The Ultimate Tragedy: By Gilbert Wilkerson Sr.

​There are many tragedies in the world but one of the greatest tragedies lie with good people who say nothing or speak up about the bad in the world. Bad people take pleasure in torture, pain, oppression, and the like. Bad people love being bad, they enjoy the power it gives them. Like caring a gun gives one the boldness he or she would not have enjoyed if they had not had a gun. They love the fear they can bring upon people who may be much stronger and bigger than they.  Bad people see themselves as the winners because they take what they want without asking. They abuse because they love to oppress the weak. They also bring terror and fear to people which gives them a sense of glory. They feel empowered by your fear and know you are afraid to challenge them. They breed fear in other people because it gives them a kind of adrenal high.  At the same time bad people experience fear like we do. 

I once met a drug dealer in Washington D.C. who thought I was an undercover cop. I saw the fear in his eyes as he walked around the apartment trying to figure out what to do with me. He had my two female cousins in the back of his apartment and would not allow them to leave with me. They knew the guy because they did drugs with him. I was an out-of-town guest he had never seen before and that made him very nervous. I carried a small camera in my hand, and he did not know what to do with me. I read his body language and eye contact which said, "it's go to jail or fight." He seemed trapped with very few options. He finally walked up to me and said”, Man you gotta leave”, I said, “are my cousins coming with me”? He said, “no! He then opened the door for me to leave, and I walked out. I never went back to visit my cousins again. I was blessed to get out of his apartment alive.  Both my cousins ended up dying very young of drugs overdoses later on.  He was a bad guy but afraid like anyone else who was confronted with something bigger than he.   I saw in his eyes his fear of going to prison.  My two cousins also hung with mean boyfriends who had little respect for them as women. I lived with my uncle during the summer of 75 and I saw how he never confronted her boyfriends about respecting his daughters. We would come back from out of town and they would be sleeping in my uncle’s and aunt’s bed. My uncle would never say one word of rebuke. After traveling three hours late at night we would have to wake them up, wait till they got dressed more than once. She and her boyfriend would take their time while we waited in the hallway as though her boyfriend was the head of the house and was doing us a favor. I thought about what it was like to have a father that would not stand up for his daughters. They fell victim to the bad boys in the streets who abused and beat them. My uncle was full of fear, and he never complained. In the end his two beautiful daughters ended up on drugs and overdosed at a young age. The tragedy was not the drug dealer who kept my two cousins against their will, nor the boyfriends who took their precious  innocent  lives. It was the father who was the worst of them all. He would not speak up for the precious daughters God had given him. They were the most beautiful girls, but once they got into drugs, the beauty turned to misery, they had no life of own. One got her teeth knocked out the other one was just sad to look at. The tragedy is not the drug dealer or the boyfriend but my uncle, the father of the girls. The boyfriends were bad and cruel; the father was the silent one who allowed the bad boys to overcome the life of his daughters.   Martin Luther King said, “The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty of the bad people, but the silence of that by the good people.”  My uncle was the ultimate tragedy in this story, because his silence led to his daughter's early death.  The ultimate tragedy was not the oppression and cruelty of the boyfriends, but the silence of the father.  The young men would have shown him respect but no, his silence was a sign he didn’t care. Evil came to roost at his doorstep. 
  Are you silent in life when evil comes your way?  Do you stand up when you see injustice?   Are you the silent one in your community when we see bad things happening? Do we make an effort to do something, or do we allow evil to reign because we are too afraid. Do not allow bad and cruel people to oppress others because sooner or later they will oppress you.