Photo by Maria Krisanova on Unsplash

And clearly, it’s not just choosing to remain silent because they don’t care, but sometimes because they don’t feel as though their speaking up will have any effect other than to annoy people or make a situation worse. I think we don’t think about how discrimination (or any other social ill) is like an infection — starts with a small wound. Nothing much. But the pathogen, allowed to multiply unchecked, gets more and more powerful. More and more widespread. The organism, eventually, will die.