There’s a Martin Luther King Jr. quote being passed around on the internet that reads, “A riot is the language of the unheard.” Alongside this quote I’m seeing other’s post pictures or videos of blacks “looting” in Ferguson, MO. This is seemingly a means of depicting them as if they are the issue.

I think that ignorance is just as much of an opiate to the privileged as indifference is. What us privileged folk fail to see is the fact that “black people” are not the “issue,” systemic injustice is the issue. What I’m saying is that the privileged people who stay silent and do nothing about injustice, you’re the issue. Plato was right in saying that:

“The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”

We claim a God that is a supposed voice for the voiceless yet we build a church that has ostracized and created sects of society that, as a result, are voiceless. We’ve taken an “upside down kingdom” and turned it right side up.

I was asked earlier today, “Why do I care so much about this?” I presumed their confusion stemmed from the fact that I’m Asian, and their [mis]conflation of Asian’s being the same thing as them, white.

I responded, “Why would I not care ‘so much‘ about this?” In all actuality their question stemmed from this falsified social construct of race which damagingly says that if I’m not this particular race, then I shouldn’t care.

I care, for the same reason I think that we all should care, this is not a black issue this is a people issue.

If we’re going to post these videos of rioting on Facebook and preach pacifism then your life should also preach or resemble an activism. Our pseudo-pacifistic ways are damaging and only being used as a means of silencing and deterring away from the issue of systemic injustice individualizing it to that one isolated video’d instance. In the same way the oppressed can be accused of overgeneralizing I’m saying that individualizing ignores the issue, systemic injustice.

Would there be riots if we enacted and sought after justice? Would there be a racial war, if we acknowledged race is a damaging social construct? Would there be riots if there was no systemic injustice?

We must learn to differentiate between non-violent resistance and nonresistance. One is fighting against injustice and the other is doing nothing – I’m not asking us to save the world I’m asking the silent to speak up and do something, anything, that would show the oppressed that you are for and not against them.

This is not a pursuit of becoming an antihero of the oppressed but rather it is the pursuit of becoming an antithesis of the oppressor; to incarnate the love and very life of Christ.

The church in the states makes up over 70% of our population imagine the change that could happen and love that could be felt if we spoke up instead of remained silent. So far the privileged Church has been silent and it’s deafening. I called out pastor’s last year and got in trouble for it, but I no longer fear “the man” as the man should fear us.

We must continue to call out and ask our evangelical/mainline/progressive/Catholic leaders to speak up! It’s called accountability and properly stewarding ones platform.

The blood of the oppressed is on the hands of the silent.