“If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.” Teach Different with Zora Neale Hurston – Self-expression

Transcript

Dan Fouts (00:10)

Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Teach Different podcast. We have an awesome quote today from Zora Neale Hurston, got to get this, make sure that I have the pronunciation right. Novelist, civil rights activist during the Harlem Renaissance period in American history. Just a fantastic writer. One of her famous works, Their Eyes Were Watching God. I used to teach American studies with an English teacher in my high school, and he taught this book, while I taught The Harlem Renaissance in US history. So it’s a nice, American studies is a nice, a blend kind of course that integrates, novels like what Zora Neale Hurston had. It was fantastic, great writer. This quote is very, very interesting and provocative, and we’re going to get to it in a minute. See if we can make some great connections, but we’ll work with the quote and then we’ll look at the claim. See what she’s saying about it and then we’ll think about the counterclaim of it. What’s another way to look at the world that’s different? And we get asked all the time, why do you share quotes with the Teach Different method and then have people disagree with the quotes? This is because of critical thinking is so important and the ability to hold different ideas in your head and be okay with that is important in an audience when you’re with other people because there’s going to be disagreements and there’s going to be different ways of looking at the world so the structure of this method invites these disagreements and so we’re training our brain to be okay with disagreement and boy do we need this in our society now. All right, and then we’ll ask questions as they come up, the essential question part of the method. So here’s Hurston’s quote. If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it. Whoa. If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it. What do you think the claim of this is? And by the way, we have Steve, of course, as my counterpart. We also have Siye with us, who is the Teach Different podcast producer. So we’re really happy to have her with us participating in the conversation. What do you guys think?

Steve Fouts (02:52)

Siye, if you want to try this one, I mean, I’d say speak up. It’s saying speak up. Okay. I don’t quite understand what it means, they’ll kill you. You know, if you were silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it. I don’t know about that second part yet, but it’s definitely saying speak up if you’re hurting.

Siye Dlamini (03:16)

Yeah, I agree with that. I think it’s definitely saying we need to speak up about our pain more. Because typically I think people tend to shy away about speaking about their pain or their traumas because they see it as something that they should be ashamed of. And they see it as a defect of them versus just like the environment that they were in. And I also think the they will kill you and say you enjoyed it part just reminds me of, I don’t know if this is a quote or it’s just something that I heard that says history is written by winners, right? So the person who wins the battle gets to tell the story of how the battle went, which is the reason why we find that.

There are certain things that are omitted or certain individuals are made to look better than others in terms of historical context. I think the part they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it is just based on that, that if you do not speak up about your pain. They get to tell your story for you and they will tell it in a way to say that you enjoyed it. It was something you asked for which is the reason why you didn’t speak out because had you not enjoyed it, you would have said something, right? And they get to say and build that narrative. Whereas if you just speak up and tell your side of the story and tell how painful it was for you, you tell a much broader picture versus somebody else’s side of the story, who is going to paint themselves in good light and omit certain things or certain pain and traumas that they caused you. 

Steve Fouts (05:07)

That’s great. That’s lovely. That’s powerful. 

Dan Fouts (05:09)

Yeah. I really like how you interpreted, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it. And they kill you by telling the story the way they want, not the way you wanted because you were silent and so you have to then become a victim of life because of somebody else. That is, okay this this quote, one interesting side conversation would be who’s the “they’ll” that you know, they’ll kill you? Who are the people in your life who tell your story for you? And you have to prevent that in order to be authentic.

Steve Fouts (05:57)

I think it’s your abusers, the people that are causing you pain.

Dan Fouts (06:05)

Okay. But just…

Siye Dlamini (06:07)

And I think in the context, sorry. I was just going to say, just in the context of Zora Neale Hurston, just in terms of like her being a civil rights, activist, I think she was talking about like the oppressors of the black community that black people need to stand up and speak up and tell their own stories so that their oppressors are not the ones that are determining their fate and rewriting the history. So I think ultimately it’s your abusers or your oppressors or anyone that is just inflicting pain in your life. Even like, I guess, in relationships,  if you have an abuser in that sense, maybe in domestic violence cases, the person, the perpetrator of that violence and abuse towards you will say they never did that to you. That’s not how it happened, and you enjoyed it. Just because you never spoke up. So I guess it puts the onus on the victim of whatever violence is being enacted, whether it’s structural, whether it’s physical, whether it’s mental, whatever the case may be, to just have the ability or gain the strength to speak up so that they don’t die. But also their narrative doesn’t just fall into the shadows because I never said anything. 

