I'm going to make a statement that might shock you.

Calling for unity and peace in the United States makes you an accomplice of violence.

WHOA. Excuse me? What?

Let me briefly explain with an analogy. THREAD ->

You live next door to a couple. The man is usually quiet, keeps to himself. Seems put-together. The wife usually looks a little rougher, but also keeps to herself. You've lived by them for years without noticing much. Then, you start hearing the woman scream every few nights.

You hear a man's voice, muffled, saying horrible, shocking things that make you quit listening. You hear her noisily crying more often. She has a black eye and bruises the next time you see her. The crying and screaming gets more common.

All in all, living by this constantly-escalating tension has become extremely stressful for you. It's disrupting your life. You're even losing sleep. You just want life to go 'back to normal.' You want 'peace and quiet.' So you write a letter to the couple.

You ask why can't they just live in peace, finishing with a demand that for the safety and health of the neighborhood, they need to have unity with each other. Things quiet down for a bit, but then it starts again. The cycle of the relationship next door continues indefinitely.

We as white Americans get the luxury of 'living next door.'

I hope we can all agree that looking the other way when domestic abuse is ongoing is wrong. Calling for unity with an abusive spouse is sickening. So why do it with an abusive society?

When you call for peace and unity, it is inherently dismissive. It tells victims of abuse, oppression, and racism that our comfort and convenience is being disrupted and we'd like to go back to not hearing about it. It says "Can't you go back to enduring rather than speaking up?"

This means calling for unity right now is in itself abetting violence, because it's tacitly states that the violence doesn't matter as much as our status quo.

Instead, those of us who are outside these issues need to stand with and lend strength to the oppressed and abused.

So to summarize, by making statements asking for peace and unity, you dismiss, trivialize, and ignore the oppression and violence committed daily against vulnerable people. You look away when human rights or access to medicine is stripped because it doesn't affect your life.

And most importantly of all, when you call for peace and unity, you are publicly requesting a return to the status quo of quiet violence against the vulnerable, therefore enabling it to continue.

Stop calling for unity. Start calling for accountability.

Call out racism and police brutality and oppressive policy decisions and vote like you would if they affected you personally.

Thank you.