This is the second of a two part reflection by The Rev. Ellis Crum, a United Methodist pastor who serves on the Board of Directors of the Cornelius Corps. In this powerful piece, he challenges himself and all of us to be honest about the ways we quietly say “no” when given the chance to confront racial injustice. Not meant to induce guilt or shame, honestly seeing this in ourselves and our insitutions provides room for growth and reveals the need to be part of a community that is willing to face the truth and act on it together. The Cornelius Corps is one such community where we can both face the hard truths of our racial history and take steps to change the “quiet no” into a “humble yes” in response to God’s call to racial justice as discipleship. Please take the time to read and reflect on Rev. Ellis’ profound honesty that is the foundation for transformation both personally and in community.
In March 2026, the United Nations adopted a resolution naming the trafficking of enslaved Africans and racialized chattel slavery as the gravest crime against humanity. Only three nations voted against it. The United States was one of them. That vote revealed something. So did my reaction to it.
I know that decision. I have made it myself.
I Know This Room
I recognize the architecture of this avoidance because I have furnished its rooms. Even as a Black man who carries this history in my marrow, I know the seductive pull of silence. I know the precise weight of the “No” in my own soul. It is the internal veto I exercise when the truth of a relationship feels too demanding or the friction in a boardroom feels too costly. I too have traded clarity for comfort. I have laundered my own convictions into “collegiality” just to survive a dinner.
I have felt it in the congregation too. I have stood in a pulpit with a word that needed to be spoken and chosen a safer text. I have sat in a church meeting where the room was moving toward a comfortable conclusion that everyone knew was incomplete, and I let it land because the cost of interrupting it felt too high. The pulpit is not exempt from the quiet no. Neither is the pew. We have sanctified our silence so thoroughly that we have confused it with wisdom. We have called our avoidance discernment and our cowardice pastoral sensitivity. But a shepherd who will not name the wolf to keep the sheep comfortable is not protecting the flock. He is protecting himself. When I critique the “No” of a nation, I am interrogating the cowardice of my own quiet.
This is an invitation, not to guilt, but to honesty.
We all have areas where acknowledgment would cost us something. Relationships where truth would disrupt comfort. Systems we benefit from that we have never fully examined. Stories we prefer to keep in the past because bringing them into the present would require change. This is our internal veto.
We may not sit at the United Nations. But we exercise the same privilege. The privilege to name or not name. The privilege to engage or avoid. The privilege to say yes to truth or no to responsibility.
What “No” Protects
The real question is not whether a nation has the power to say no. It is what that “No” is designed to protect. We protect the version of ourselves that does not have to change. We protect the privilege of remaining unaffected.
And this is why the United States’ refusal to endorse the UN resolution is so sobering. That decision did not occur in a vacuum. It reflects a familiar pattern, the instinct to step back when truth threatens the stories we prefer to protect.
That national “no” is a magnified version of the same reflex that shows up in our own lives when acknowledgment asks more of us than we are willing to give. It shows up when a colleague makes a comment and we let it pass because the meeting is almost over. It shows up when a friendship asks us to reckon with a dynamic we have never named. It shows up when we sit in a congregation, a boardroom, or a family dinner and feel the truth rising in us like heat, and we swallow it because the social cost of saying it out loud feels too high. These are not dramatic moments. They are ordinary ones. And that is precisely what makes them dangerous. The national refusal to name a wound is built brick by brick from a million private decisions to stay quiet when honesty would have cost something.
The avoidance we critique at the level of nations is built from the same narrative control that shapes our personal silences.
And when everyone in the room exercises their quiet no at the same time, something more than individual silence is produced. A culture is produced. A community that has collectively decided that racial honesty is too costly becomes a community that cannot fulfill its own mission. A network that avoids the hard conversation in favor of the comfortable one eventually loses the capacity to have any conversation that matters. The quiet no is not just a personal failure. It is a communal one. It does not stay private. It shapes the room. It sets the ceiling on what the community is willing to become. And it passes that ceiling on to everyone who enters the space, as an unspoken inheritance of avoidance dressed up as unity.
Face It to Change It
Avoidance does not erase reality. It only postpones reckoning. The work of justice begins in the same place for the individual as it does for the state. Not with power, but with the willingness to face what we would rather not.
Until we do, what we refuse to face will continue to shape what we are unwilling to change.
I am still learning that. And I am not learning it alone. I invite you to join me in building transforming relationships through a network of organizations (churches) and individuals committed to a shared journey of racial justice, reconciliation, and spiritual formation.