I Laughed as Everyone Lost Their Shit

I admit to mostly hanging out online versus interacting — just observing is interesting. I joined the internet age in 1996 using it as tool to connect with more information.

The social media hoopla ignited without me.

I’ve only been on Facebook for about a year and I find the exercise to be tedious. Maybe if I had more friends…

Anyway.

Recently someone posted a link to Aime Harper’s post White Fragility and Joel Salatin’s ‘Good Food’ Framework: Daring to Critique The Mainstream Food and Sustainability Movement’s White Hero on the Facebook group ‘Regrarians’ with the either cunning or innocently phrased “Any thoughts on this…” I laughed.

The comments went on for days…hundreds of comments, comments on the comments, likes on the comments…and honestly most of the quibbling made me laugh so hard that I cried.

Why?

Because all the bickering, finger pointing, blocking, and other responses characterized the underlying premise of Harper’s post: White Fragility.

Because I don’t want anyone to make the same mistake as hundreds of others, first the definition of white fragility. Let’s have Robin DiAngelo the author of the scholarly article entitled White Fragility do the honor:

White people in North America live in a social environment that protects and insulates them from race-based stress. This insulated environment of racial protection builds white expectations for racial comfort while at the same time lowering the ability to tolerate racial stress, leading to what I refer to as White Fragility. White Fragility is a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. These moves include the outward display of emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium.

The sheer volume of banter cloaked in ‘let’s just focus on work not this social stuff’ revealed the gravity of the social constructs holding and withholding our society from realizing its fullest potential. In other words — this shit is holding us all back.

Then what?

No longer wanting to play in the Regrarian’s sandbox, the ‘let’s just focus on work not this social stuff’ folks moved on to build new sandboxes with new names, new rules, and feelings of good riddance.

Me?

Well, I’ll use best information from any of the sandboxes while continuing the conversation.

Peace.

Soirée-Leone

Read Steph’s take: “Intersections, Parallels, and Dynamics in Social Media”