Laying a good foundation
It has been very interesting to see the changes happening online since the death of George Floyd in the United States. His passing marked a shift in a larger conversation that has been going on for decades. How many more cops will murder black people before there is real change? Do black lives matter or are they just another commodity for a white majority?
I would like to take this opportunity to say black lives matter, they should have always mattered. This should never have been a ‘thing’. It’s a human rights issue, not a political one. Life should not be a commodity, and we should live in a world where human rights are accessible to all and not held by white gatekeepers in the West. This is not truly a free society if that is the case. Now, since so many of us seem to finally be able to agree on this, how do we keep the conversation going? This is not the first time this has happened. Black Lives Matter did not start overnight, it is a movement that has been working tirelessly for over 5 years to bring these injustices to light. After the 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman, the man who fatally shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in the previous year, the hashtag #blacklivesmatter started to get passed around online. People were started to take note and before we knew it, three radical black women got to work and started the movement to eradicate this modern injustice. For me, I caught wind of it about a year later after the shooting of Mike Brown in Ferguson and the subsequent riots. Even at that time the news was jarring. Black people were being shot for no reason and it didn’t matter how many people went to the streets; the media saw the protesters as criminals and looters and the silent majority kept calm and carried on.
So what? That was years ago.
Well imagine yourself six months from now. Will you still be standing up for this issue after the hashtag stops trending? How will you continue to stand up for a community you just declared your loyalty to on social media? How can this hurting community trust this commitment? It’s pretty clear that black people will keep dying and systemic racism will persist unless something is drastically done to change it.
Now, I don’t have the answer to that. That’s not my job. There are countless posts from people of colour openly discussing what they need from allies during this time, you should check those out for tips. I just have one more suggestion to add to the conversation that relates directly to personal social media feeds.
When following various social media pages, tailor what you would like to view so it reflects the diversity you would like to see. That doesn’t mean stop following your favourite cat blogs, but maybe find some cool cats of colour to add to that feed of yours. Adjusting the feed makes a difference. The algorithms learn what you connect to and engage with, so why don’t you make sure your politics are reflected in what you follow. If I was a betting man, I would say it will make a difference. For the moments when those with racial privilege goes unnoticed, it will be harder to ignore on platforms that are curated to reflect the vast amount of colour you want to see.
Social media echo chambers are a very real phenomena in today’s modern world. We can live our entire life consuming completely different information than our neighbours thanks to the power of social media and the internet. We have endless streams of information, so we actively curate our platforms to only display what we want to see. It’s become common practice, but what kind of effect can that have on our understanding of the world? If we only see one opinion, of course we would be upset to find out someone opposed that side.
If we continue to live with social media in our lives, we should be critical of how we create those spaces for ourselves. If we want to hear a diverse set of opinions, we should follow creators and makers that showcase that diversity. If you paint an entire room white don’t expect to see colour. Social media has become a critical feature of modern digital infrastructures, so let’s craft it into something we can be proud of. Neither race relations nor social media are going away any time soon.
So why not fix up your feeds to reflect what you would like to see?
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
