Thoughtful Engagement

Reflecting on Social Action: Outrage, Intellectual Activism, and Ineffective Knives

10/4/2018

I don’t know when it happened. I can’t get my head around why there are so many people who have so much energy to talk yet such an anemia of action. It is a very uncomfortable position to place oneself in what could bring opposition from a variety of persons.

Maybe its social media. Everything comes at us one hundred miles an hour. One moment a man is shot by a policewoman. In another moment a president with Nobel in hand drone strikes people. In another moment children are being escorted to centers apart from their parents. While another president drops a MOAB on a already turbulent land. As soon as we get outraged about one event, here comes another. Dang it Nike! We return to business as usual.

Maybe we like our comforts. You know business as usual. Selfies. Trips to some resort getaway. Getting all emotional because Cardi-B and Nicki Minaj had blows. We swoon over a Kardashian’s lifestyle and our desire to be part of the rich and famous.

Outrage. Pontification. Normalcy.
Outrage. Pontification. Normalcy.

Maybe outrage is simply a cathartic opportunity to feel as if we care. I mean surely we don’t “want to be on the wrong side of history.” I can’t look like a bigot or a sympathetic nationalist. I pick up my phone. I get on my computer. With furor and anger. With some sense of moral standard and justice, I have to get my thought out there into the universe. I have to say something to show I care. It is the two-hundred and eighty characters who I will employ with my moral outrage to express my shock, put my opposition in a corner, and anxiously await the glorious sound of affirmation.

Now I can go back to my comfort because I have maintained my distance from the Jericho Road.

Looking back on the Civil Rights Movement of the sixties, there were many well meaning Caucasian brothers and sisters who wanted to see changes in the society. In the North, there were well meaning persons who rejected segregation and racism. There were those, yes even in the South, who wanted to progress out of the dehumanizing posture towards Black Americans. Inspirational in words. They were outraged about the treatment of courageous young persons facing dogs, hoses, and Sunday school teaching resistance. Yet the level of activism resided in words and lacked any strength to be present, participate, and if needed, have their reputations perish for a greater cause, the cause of justice. Many simply did not want to give up a way of life which was normal. “Life seemed unrecognizable to many white Southerners. Confronted with a reality they had barely contemplated, some whites retaliated with any weapons at their disposal. Others attempted to avoid the upheaval; they tried to maintain cherished ways of life even as the ground shifted beneath their feet. In the end, evasion proved impossible” (Sokol, 64).

History illustrates a point. One can be outraged about the treatment of others or the trajectory of our country, yet in the same experience, we can choose not to act because of the implied changes which would happen to us, our context, and most importantly those we are advocating for in words.

Outrage and intellectual activism which remains in our social media silos or silently discussed around our white chocolate mochas and expensive MacBooks are ineffective knives to cut the chords of injustice.

James Brown opened a song with the following words:
Like a dull knife
Just ain't cutting
Just talking loud
Then saying nothing
Don't tell me
How to do my thing
When you can't, can't
Can't do your own*

The Godfather of Soul has some good instruction for all of us. Outrage and intellectual activism without actions which puts us in the middle of the injustice are ineffective knives. The very design of a knife is have and maintain a sharpness which is then capable of cutting through some object. The knife for a period of time becomes part of the object until it separates the object from whatever it maybe attached. If we would be honest many of us are simply dull knives, creating a lot of noise, fostering incivility, and not willing to offer substantial change.

If you are not moved by James Brown, I would encourage you to hear the voice of a woman. Esther was a Queen who took outrage and words over the treatment of people she identified with, choosing to disrupt normalcy for the sake of justice. In her actions, she went unannounced into the throne room of the King.

Outraged about the impending injustice to kill Jewish people.

Intellectual activism in her discussion with her uncle Mordecai, “I will go to the the king, though it is against the law, and if I perish, I perish” (Esther 4:16).

Action knowing the threat of death, “And when the king saw Queen Esther standing in the court, she won favor in his sight, and he held out to Esther the golden scepter that was in his hand” (Esther 5:2).

James Brown and Esther still speaks today. We can be men and women who act justly. Yes it means being outraged and discussing the injustice. Yet these two must be accompanied by actions because injustice is tied to people. People whose lives, potentiality, and capability are interrupted by some form of individual or societal injustice. When outrage, intellectual thought, and loving action work together, the chords of injustice are severed and people can move freely.

Notes:

“Words from James Brown’s Talking Loud and Saying Nothing”
Sokol, Jason, (2007). “There Goes My Everything: White Southerners In the Age of Civil Rights 1945-1975.” Vintage Press.

Riposte

10/4/2018 10:04:51 pm

What an accurate summation of the current zeitgeist of outrage and inaction.You state that "Outrage and intellectual activism that remain in our social media silos....are ineffective knives to cut the chords of injustice." Though those "knives" are ineffective at cutting through injustice......they are highly effective at cutting through the tenuous fabric that holds us together as a nation, a people, as communities, as churches, as families. Those knives, when it comes to cutting the bonds that connect us to one another...in the name of outrage will sever those bonds, and often progress to slicing and cutting one another. Perhaps it is because we sharpen the knives to cut those bonds and to cut one another....or perhaps we have dulled the knives severing bonds so that they are too dull to cut the cords of injustice? Or the knives have always been dull, but the bonds that hold us together are so very fragile, so weakened, so tenuous that even dull knives can sever them. Conversely, the cords of injustice are more like thick cables.........and it is only by coming together, and strengthening the bonds between us that together we can sever the cords of injustice. But I am afraid you are right: we just love our comforts and catharsis too much.

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