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Much as the term “flatten” has some new (and challenging) currency of late, so too has the concept of being “silenced,” as a quick search of art-world news demonstrates. But if you live in the United States, please do not say you are being silenced. Unless, of course, you are being actively prosecuted for your utterances by some local, state, or federal authority, in which case you are in that rare category. 

Claiming you are being silenced in a society as free as ours devalues those who really are being silenced. For example: Alexei Navalny, the late Russian opposition leader, killed to prevent him from further rabble-rousing against Putin’s regime. Or: the American satirist and playwright living in Germany, prosecuted because of a (satirical) use of a banned symbol to make a point, as satire is intended to do. Or: the publisher of Apple Daily, in Hong Kong, arrested on “national security” charges by the Chinese government in order to shut down his pro-democracy newspaper. Or: the dissident blogger in Shanghai, who was sentenced to seven years in prison—for the kind of speech that Americans take for granted. (Indeed, for anyone concerned about the silencing of viewpoints, including of Chinese expats in the U.S., the reports of Chinese repression are many, varied, and consistent.)

However, for those of us in the United States…

If you have access to social media, you are not being silenced. If you have access to platforms like this one—websites, blogs, etc.—you are not being silenced.

If you have access to social media or websites and choose not to post, you might be self-censoring, but that is not the same thing as being silenced. If you choose not to post because you are concerned that sharing your views may have consequences—for your job, or how your colleagues, friends, or family feel about you—that does not mean you are being silenced. It means you have weighed the risks and decided the potential consequences outweigh the benefits.

If your employer declines to share a message—internally or externally—about something you believe, you are not being silenced. Your employer may have different views, either on the substance of the message or on the appropriateness of them sharing it for you, or both. That does not mean you have been silenced.

If your message—literally your message, a quote from you, with your name attached to it—winds up in press coverage about the issue of your concern, then you have not been silenced. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Are there Americans who are being silenced? It’s likely, no doubt. But if you are not incarcerated, and you are able to stand on a corner and speak, or join a protest or picket line and carry a sign, or post to the internet, or to see yourself or your friends and your messages reflected in some piece of news coverage: you are not being silenced. You are being heard.

Whether people agree with what you have to say is an entirely different matter. Whether they acquiesce to your demands is also a different issue. And, again: just because they may not agree with you does not mean you are being silenced. In fact, fighting against silencing means protecting dissenting views—even the ones you disagree with.

The term “flatten” has been gaining currency in the last few years and it has been rattling around in my head for a number of reasons, several of which relate to my recent piece in The Forward.

The obvious application here is how the Israel/Hamas conflict has for too many people flattened an understanding of Israel as a diverse and multicultural and multi-ethnic society. It is instead framed as a country founded and inhabited by white former-Europeans, thus flattening the fact that 50% of Israel’s Jewish population has roots in the Middle East and Africa and, transported to a different context, would not be considered white.

This also flattens the fact that 20% of Israel’s population are Arab Israeli. And it likewise flattens an understanding of Palestinians, especially Gazans, the majority of whom identify with a conservative Sunni branch of Islam, but do not necessarily support Hamas. To consider most Gazans either Hamas supporters on the one hand, or in alignment with the values of the American progressives who have adopted them as a cause on the other hand, is to take away Gazan’s their own identity.

But there is another, equally important set of “flattening” actions taking place.

The first flattening seems to be built around the concept that “the personal is the political.” From the idea that one’s personal experiences can be seen as connected to larger political issues, this concept has been flattened such that now, for too many people, everything about one’s workplace has to align with one’s personal and political goals and values. Never mind that for most entities there are multiple employees. This flattening creates unnecessary conflict with colleagues where there isn’t political alignment, and introduces contemporary politics into workplaces that in all likelihood should be focused on other issues.

This feeds directly into the flattening and eventual loss of “neutrality.” Recognizing that political and intellectual diversity are valid forms of diversity is part and parcel of my original argument against organizations like colleges and museums making statements about the Israel/Gaza conflict. “Neutrality” is not a cop-out but is in fact its own, very valid position–one predicated on recognizing that diverse views can and do (and should) exist, and that diversity of viewpoints is an essential part of the larger set of diversity goals that everyone espouses as important for the workplace.

Monocultures are unhealthy—whether in agriculture or higher education or museums—and leadership should resist them.