#ChallengeThis: Is it Slacktivism?
By Trish HoseinREAD THIS IF YOU POSTED A BLACK SQUARE OR PARTICIPATED IN #CHALLENGEACCEPTED WITHOUT KNOWING THE CHALLENGE ORIGIN OR FOLLOWING UP WITH ACTION
When my inbox was hit with copy and pasted invitations to post a colorless photo of myself in the name of female empowerment I was utterly confused. I did not understand how it was empowering, or challenging, or helpful.
I enjoy a viral challenge. The #SavageDanceChallenge, yes, I did it, I’m sorry. I would have done the #WAPchallenge if I had more stamina and flexibility (The split at the end are you kidding me?). These challenges aren’t pretending to be something they are not. There is no veil that they will help the world or humanity. They are fun, and they give us a shared experience. I appreciate that. But this one, #ChallengeAccepted, was a representation of an indistinct ideal. It was a symbol.
Symbols are important but they are deceiving. Symbols are exceptions that prove the rule. Black presidents are symbols. Black squares are symbols. Black and white Instagram selfies are symbols.
The problem with symbols is that they are both powerful and shallow at the same time.
A black president can convince a nation that it is post-racial. A black square can convince a person that they are an ally. A black and white selfie can convince a woman that she is a feminist. Symbols can give us a false sense of accomplishment while silencing the very voices they represent.
Visible symbols and performative acts, like the viral, yet vaguely purposed #BlackOutTuesday and #ChallengeAccepted trends, give us the illusion that we have gained “moral credentials” without going through the trouble of actually doing anything moral. Even worse, they make us less likely to act morally afterward. Psychologists call this phenomenon “self-licensing.” When we do one perceived “good” act we give ourselves permission to do a “bad” one - or, in this case, not act at all.
“I would have voted for Obama for a third term if I could,” Bradley Whitford’s character says to black protagonist Chris shortly before selling him like a slave.
The famous quote from Jordan Peele’s Get Out is a comical exaggeration of moral self-licensing, but there is truth behind it. A 2009 Stanford study on Obama voters showed that if a subject was given the opportunity to state that they voted for Barack Obama in the 2008 Presidential election, they were more likely to express views favoring white people and less likely to hire black candidates. A similar study showed that if given a chance to condemn sexist statements, a subject was more inclined to hire a male candidate over a female one.
I did not participate in either #BlackOutTuesday or #ChallengeAccepted, but I’m not saying you’re wrong if you did. You can both post symbols on social media and do the work of protesting and donating and making calls. It is just less likely that you will.
Still, I have friends who absolutely did and do. And even though I choose not to participate in the trendier versions of social media activism, if anyone could be suspected of performative activism, it would be me. By definition, performative activism is done to increase social capital rather than further a cause. My social media feeds are filled with social justice-related content, but if you don’t know me personally, there is no way you could tell one way or another if it were just for show.
I’m not vilifying performative activism. It is a useful tool. It’s most useful result is the normalization of ideas. While black squares got eviscerated on the internet for the hollowness of the symbol, it and other acts like it, have been a crucial part of the Black Lives Matter movement gaining greater public support than ever. Because performative activism is easier, by nature it is more widespread. This is important. But we must be careful that the benefits of performative activism outweighs it’s harm.
There is a dangerous assumption that if something is a positive act it has a net positive effect. A white woman helps her white woman friend get the open position at her office. She feels that she has empowered another woman, and therefore has done something positive. At the same time, she ignores a pile of applicants of which there are plenty of qualified women of color who do not run in her social circles. She is inadvertently upholding white supremacy, and white supremacy depends on it.
I have had conversations with white women friends about their problematic actions that they perceive to be positive. Often they feel victimized and become defensive, expecting to be praised for their well-intentioned acts even if those acts have a net negative effect.
