Notes from the Margin: Moving in Silence

From Maya Angelou’s caged bird to Melissa Harris-Perry’s “crooked room,” Black women have learned to sing through distortion, to stand upright in spaces designed to tilt us and keep us small, even uncomfortable.

But something has shifted.

We no longer feel the need to be loud. Moving in silence has proven to be better—for our souls, our community, for everyone.

For decades, Black women’s resistance was measured by volume. Marches. Protests. Voices raised in righteous anger. And that work was necessary—it still is. But we’ve learned something crucial: noise doesn’t always equal impact. Sometimes the most powerful moves are the ones they never see coming.

We refuse to go quietly into any cage—whether political, ecclesial, or domestic. But refusing to go quietly doesn’t mean making noise. It means refusing to disappear, refusing to shrink, refusing to accept the limitations placed on us—while moving with intention and strategy rather than spectacle.

This isn’t silence born of fear or suppression. This is the silence of someone who has learned that the master is always watching the loudest voices, always preparing counterattacks against the most visible threats. This is the silence of ancestors who survived by knowing when to speak and when to move in ways that couldn’t be tracked, contained, or commodified.

Audre Lorde warned that “the master’s tools will not dismantle the master’s house.” Yet here we are, dismantling anyway with similar tools as their tools of destruction. Through sermons, ballots, businesses, art, and academic work that expose the architecture of misogynoir.

But we’re wielding those tools differently now. Quieter. More strategic. Less concerned with being seen and more focused on being effective.

Courage for us is not volume. It is insistence. It is continuing to speak when history tells us we should be silent, when even allies ask for softer tones. But insistence doesn’t require us to shout ourselves hoarse trying to convince people who were never going to listen anyway.

Instead, we’re building:

Economic infrastructure: Black women remain the fastest-growing group of entrepreneurs in the United States. We’re not asking for a seat at the table anymore. We’re building our own tables, our own businesses, our own wealth. And we’re doing it without press releases, without begging for venture capital from people who undervalue us, without waiting for permission.

Intellectual authority: As the most highly educated demographic in the United States, Black women are producing scholarship, art, and cultural commentary that redefines the conversation. We’re not debating our humanity anymore. We’re asserting our expertise and letting the work speak for itself.

Community networks: We’re creating spaces - both physical and digital - where Black women can breathe, create, and thrive without constantly correcting for someone else’s distortion. We’re prioritizing each other, supporting each other’s work, building mutual aid networks that don’t depend on institutional goodwill.

Melissa Harris-Perry gave us the image of the crooked room. A tilted space where Black women must constantly adjust, trying to stand upright while everything around us is designed to throw us off balance. For so long, we exhausted ourselves trying to prove we could stand straight in their crooked rooms, trying to demonstrate our worth in spaces that were never designed to value us.

What if we stopped trying to stand upright in spaces designed to tilt us? What if, instead, we built rooms where we could breathe without constantly correcting for someone else’s distortion?

That’s the work happening now. In silent, strategic ways. Black women are opting out of spaces that require us to perform resilience like it’s a job qualification. We’re choosing rest. We’re choosing joy. We’re choosing communities that don’t demand we shrink, code-switch, or over-explain our humanity.

This doesn’t mean we’ve abandoned institutions entirely or stopped engaging in politics or given up on change. It means we’re being more selective about where we invest our energy. It means we’re building alternatives while we’re still fighting for transformation. It means we understand that sometimes the most radical thing you can do is refuse to play a game that was rigged from the start.

As theologians Jennifer DeShazier and Danielle Williams note, “power itself may be neutral; intent determines harm.” We’ve learned to wield power with different intent. Not to dominate, but to liberate. Not to extract, but to build. Not to perform, but to transform.

And sometimes, wielding power means strategic withdrawal. It means:

This looks like silence to those who expected us to keep begging for their approval. But it’s not silence. It’s redirection. It’s the sound of us building something they can’t control.

The caged bird keeps singing. But she’s also learning when to save her voice. When to hum instead of belt. When to sing for herself and her community rather than for an audience that has never truly listened.

We will not be silenced, even when we are caged in. We will continue to deconstruct and decolonize in our own circles and circumstances. We will always be strengthened by God to reconstruct and rebuild. No matter how loudly the racist patriarch screams.

We will continue to speak truth to power. But we’ll do it on our own terms, in our own time, in our own ways.

And here’s what they’re realizing: moving in silence doesn’t mean we’re less dangerous to their systems of oppression. It means we’re more dangerous. Because by the time they notice what we’re building, the foundation is already poured, the framework is already up, and it’s too solid to tear down without enormous effort.

Courage, then, is not the absence of fear. It is the audacity to keep singing in the crooked room but on our own terms. To use every note, every breath, and every platform to tell the truth until the walls themselves begin to bend.

bell hooks once observed that America’s refusal to legitimize women speaking about race reveals a “long tradition of sexist and racist thinking.” That refusal still echoes. But we’re no longer waiting for legitimacy from systems designed to delegitimize us. We’re creating our own metrics of success, our own definitions of power, our own standards of excellence.

As Ecclesiastes 1:9 tells us, “There is nothing new under the sun.” The patterns come back, but our will is strong. Stronger than ever. And our strategy is sharper. Quieter. More sustainable.

Because here’s what we’ve learned: you can scream at a brick wall until your voice gives out, or you can quietly gather your tools and start building something new. Both are resistance. But only one leaves you with your voice intact and something tangible to show for your efforts.

We’re choosing to build. We’re choosing to move with intention rather than reaction. We’re choosing strategies that sustain us rather than drain us.

And sometimes, the most powerful voice is the one they never see coming. The one that doesn’t announce its plans. The one that just keeps building, keeps creating, keeps transforming until the new world is already here, and the old one realizes too late that it’s been left behind.