Next Question, Please.

"Just say it," you silently remind yourself.  You know you'll regret it if you don't. 

You stand and step to the microphone placed in the aisle.  There's no line, no one waiting to speak.  You take a deep breath.  "I don't believe it."  You say.  "You're saying that here, in our community, in our schools, black people can't get a fair shot?  You're saying that I'm racist?  You don't even know me!  Hasn't all of this racial injustice stuff gone far enough?  I mean, it's 2020.  I work with black people.  They have the same opportunities I have, my kids go to school with their kids; aren't we past needing to talk about race?"

The silence that follows is deafening.  But as you glance at the rows of people around you, you see heads nodding.  You weren't the only one offended, the only one tired of the rhetoric.  You were just the only one to speak up against the constant barrage of shaming.  It was about time, you think, that someone said something.  

The keynote speaker steps back to the mike.  She looks you right in the eye.  She deliberately turns to look at the mike on the other side of the auditorium. 

"Yes.  Go ahead with your question, please." she says.

"Wait, hold on!  You're not going answer me?  You're not even going to respond to --"

"Could we please have that microphone removed?"  She asks, with a tight smile. 

A stagehand appears out of nowhere, turns off your microphone  and takes it off the stand in front of you.

At first, you're stunned.  You stay there for a moment in the aisle, staring at the empty mike stand.  Then, still in shock, you head back to your seat.  The people in your row avert their eyes as you shuffle past them with murmured apologies.  Apologies for disrupting them as you move past, or for speaking?  For being bold enough -- stupid enough?? -- to say what they must have been thinking too? You're embarrassed.  Then, as you sit hunched in your seat and the Q&A continues, you start to feel anger welling up, enough to choke you.  You weren't out of line, you deserved to be heard, to be responded to.  You weren't the only one thinking what you said, either.  You saw the heads nodding.  How come no one else is saying anything?  Then shame tinges your anger.  “I shouldn’t have said anything,” you think to yourself. "It was stupid.  You just -- you just don't say stuff like that.  It's not that I'm wrong.  It was just too politically incorrect.  Of course everyone is thinking it...I just shouldn't have...it was stupid."  

You sit for the remainder of the presentation, hearing nothing, taking in nothing, until an usher taps you on the arm.  “Excuse me.  Could you come back to the mike, please?”

What?

You shake your head, not wanting another humiliation.  You have nothing left to say.  What would be the point?  But the people around you are shuffling uncomfortably, starting to clear their throats.  The usher is insistent.  So you rise and walk back to the aisle, where the microphone has been placed back on the stand.  You stand behind it.  You look wildly after the usher when she steps back, melting into the darkened back of the room, then down at your hands, fiddling with the edge of your jacket and finally up at the stage briefly.

“I want to finish this presentation by returning to the first question that was posed.”  The speaker says.  She’s going to answer you now?  After humiliating you?  What’s the point?

She looks right at you. “You look like someone who is used to being heard.  Used to having your questions answered.  Used to being respected and responded to.  It must have been uncomfortable for you to be sidelined like I did earlier.  But you see, here, today, I am the one with the power.  I get to choose who is heard and answered.  I chose to take away your voice.  And that is my response to you.  Yes.  It’s 2020.  And yes, I have been saying this whole time that here, in your community, in your schools, black people can't get a fair shot.  It’s because of who controls the dialogue.  It’s about who gets to manage the mikes.  You’re not used to someone shutting you down, are you?  What did it feel like?  Were you embarrassed?   Angry?  Ashamed?" 

You nod slightly. She goes on. "What you felt, sitting there silently, ruminating on what happened, that’s been building up for centuries in people who have been shut down every time they tried to be heard.  What happened there?  It happens over and over, every day, everywhere.  Just not to you.  You know what?  I don’t know you.  But I know what you look like.  And from that, I can assume that you’re used to controlling the mikes in your conversations.  And I know what I look like.  I know how often I’ve had my words ignored, brushed off, questioned, disbelieved, not heard, not responded to.” She pauses, again leaving a deafening silence in the auditorium.  But now, there is a tenseness to it.  “So that’s my answer to you.   It’s 2020, and we’re not past needing to talk about race.  Not until what I am saying -- what people for centuries have been saying, or trying to say -- is heard - really heard - and accepted by all the people who control the conversation.  Not until the balance of power, the controllers of the dialogue, reflect all of us and include all of us.”

The speaker steps back from the podium, and the auditorium erupts in applause. 

You stand there in the aisle, in front of the mike, mouth slightly ajar.  Usually you're quick with a response, willing to debate any point.  But now, you find yourself speechless.  Not shocked and awed, nor even humbled into silence.  Just speechless.  The shame you felt earlier has stayed with you and caught in your throat.  The anger clouds your thoughts.  Strongest in this moil of emotions, though,  is the fear of further humiliation.  You just have nothing to say.   No one would hear you, anyhow.