Courage = Silence Not Being My Only Answer

Dismissing someone’s negative, destructive behavior or comment, can be something I do on a regular basis for a variety of reasons.?Usually, my most popular go-to reason is to say they are not worth it.?Or (I’m embarrassed to say) to judge someone and silently walk away.??

This happened to me when reading through a National Post opinion newspaper article by Jordan Peterson sharing why he is no longer a tenured professor at the University of Toronto (National Post, Opinion, January 19, 2022). If you don’t know who Jordon Peterson is, google him.??So reading his hate-filled talking points, I only read for a few short moments and stopped.?I quickly dismiss him due to his mocking, derogatory tone which was blatantly tailored to his base.?I felt, I don’t need that negative energy and went on with my day.

The next day, my friend and colleague, Jennifer Spear asked for my thoughts on the newspaper article. As a white woman raised in Canada, she shared what angered her, and was checking in with me and my work with EDI about her visceral reaction.?I gave a quick response saying I saw the author as being a defensive cis-gender white male in a moving landscape of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Or a not-so-clean version of that.?

And then I could not shake the question she asked me.?I had a strong opinion and my response was to dismiss my thoughts. I spent a few hours ruminating on this and send an email back to Jennifer – listing all the reasons why the rhetoric spoken by Jordon Peterson was factually incorrect with reference links (yes when I get angry, I get accurate).

Now comes the layer of becoming aware of how important it was to NOT walk away, rather go public with my beliefs.?What scared me about speaking my truth so openly??Why do I walk away??I mean the REAL DEEP truthful reason, of why I walk away.??My fear of speaking up is not to stand out or offend.? Who am I to say something? The value I have been raised with and align with at times is not to be too 'unagreeable'. So, I traditionally have walked away, and distorted the reason to be a self-professed higher moral position.?And I uncovered that I silence myself so as not to be shut down by another person.?I shut myself down first. And when I do share, I habitually tone down my beliefs to make it easier for another to hear.

And then when I got quiet, I knew it was important to ensure my voice was added to expressing what was true for me.?It WAS important to add my counter view.?What was written by Jordon Peterson was not my belief.?I remembered, silence is still an answer.?And it was not the answer I wanted out there.?

Courage sometimes can be helped with another’s support.?When Jennifer asked if we wanted to write together, it was an easy yes.?I liked the safety of taking this step with a trusted friend.??We wanted it to be expressive and ended up doing a poetry slam, something neither of us created before.

The next step was deciding where and how to publish.?After sharing the first read-through with our writing group, the discussion of including hashtags came up.?I found my fears creep in.?To calm my nerves, I went back to assess the intent of the writing. For me, my intention was an act of expressing my deeply held point of view, out loud.?I was moving a belief from being a whisper to more audible.?With a bonus intention of maybe helping another with their act of visibility by clicking a LinkedIn reaction.?

We posted our poem called 'Lifting A White Man's Burden' on LinkedIn.?The fun continued, we made a small video clip. Yes, the news cycle has passed about the resignation letter AND my small act of courage continues.

Enjoy the video of our poem. What is one small act of courage you can do today?

Lifting

A White Man’s Burden by Jennifer Spear, Kanchan Prinsloo

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