The Danger of Neutrality

Those who stay neutral are arguably worse than the oppressors they turn a blind eye to. It was Italian poet, Dante Alighieri who first said,  "The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis." The idea of neutrality being viewed with a negative connotation has been in circulation for decades now, as early as the 14th century, but why is that? Surely those who choose to stay impartial cannot be viewed as immoral as the oppressors and murderers, but Anna Baltzer seems to digress. 

Anna Baltzer is a Jewish-American public speaker and orator who grew up with a Zionist mindset amidst her Jewish grandmother, listening to the horrifying stories of Nazi Europe and how her grandmother was one of the lucky few that survived such a dark period in time. Anna's upbringing was no different from any other Jewish kid's childhood. Anna believed in the Jewish state of Israel because of the generational trauma that all Jewish people carried.  It wasn't until Anna grew up and visited Palestine that her opinion began to change. 

 The issue that Anna believes most people face today is being neutral and not having a firm opinion or a side in major political debates. Anna argues that one can only find themselves when one takes these sides as it allows you to understand the type of person you are. The way to navigate through which side you should support in a general sense is, to look for the side that is underprivileged, those who don't have power and are denied fundamental human rights. When you determine which side is not getting the justice they are entitled to, that is the side you must support. 

This mindset of equity over equality should be the bases for any issue that comes to mind. Anna compares what's happening in Palestine to slavery in the U.S and the Black Lives Matter movement, "it's not that other lives don't matter," she says, but that black lives are being under valued and therefore need the extra help and protests. 

The Danger of a Single Story

In this TED talk, author and storyteller Chimamanda Adichie discusses the risks that result from a "single story." She begins by discussing her early years and education in Nigeria, where she was exposed to much "whitewashed" literature. The characters in the stories were white, blonde, and blue-eyed, they ate apples and drank ginger beer while playing in the snow. These western portrayals of people in the novels and literature Chimamanda grew up reading stuck with her and the ideas carried on in her early works of writing, where her characters followed the same format and were unrelated to her style of living and the environment she grew up in.

Novelist Chimamanda later relates her experiences to that of her college roommate in America, where she studied. Her roommate expresses the stereotypes she believed to be true about people from Africa. Growing up with American cousins, I felt like I could relate to Chimamanda because of how my cousins and their white friends would ask me questions and make assumptions based purely on my ethnicity of how my life was like and what my experiences were "supposed to be".