals that
if we do not
change our performative ways there will
be a revolution
it’s time to take the challenge thank
you