The land of the blog posts
This post is not my attempt to educate you on anything related to BLM or anti-racism or anything like that. I am incredibly far from an authoritative subject on any of these topics, and there’s far better content out there. It would be a very white person move of me to suddenly pretend to know everything, now that I am learning some things, but I will try my very best to refrain from doing that.
This post is a story of how I got to where I am currently, and what I am doing to continue moving forward. If there is content in here that inspires you or provides a useful resource, that’s great. Let me continue to emphasize that I am not an educator on these topics, but if I can help you craft a better Google search or something, that’s a perfectly acceptable outcome.
I was very aware that key systems of society (education, housing, healthcare, law enforcement, etc.) were fundamentally not designed to support BIPOC. I was a strong advocate for affirmative action because I believed it was ridiculous to assume the playing field was even for everyone, and there were clearly disadvantaged communities that could benefit from these opportunities. Further, I did think most white people were racist, in the sense that we all live largely segregated lives and have assorted unconscious biases that we don’t fully examine. What has been eye opening for me as of late is my realization that I am part of the problem.
What I had been failing to examine was how little I actually knew. I had this idea that other people were worse than me, and I never bothered to take a hard look at myself. A work colleague shared a story where she explained that her son’s school asked her if she was educated and would be able to help her son with schoolwork. My CEO has talked on other interviews about how when he got stopped for speeding, he made the mistake of getting out of the car and had his vehicle searched for drugs as a result. I was living in a fantasy world where I thought racism happened to Black people in stories on news feeds, instead of realizing that these things happen to every Black person. My own segregated life really hit home in these moments.
Not to be too cute, but there are three main things I am doing now that I think have been valuable.
I’ve been approaching this part from a couple of different angles. Also to be honest this step feels like cheating because I’m a nerd who loves school. I have been trying to diversify my feeds to include content from BIPOC. I still have a pretty stringent view of the purpose of Instagram in my life, but I have added a few voices to my feed that resonate with this view still. Like 99% of white people who realized the BLM movement was a wake up call for them, I am reading White Fragility. I’m not sure I think this is the best book, but it will be the first book. A super easy win for me has been to watch Black content on streaming services, so I’m currently about to start season 3 of Dear White People. There are a lot of documentaries I want to watch too, but I struggle generally to find time to watch that much TV. For example I still have not watched Hamilton. I generally pay attention to the news anyways, but I have been feeling extra vigilant in keeping up with relevant stories.
I am a reformed petition non-believer. When I started signing petitions in the early days of the BLM movement, I was pretty sure I was just checking some performative allyship box. I figured there was no downside, but besides helping to draw media attention (which didn’t always seem to work), I didn’t really know how effective large-scale petitions really were. I had more faith in local ones because of the concentration of political pressure, but those types are not easy to find. Well, I am singing a different tune these days. Besides Ahmaud Arbery, it seems like the petition for Elijah McClain actually had a real effect too. So that’s pretty cool because this is literally insanely easy. I try to track big ones going around on Twitter but I also peruse change.org.
Donating is pretty tricky in my opinion because it’s not always obvious the best places to put your money. I will say it also feels like a very white person solution to just throw money at something but I try to remain optimistic that it is helpful. My work is matching a campaign that has a couple of different organizations in it (Black Lives Matter Global Network, NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Innocence Project, and Race Forward) so I like that option because it’s double money. I also think smaller, grassroots style orgs are good options because less of the money needs to go to overhead things and more of it goes directly to the actual people that need it. Through a mutual friend, I learned about a group of organizers who raise money to buy menstrual supplies for BLM protestors and activists. This is my current favorite option because it feels tangible. Small donations can have a big impact, and there’s a very clear purpose for your money.
As sort of a side note, I initially felt confused about the idea of paying BIPOC for educational content they discuss in social media. I get a lot of educational content on Twitter so I did not really understand this idea. In very white person fashion, it was not until I connected it to my own life that I got it. At my previous job, I felt very frustrated that not only was I constantly being asked to explain the problems with women in my division, I also kept getting put on the spot to offer solutions. I thought to myself "This is not my job, pay someone who does this for a living!" Well, that is exactly what is happening with BIPOC who take the time to not only explain what the problem is but also provide concrete ideas on how to fix it. It is not their job to continually relive traumas so white readers like me might actually learn something useful to suck less. So yea I have realized how wrong I was and I am trying to correct for this mistake now.
These things describe where I am now, but I know they will continue to evolve and grow as the movement goes on. One of my overarching goals is to try to learn how to be uncomfortable. There is now and will continue to be a lot of discomfort as I start to grasp the role I specifically play in upholding systems of oppression for BIPOC, and as I start to understand what it would mean for me when those systems are dismantled. No pain no gain, as they say.