Is Silence Complicity?
Sometimes silence is complicity. Consider:
At Jack's place of employment, Jane is the supervisor. However, Jill wants Jane's position, so she lies to the upper management about Jane's workplace conduct. Jane is fired and replaced by Jill. Jack realizes that an injustice has occurred but chooses to remain silent (perhaps Jack even benefits from Jill's new leadership; e.g., Jill is able to get Jack a pay raise).
It's true that Jack did not cause the injustice, but that's where the concept of complicity comes into play. Roughly, complicitous individuals are not the primary perpetrators of the wrongdoing; nonetheless, they contribute to the wrongdoing in a way that makes them partially blameworthy for it. In the case above, by remaining silent in the face of a wrongdoing, Jack enables the wrongdoing to succeed. This is the sense in which he is complicit.
Having said that, it is not always true that silence is complicity. Amend the above case so that Jack is unaware of Jill's wrongdoing. It now seems wrong to say that Jack is complicit. He was silent but had no idea that anything wrong happened. This suggests that complicity requires culpable contribution (like knowingly contributing to something bad). So maybe we should say that silence in the face of known wrongdoings is complicity. To test that slogan, consider the following emendation to the above case: Jack knows about Jill's wrongdoing against Jane, but he also knows that the upper management will not believe him if he speaks out, and Jane has concealed all the evidence of her wrongdoing. There is nothing he can do to resolve the injustice. In this case, his silence does not make him complicit in the wrongdoing against Jane. The reason is because his silence doesn't contribute to the injustice in any way (e.g., it doesn't enable it). So it seems like "silence is complicity" is true only if silence enables or empowers the injustice in some way. "Silence that enables is complicity!"––less catchy, but probably more accurate. And, in fact, there seems to be a lot of silence in the world that functions that way. Silence on the part of whites concerning racial injustice often enables disadvantaging systems and norms to remain in tact.
"But," someone might say, "while it is true that silent white people––as a group––enable injustice, my individual contribution is small and causally un-needed. My silence adds little, and ceasing wouldn't change anything.'" That's true, but it doesn't necessarily free you of complicity. After all, it is pretty clear that you can be complicit in a wrongdoing even if your contribution is both small, un-needed, and causally impotent. Just consider: Jack is part of a group of 20 robbers carrying out a vault from the bank. Only 5 people are needed to carry the vault, though. Clearly, Jack is complicit in the robbery (and, hence, bears some blame), even though his contribution is small, un-needed, and causally impotent (cf. Elizabeth Harman, "Eating Meat as a Morally Permissible Moral Mistake"). Likewise, your silence is not itself decisive in enabling injustice. The group's silence will enable injustice, with or without you. Nonetheless, your silence might be like that extra hand on the vault. It still contributes (knowingly) to a morally bad collective outcome (white silence) and, hence, is a form of complicity.
Collective white silence enables injustice.
Individual white silence contributes to the wrong of collective white silence.
Notice this: if this argument works, it does not show that silence makes me complicit in the specific racial injustices enabled by collective white silence. But I am complicit in the injustice of collective enablement of racial injustices. That is, it is unjust that whites, as a social collective, enable racial injustice by virtue of their silence, and my silence makes me complicit in that injustice.
To develop this argument further, we would need to explore a certain objection, to wit: in the vault case, Jack intentionally participates in an *organized* effort to commit a wrongdoing; silent Jack is not part of anything like that. So maybe robber Jack is complicit for that reason, despite the fact that he is an unnecessary extra hand. But how many white people intentionally lend their silence to an organized effort directed at upholding unjust systems? Probably few. White silence that enables injustice is usually uncoordinated and unplanned. Perhaps a better comparison, then, involves individual contribution to the factory farm industry. When I buy factory farm meat, I am not intentionally collectivizing with others around the common goal of keeping the factory farm industry intact. The same holds for the fast fashion industry; consumers of fast fashion don't organize to keep the industry intact. Still, many intuit that my purchase of FF meat makes me complicit in the wrongs of factory farming and/or that my purchase of fast fashion makes me complicit in the exploitation of garment workers. Perhaps white silence is more like those types of complicity (for more on this, see Adrienne Martin's really fascinating paper, "Factory Farming and Consumer Complicity").
ReplyDeleteJoel, I'm glad I noticed the link to your blog. This is a really helpful way to think about this.
ReplyDeleteI haven't figured out exactly how to work this into Jack's analogies yet, but it relates to issues like factory farming, fast fashion, white silence, even going back to slavery and the cotton industry. When one is born into a culture that relies on unjust systems, there is a strong default to being complicit. It takes quite a bit of effort on the part of an individual, first to even see the injustice, and then again to extract oneself from the system. It might even require an extra measure of privilege to be able to live outside that system. For example: cheap food at the regular grocery store is reliant on factory farming and exploitation of agricultural workers at almost every level of the system. Those who have enough time and money and bandwidth left in their brain to garden or buy directly from local farmers or search out fair trade foods might be able to live outside of that system to a certain extent. But the single mom who has no money, time, or energy to spare is simply going to have to participate in the default system even if she is aware of and concerned about the ethical problems.
I have to go back to Jack: "Jack knows about Jill's wrongdoing against Jane, but he also knows that the upper management will not believe him if he speaks out, and Jane has concealed all the evidence of her wrongdoing. There is nothing he can do to resolve the injustice." I'm not sure if this premise works for me. I have a suggestion which might add some another layer to white complicity.
ReplyDeleteJack can't know with certainty that upper management will not believe him, and it is likely that Jill has not covered her tracks as well as they both believe. Maybe upper management has their suspicions, but they're waiting for corroboration. Maybe what’s really happening is that the idea of speaking up feels too risky to Jack. Maybe he fears losing his own job. How often do white people, like Jack, know what’s right, but it feels too hard, too risky? Maybe if Jack does the brave thing by choosing to speak up, he WILL lose his job. But maybe in a year or two, Jill will do something similar, and she will get caught in part because Jack spoke up earlier and upper management was able to recognize a pattern of behavior.
We can’t base our actions strictly on our chances of success. When we speak up, even if we can’t change the big picture today, we show support for the movement, and we may embolden others. If we stop wearing fast fashion, we may not change the fact of fast fashion, but maybe we weaken the industry just a little, maybe we talk about it with one friend who also stops wearing fast fashion. If we speak up about racism, maybe we influence someone we don't even know is listening.