Injustice and Silence
At the beginning of this Ted Talk, the speaker, Clint Smith, quotes Martin Luther King Jr. by saying, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends”. Smith says that everyday we see the consequences of silence manifest themselves in the form of discrimination and more, which was clearly evident in Twelve Angry Men. A few of the jurors in the play were obviously racist and discriminatory with their remarks towards the boy being convicted of murder, while others remained silent. Even if the other jurors disagreed with these comments, all but one of the jurors kept their mouths shut or simply pretended to agree. Silence truly does appease ignorance, as said in the video. Being silent and turning the other cheek does nothing except enforce the behavior going on. At the first vote of seeing which jurors thought the nineteen year old boy was guilty or not guilty, only one of the jurors (number 8) thought that he was innocent. If it weren’t for him trying to convince the rest of the jury and explain his reasons, the boy would have been sent to his death just because the other jurors remained silent. During the vote, a few of the men had to wait for everyone else to cast their vote before going along with the majority for their vote. The speaker in the video says that silence is the residue of fear, but that we all need to stop pretending to see or hear things, for in some cases being silent truly is a matter of life or death, as it was in Twelve Angry Men.