This is a must-read from Awesomely Luvvie (Luvvie Ajayi) from last December about the very predictable response that can be expected when there's an egregious example of injustice, violence, violation of black people.
It begins with
Stage 1: Another Black person is beat up, arrested or killed senselessly
and then
Stage 2: People are enraged by the injustice
which is the appropriate and deserved response.
but then.... well, follow me over Rand Paul's hair. And yes, there will be finger-wagging at our community. So stay on this side of Rand Paul's hair if you don't want to see that.
Really, I cannot do the rest of the article justice in this diary.It deserves to be read. In a nutshell, the article details how the victim gets blamed and 'otherized', how "whataboutists" deflect with what they deem more serious problems, #NotAllWhitePeople happens, and people become so very very troubled that the response is less than 100% Gandhi.
This is a predictable and universally followed pattern. And it is disgusting.
We should be stuck on Stage 2 until we can jump directly to Stage 10:
Stage 10: We get to work on dismantling the system brick-by-brick
We organize. We march. We find out what we need to do next to make change happen because we’re sick of this shit and we need it to stop. Because when stage 1 happens again, we’re left in the same rage cycle, left to figure out why the hell we’re still fighting for basic human rights.
But we’ve been fighting for a while. We’ve been fighting the same battles for so long.
Stages 3-9 should be completely eliminated, and we should not be goddamned facilitating or participating in them.
And yet even here on the Great Orange Satan, we are, in fact, doing just that.
In the last 48 hours, I've seen all these "steps" detailed by Luvvie in diaries and comments here (and I'm being very terse to try to stay on the right side of copyright rules):
Stage 3.75: The “None of us were there” people
People will chime up to tell us that none of us were there and we don’t really know what could have happened. They’ll play “Devil’s Advocate” and tell us we need to understand that there are two sides to every story. EXCEPT ONE SIDE IS DEAD AND THAT’S THE SIDE THAT MATTERS MOST, DINGBAT!
Stage 5: Reminding us that “Not All White People”
As we rage about the system, the inhumane treatment of Black people that has been allowed, encouraged and state-sanctioned because of white privilege that has soaked the very fabric of the system, people push back to let us know that not all white people are racist.
Stage 5.5: #BlackLivesMatter? What About #AllLivesMatter?
We know that all lives matter. WE KNOW. But we have to say #BlackLivesMatter to remind people of our humanity, which is far too often forgotten. So for white people (or anyone who isn’t Black) to feel like this proclamation somehow diminishes THEIR humanity is to confirm that very self-centeredness that we’re fighting against.
Stage 7: People protest and are told to be calm
Stage 7.5: Calling protesters rioters
Stage 7.75: Quote MLK to call for peace
Because Martin Luther King Jr. has become the Patron Saint of Respectability and Pull Your Pants Up, folks are quick to quote his words on keeping peace and nonviolence and kumbaya. But they forget that MLK also said: “A riot is the language of the unheard.” In a country where our people are being killed with no consequence, not feeling heard is DEFINITELY a problem.
And of course...
Stage 8: You learn how the people you know really feel
During these times, people show who they are, whether in their silence (which speaks volumes) or in their words. You will either unfollow and unfriend racists, lifelong friends and people you thought you respected. OR you actually fall deeper in love with the people you know because they are with you, and they are being loud about it.
We need to not be contributing to this pattern of bullshit.
Just to be clear -- there are stages on this list that aren't bad things. The twitter hashtag, the "good side" of Stage 8 where you see people stand with you. I'm talking about everything else; the splainaways justifying the police, the distractions, the full-throated condemnations of the rioters that never stop to give more than a perfunctory remark about what they're rioting about, the white-guy-invoking-MLK-to-cluck-his-tongue-at-black-protestors. We need to not. fucking. do. that. Unless it's our sons and daughters being murdered, unless it's us who are afraid to walk down the street and be seen by a police officer, unless it's our loved ones being demonized in the media as "thugs", "criminals", and "looters", it's not. our. fucking. place.
Read Luvvie's article. Please. And then resolve to not follow the pattern. Don't participate. Don't be that guy. If you do these things, you are helping provide the oppressors cover. We can be better than that. Let's be better than that.