Whatever the initial intention of #BlackOutTuesday was, by the time the day came, that intent had been co-opted, diluted, lost. In practice it was a wasted opportunity to educate or inform. Perhaps it still represented solidarity, but even then that solidarity was ambiguous (Does the black square mean you are for defunding the police? Does the black square mean that you believe in ending qualified immunity?).
Symbolic activism can create so much noise it drowns out the voices it is supposed to be amplifying. There is not a better example of this than when #BlackOutTuesday flooded the #BlackLiveMatter Instagram feed with squares, making it difficult to find information about BLM protests and other direct actions. There are conflicting accounts of the genesis of #ChallengeAccepted, but a popular theory is that it originated in Turkey as a way to raise awareness of Turkish femicide, and the black and white pictures were reminiscent of news photos of deceased women lost to violence.
This made much more sense to me - the specificity not only gave it more political impact but emotional impact too. Picturing each black and white photo of a friend in an obituary or next to a casket forces the viewer to live through an entire death in their minds. Some sources dispute the Turkish origins theory, but if it is in fact how it began, it would not be the first or last time white/western women appropriated a cause for their own benefit, sugar-coating it, watering it down and then swallowing it up.
Over the summer I thoroughly enjoyed watching comedian Yassir Lester point out the pitfalls of performative activism by trolling well meaning white people on the internet. He began with #FedorasForFreedom in which a fictional “Race Coalition” asked white allies to post a picture of themselves wearing fedoras as an act of solidarity with POC. He followed this with #RaiseYourVoiceNotYourBrows, calling on the same group to shave off their eyebrows “the idea being that eyebrows express anger and we need you to be vulnerable.”
Some people got the joke and participated anyway. Some participated in earnest. Others got angry because they neither understood nor cared to participate.
Lester later photoshopped a fake Jersey Mike’s statement, announcing the BLM (Bacon, Lettuce and ‘Mato) Sandwich, to which I died laughing only to be resurrected by the replies of people believing it.
His point: this is all so lazy. The lack of research, the lack of information, the lack of meaningful change. Cities paint streets with “Black Lives Matter” without reforming the police that violently patrol them. Brands issue statements supporting racial justice without altering the homogenous boardrooms that uphold white supremacy. The internet pats itself on the back after another day of virtue signaling and waits for the next hashtag.
When it comes along, we need to ask ourselves these questions:
Is this action net positive?
Just because something appears helpful or feels good, doesn’t mean it is helpful or good. For example, volunteering abroad may sound appealing in a white-saviory sort of way, but often free labor takes away paid jobs from community members.
Our actions to uplift one group should not marginalize an even more vulnerable group. Similarly, our activism should never overshadow the group it was originally intended to highlight. An expression of universal female empowerment (like DMing your friend to post a b&w pic because she is “beautiful, strong, and incredible” as the #ChallengeAccepted chain message read), is a net negative if doing so extinguishes, instead of fuels, a movement created by and for a specific segment of women.
How is this helpful?
If your only answer is that the action displays “solidarity,” ask yourself to do better. Take the time to research the origins of what you are participating in and how the community it is intended to serve would like you to do so.
Attention is the most precious resource of our time and we need to utilize it to educate and inform. The biggest flaw of the black square is that it did not share any information or direct action. Millions of eyes scrolling an empty void could have instead stumbled upon statistics, or inspiration or Black owned businesses.
What are my offline actions?
There are two quotes that help guide me when balancing seen and unseen action:
My college motto - “Esse Quam Videri” (“To be instead of seeming to be.”)
A verse I learned as a kid in Bible school - “When you give, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.” (Matthew 6:3)
My go-to rule: for every action you see, I do two that you don’t.
Symbols are dangerous when we rely on them. If we rely on them it means we are not paying attention to the actual needs of the communities we are hoping to uplift. If we rely on them, that means we have not been loud enough in our words and actions otherwise. The only way we will see change is if we are consumed enough with the fight for equity and equality, that it drips out of our pores and off of our tongues wherever we go and whoever we are with. There can be no mistake about where we stand or what we stand for. Anything less than that is just self-soothing.