January Blog Post

In reading Anne Russo's Between Speech and Silence: Reflections on accountablility the sentence that I chose to talk about in my blog post for this month is this, "What I've come to realize is that it is not a speech or silence that are liberatory on their own, but an awareness of how both can undermine and reproduce the unequal divides that we are working to dismantle" (Russo, 47).

I enjoyed how in the article the author talked about how she became aware of the privilege that she had and went on a little to discuss how that awareness came about. Thinking outside of yourself is notoriously difficult to do, because even as much as we try we will never have the same lived experience as someone that is not in our shoes. She didn't realize that her speaking out as a white, middle-class women could at times step on the toes of the marginalized. This brings us back to the sentence about having that awareness as to not reproduce the unequal divides.

We often see a loud voice, a continually talking voice, as an authoritative voice. Though this is not always and not often the case. Learning how to be an active listener to those who are speaking as well as those silenced brings us closer to having that aspired balance between speech and silence. We have power when we choose to talk and when we choose to step back and listen and the focus on that in the article is what I took away most.