Unfollowed: What to do when your “friends” unfollow you for supporting Black Lives Matter

by Brian Moniz

It has been over a week since George Floyd’s heartbreaking death at the hands of police brutality, and America is waking up and fighting back against corrupt police and systematic racism. We are all in the same boat — peacefully protesting, voicing our support on the Internet, giving donations, and standing side by side as Americans against racial injustice and a racist President. While all this is going on, you might notice that the more you voice your support for Black Lives Matter, the lower your friends list on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter is getting. Want to know what to do when someone you know unfollows you for supporting Black Lives Matter? The first and only thing you should do is go to your kitchen, pour yourself a glass of your favorite beer, wine, soda, or whatever you enjoy most, and toast to those individuals taking their toxic energy out of your life!

When someone unfollows you for standing up for justice, standing up for what is right, speaking out against racism, hate and intolerance, let them go! They are doing you a favor! In fact, they are doing you the best favor they possibly could, they are showing you their true colors and making the statement that they themselves are either:

Racist

…whether or not they even realize it. They fail to understand that you do not have to be wearing a white hood, spewing out the N word and burning crosses to be a racist.

Complicit

…and therefore dangerous because they refuse to speak out when they see evil right in front of their eyes, and they make the choice to be on the wrong side of history.

Ignorant

…and slept through history classes their whole life and do not see that we have seen this play out many times before, and more importantly do not want to educate themselves because their own life is fine just the way it is.

Privileged

…and dismissing this movement because it does not personally affect them, so they do not care if it affects other Americans they do not know. This also goes with the idea that they know racism is out there, and they have no problem with it because it keeps down so many others that it allows them to have more for themselves.

A hypocrite.

These are the same people who just one month ago were silent when protestors who brought guns to government buildings, used their cars to block hospital entrances and played loud music and honked their horns so loud that seniors and children in the hospitals couldn’t rest, and got in the faces of police and screamed (and spit) in their faces without masks, all to protest having to stay home during a life-threatening pandemic. To them, getting haircuts, their nails done, going bowling, and having public picnics are more important than human life.

You cannot avoid the topic of race here. There is no more room for “All Lives Matter” or “If they were not rioting and were more peaceful, I would listen to them.” Black people tried that! Your friends (or family) never want to listen!

Remember when Colin Kaepernick took a knee to peacefully protest police brutality? Trump called him a “son of a b***h” and demanded that he, Marshawn Lynch, and other NFL players be fired; and those same friends who unfollowed you were the ones who defended Trump’s “freedom of speech” over Kaepernick’s freedom to peacefully protest.

When LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, and other basketball superstars wore shirts during warm-ups that said, “I Can’t Breathe” to peacefully protest, your “anti-riot” friends cheered when Fox News’ Laura Ingram told them to just “shut up and dribble.”

When Lupita Nyong’o, Maxine Waters, Taraji P. Henson, and Spike Lee win awards and use their spotlight to fight for racial tolerance, peace, and stopping hate, your “anti-riot” friends told them to stop politicizing everything and just accept your award and get off the stage.

White Trump supporters stormed government buildings with handguns, AR-15’s, and hung nooses over trees with dummies of their political leader hanging from them, where were your “anti-riot” friends then? Over 100,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 and much of that is from Trump’s gross laziness and incompetence, but those “All Lives Matter” people never once protested against Trump, in fact they literally did the exact opposite.

Its only “peaceful protesting,” “freedom of speech” and “right to bear arms” from “patriotic Americans against the government” when its white people. When it is black people protesting, it suddenly changes tune and now it is “thugs, punks, criminals, radicals” and “violent rioting”. When the government is used against those people, suddenly the “patriots” who are always bragging about much they are for small government, are now for big government using military forces to step on the American people and their freedom of speech or right to protest.

When you ask these white “All Lives Matter” friends of yours why they love the 2nd Amendment, they say “the people have a right to stock up on guns to protect themselves from a radical corrupt government or a corrupt President overreaching and abusing their power!” We now have a radical corrupt president overreaching and abusing his power and these same 2nd Amendment “patriots” are cheering for the corrupt government using violence and force against the American people. If you are one of these people who has unfollowed someone because you were over their political posts, look in the mirror and ask yourself, are you sure you aren’t a racist? What other reason do you have to defend Trump? To defend police brutality? To defend black Americans getting shot and murdered by racist corrupt cops and saying they probably deserved it? Why do you see millions of peaceful protestors in the streets on the news fighting for racial equality and get uncomfortable? Why are you making the choice to be on the wrong side of history?

I ask anyone reading this who may have lost a friend or family member over your political posts and are sad about it, why are you sad? Is this really someone you need in your life? If they prove to you they are a lazy, privileged, uneducated, or clearly just a racist, why is that a loss that they cut themselves out of your life?

History is being made right now. We have seen this before, many, many, many times. I am a gay man and I would not have any rights today if it were not for black LGBTQ people rioting at Stonewall! Riots are necessary because they come when every peaceful route has been taken but no results have come from it. If you are more mad at some people rioting then you are about racist cops killing unarmed black people, then congratulations — you are what’s wrong with America, and it is that thinking that holds us down as a people and slows down progress for everyone.

Do not change who you are to please others who are on the wrong side of history. You cannot control their actions, all you can do is control your response, and they do not deserve one from you. Stay strong, stay resilient, stay peaceful, and stay safe!

If someone unfollows you, let them. You have nothing more to do after they click “unfriend/unfollow.” Sometimes the trash takes itself out.

BLACK LIVES MATTER.

About the Author:

Brian Moniz is from San Jose, Calif. He studied filmmaking and writing at San Jose State University from 2010–2013 and got his bachelor’s degree in Radio-TV-Film. Throughout his high school and college years, he worked as a music and movie journalist and critic. Having only recently come out of the closet himself in 2014, Brian enjoys writing about LGBTQ issues. His only regret when it comes to his sexuality is that he didn’t come out sooner.