I passively observing a lot of the social movements in our country from a distance, not because I don’t care about them (I do!) but as a white man I’m very unsure of how to help. There are things that seem obvious to me from my perspective, but I don’t want to inject myself 1 because I realize my perspective could be wrong, and 2 at this point its just natural self preservation to avoid these topics as a white guy.
The main point I would want to offer some of the prominent social justice movements is: you can make a point of your can make a difference but its very hard to do both, I’ll elaborate:
From my perspective the goal of the BLM movement is to try and root out all the of systemic racism in this country – a lot of this racism is invisible to the average white person because they have never felt it directed towards them. So if the goal is to change these whites peoples mind and to show them the discrimination and get them on the same team to help end this discrimination then the messaging should be designed to changes these white peoples mind. A few concreate examples:
BLM = Black Lives Matter. This slogan is not going to be very effective in reaching the average white person (the person who’s mind we need to change). If you contrast this with:
BLAM = Black Lives Actually matter. The average white person would read this and say something like “well of course they do…. I’m confused”. At which point the conversation would be primed for success, they would be open to receive the message that BLM is trying to impart, instead of being back on their heals and in a defensive mode they would be open and (I think) much more easy to interact with. And in turn they would be much more willing to change their mind and or be shown the systemeic racism and the societal structures that are in place.
Obviously to a person of color this will be very frustrating, they have lived their whole lives under these systems and don’t want to be told how to protest. I’m fully aware of that and that’s why this topic is such a challenging one to bring up. But not bringing it up makes me feel like I’m standing on the sidelines of a family argument watching 2 people yell at each other – and I can clearly see both perspectives, and more than that I can see ok here is the argument person 1 could use to change person 2’s mind. I think its a lot like when you watch your spouse interact with their parents. Your spouse has years of built up interactions with their parents so a small comment can trigger a massive argument, which to you as someone who only has a few interactions with their parents seems totally silly. It’s not until you comprehend that this is the 5000 time their parent has made this annoying comment that you can fully grasp why they are getting so angry haha
Oppressed people have lifetimes, generations even, of built up interactions which can be triggering to them. That is 100% understandable, and justified. It’s just as someone who hasn’t lived under that lifetime of oppression, and someone who grew up as apart of the group of people that have historically done the oppressing – its very easy for me to see the pit falls of trying to change this groups mind. And i’m not saying we should try to manipulate the average white person – I’m saying there is messaging that would be effective at reaching the average white person – and I wish that messaging would rise to the surface because 10 or 15 years of progress could be made in 1 or 2 years.