Your Silence Will Not Protect You

Privilege is speaking with the expectation of being heard.

I’m Dr. Elisa Glick and I help leaders build trust in the workplace, one courageous conversation at a time. As an educator and DEIB practitioner, I have dedicated my career to empowering others to use their voices and cultivating environments where people feel seen, heard, and welcomed.

For many years, silence separated me from the person I yearned to be and isolated me, but I thought surrendering a part of myself to silence was necessary for my safety and survival. After living so long in silence I doubted my capacity to move through the world speaking my truth openly. Who would I even be without the cloak of silence I thought was protecting me? It was a terrifying question.

Black feminists Audre Lorde and bell hooks taught me about language as a tool of resistance and empowerment.* In their work, they speak eloquently to the power of voice as a political demand and the price of keeping silences, especially for Black girls and women: “My silences had not protected me,” Lorde famously says. “Your silence will not protect you.”

Women, Global Majority people, and gender expansive people of all ethnicities, classes, ages, sexualities, religions, and abilities all struggle (in different ways) against the tyrannies of silence. It is by recognizing our shared journeys to find language for our truths that we can face our fears, decolonize our minds, and create spaces for healing, authentic connection, and collective liberation.

Lorde sums it up like this: “I am not only a casualty, I am also a warrior.”

And so are you.
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ID: Photo of Audre Lorde with the quote, “My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you.”

*This post draws from Lorde’s “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action” and hooks’s Talking Back.