Dan Fouts (07:35)

That’s great. This reminds me, if you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it. This is very similar to another quote that Steve and I use in so many of our workshops. From Audrey Lord, another civil rights activist from the 1970s, your silence will not protect you is her quote. So this really makes me think of that as well. I look at this, this is a highly charged quote, especially as you did Siye, when you put it in the context of who said it within the civil, you know, someone fighting for civil rights in a society of injustice and abuse, this could be, this is one where I think it’s going to be important to use this with the right age of students so that they are mature enough to handle some of this. I just wanted to say that, you know, we have to be flexible in some of these conversations and know our audience, so to speak.

Steve Fouts (08:42)

And I have a counterclaim. 

Dan Fouts (08:44)

Go for it. 

Steve Fouts (08:46)

And it’s pretty striking. So the quote is, if you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it. The counterclaim is, if you’re in a system of oppression and you speak out about your pain, they might just kill you.

Siye Dlamini (09:10)

As a person who lives in an absolute monarchy, I have seen examples of people standing up for their rights, and them being imprisoned and being charged with treason against the state and things like that. So there are instances where your freedom of speech can actually get you killed or where you actually just don’t have freedom of speech, right? Therefore you kind of have to swallow your pain and your oppression, and kind of keep it low key. 

Steve Fouts (09:48)

Can you share where you’re from? 

Siye Dlamini (09:50)

What if they kill me, Steve? I was about to 

Steve Fouts (09:54)

I was about to say. I don’t want to put you out there. What we’re doing right now is going to be something. So nevermind, I guess. 

Siye Dlamini (10:03)

I’ll just say, it’s an absolute monarchy in Africa. So you, if you Google that, you’ll know where I’m from, but in case they come for me.

Steve Fouts (10:16)

I’m so glad you’re with us, by the way. And I hope you get out of this stuff. And at least it’s something that you can like, hold on to where, hey, I’m doing some free thinking with some people in the world here. Like, we really, really have gratitude that you’re with us.

Siye Dlamini (10:37)

Yeah,  it’s not that terrible, but it is quite jarring as well, but absolutely like there are environments and parts of the world where you can get persecuted for the things that you say, especially if they are, when it comes to the state and another part of the counterclaim also is even in abusive relationships, right? Standing up to your abuser can get you killed. So, if you stand up and say that I’m being violated in this way, which is why some people end up never speaking up and things like that. So, yeah, I think that is a counterclaim, that sometimes speaking up about your pain can get you killed. 

Dan Fouts (11:22)

So the tension, then, as I see this, and maybe a question is percolating up here, is when do I know, how do I know when to express myself as opposed to protect myself? One is about expression of your pain. The other is about protecting and making sure that you’re not hurt. And a lot of times you don’t know if you say something, it might put yourself in danger. So you have to fall on the side of self protection and be silent. At other times you think the risk is worth it and you speak up. How do you know when to do one or the other? 

Steve Fouts (12:14)

Yeah. So maybe the question could be, what’s the best way to protect yourself? You know, is it speaking up or is it keeping silent? That’s going to be a question that will just plague you constantly. I thought of another quote I’d like to put out there. 

Dan Fouts (12:34)

Well, but can I just mention something, Steve? But in, it’s not just about when you speak out, it’s not just about protecting yourself. It’s about asserting yourself. It’s having a voice. So I see your question. I don’t think it, it didn’t seem to, anyway. 

Steve Fouts (12:53)

I was conflating protection with, sometimes you have to have a voice to protect yourself. If you don’t, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it. I think of that quote, a coward dies, a thousand deaths, a hero dies, but one.

Dan Fouts (13:18)

Yeah. Cause the coward doesn’t speak up.

Siye Dlamini (13:21)

I would actually like to have a go at the question Dan posed. And say that it is, I guess you know, when the outcome is kind of the same. When staying quiet kills you and also speaking up kills you. So I think when you have nothing to lose, that’s typically the time when people speak up. That if I am silent, I die. If I speak up, I die. So whatever I do, I die. So I might as well speak up. I don’t know if that makes sense. Wow. 

Dan Fouts (14:05)

That is powerful to have that,  to be faced with that. Okay. Well, this is a heavy one in a really interesting way. Zora Neale Hurston, if you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it. I think we did a nice job with the claim and the counterclaim. And this is a deep quote and it touches on some very sensitive subjects. And as I said earlier, you’ll want to make sure your audience is mature enough to handle this particular one. But this is wonderful. Just to remind our listeners, we put these on YouTube. So we have a YouTube channel and you can check out this episode and others, if you’d like. We also at Teach Different, I wanted to mention, we’re developing a certificate program where we’re going to take people through the learning of this method, where they will implement it in their own settings, whether it be at home or at school. So we are on the way here of taking these quotes and these experiences and sharing them with the world in interesting ways. And we’re just excited to do it. We really appreciate everybody, all the listeners who spend some time with us. And hopefully their lives are made a little better by thinking this way and sharing it with others. So thank you so much and everybody, we’ll see you in the next Teach Different podcast.