Editor’s Note: This is the second post in a series Sarah Moon wrote about the problems that privilege brings in Christian pacifist circles. It originally appeared on Sarah’s Patheos blog on October 27, 2013. The first post can be found on Our Stories Untold here. — RH In my last post on pacifism, I discussed the tendency of many privileged pacifists to shame survivors who do not react to abuse in “approved” non-violent ways. I wrote about how it’s dehumanizing to hear people who admittedly probably won’t face [insert type of abuse or oppression here] pontificating about how they would respond to said abuse or oppression. Now, I’m going to go on record to say that, although privileged pacifists often need to shut up and listen to folks from marginalized groups and to survivors from abuse, I am not giving all acts of self-defense a stamp of approval. Why? I’m going to draw a quote from bell hooks’ All About Love (pgs. 194-195) that I think illustrates this: An adult white male answers the door when a young Asian male rings the bell. We live in a culture where without responding to any gesture of aggression or hostility on the past of the […]
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