Editorial | Black Lives Matter is not a trend
Illustration by RUPALI INGLE, Illustrator
After George Floyd died at the hands of police in May, a surge of social media posts filled our Instagram and Twitter timelines. His name reached the top of trending pages. Businesses were marking their solidarity with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. Once-silent voices began speaking out.
It’s been amazing to see such a large number of people sharing, for the first time, information on donations and petitions. But at the same time, to assume that this movement only just began is hurtful and ignorant to the individuals who've been fighting long before 2020.
Social media has brought an overwhelming amount of accessibility to these important issues. It has bridged the gap for our generation to instantly soak up information and dissect what’s going on in our country with a quick click of an Instagram infographic, news article and call-to-action from friends and peers. Now, people have no excuse to be apolitical. We all see the headlines. It’s up to us to examine our own actions.
The obscure side to this digital activism, however, is that social media is all about trends, whereas fighting for human rights is not. We cannot reduce decades and decades of work to one hashtag or hundreds of black squares. It’s not enough to just post an aestheticized graphic to fit your own social media “brand” and do nothing outside of the barriers of our phones to fight for change.
Social media has increasingly questioned the authenticity of its users, many of whom utilize Facetune-edited photos and idealistic filters – ultimately blurring reality into a curated perfection. Using apps for activism only highlights this more: When can we trust when the activism there isn’t just performative, when someone’s Black Lives Matter declarations are touched up by a snazzy Instagram filter or GIF?
When you’re re-posting a BLM message or infographic, take a step back, evaluate your motive and reflect on if what you’re doing is rooted in performative allyship or genuine investment in amplifying Black voices. Speaking out is good, but actions are even better. We can’t just be posting because it’s a trend or because we don’t want to be “out of the loop” for the sake of our own appearances. That only serves to create obstructive echo chambers that impede the spread of new, developing, essential information.
It’s safe to say we should find a middle ground in all of this. Everyone expresses themselves differently on social media, and it’s their right to do what they please with their public image. But what’s been fascinatingly clear is the downward slope in social media activism after BLM either stopped being “trendy,” stay-at-home orders were lifted, or people became preoccupied with school and work as the summer came to an end.
Racism doesn’t take breaks for a 15-hour course load, nor does it end for a 40-hour work week. For some people, their activity on social media may truly be their best method of expressing the shock and pain they’ve felt as a result of racial injustice. But what sustains a movement is turning outrage into action, not just letting it fade. It is not enough for white individuals to simply feel guilty for the pain the BIPOC community faces daily. We as a society absolutely have to understand the difference between sympathy and empathy.
By all means, please continue to spread information and news on what’s going on in our nation. The worst thing you could do is nothing at all. But this will be the first time activism takes a front-row seat in many lives – and social media can’t be both the start and end of that line.
All we’re saying is to think about what you post before you post it and truly live out your social media presence, not just project the idealized image you want to be seen as.