Towards liberation, not spectacle
The responses of non-Black people to incidents of racism and police brutality often leave a lot to be desired.
The brutal murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis Police officers has sparked local and global outrage against police brutality and racism. As with the murder of Ahmed Aubrey, shock and outrage over Floyd’s murder has involved non-Black people sharing videos of the incident, often claiming that this will raise awareness about the reality of racism and police brutality against Black people.
However, while often well-meaning, sharing videos of Black people getting murdered is not going to change anything. Shock and outrage from liberals occurs every time there is a major racist incident or scandal in the US or UK, but it is tiring and useless — as is sharing brutal videos to “raise awareness”. The shock at these incidents — often expressed through statements such as “I can’t believe a person can be shot for jogging while Black in 2020” (regarding Ahmed Aubrey’s murder) merely demonstrates the ignorance that white and other non-Black people have when it comes to understanding the role that racism (especially anti-Blackness) plays in our society.
If people had being paying any attention to Black voices over the last few years and decades (since racism apparently ended when Black people were supposedly given civil equality) then they would understand that white supremacy is still a fundamentally important principle on which our society is organised. Unfortunately, I can believe Black people are lynched in 2020. I can believe that Black people are brutalised and murdered by the police (around the world) in 2020. I can believe that the protesters were brutalised unlike the white fascist militias who protested against the lockdown. The shock and disbelief from white people that happens after major racist incidents like these is wholly unproductive, as a critique of the structures and systems which allow, encourage, and depend on racism to exist, is usually absent. Often, the shock and concern seems to simply be performative — a demonstration of people’s great moral virtue and concern for Black people.
Some may argue that sharing videos of police brutality and racism may not come from a place of ignorance of the persistence of racism or performative outrage — it may be a genuine attempt to raise awareness about these issues. But by 2020, it is worth questioning the effectiveness of this approach. Unless they have been living under a rock for the last decade, most people are aware of the prevalence of these incidents and issues. The problem is that people are either A) shocked and saddened by racist incidents, but understand them as being the product of rare, racist individuals that are remnants of an old system where racism existed (without acknowledging that it is still persistent) or B) aware that they happen, but are simply too ignorant or privileged to care.
Raising awareness of these issues is important, but the mass-sharing of videos depicting racist police brutality is just trauma porn — a pointless consumption of images of pain and suffering — pain which is suffered by Black people. These videos (often presented without content warnings) are often triggering for Black people — they represent the most harsh manifestation of the historic, universal anti-Black racism that is inescapable for us and our communities — murderous state violence. On top of this, George Floyd and Ahmed Aubrey have names and families and lived real lives that should be respected. As a friend once described, sharing videos of racist violence is like providing a carpool to a public lynching.
Black people have been screaming into the void for years, decades and centuries about white supremacy and police brutality, and about how anti-Black racism shapes our experiences in every area of life. Extensive work has been produced on the importance of racism in unequal global economic development and on the deep, wide persistence of racism in society today. As shown by the tiring cycle of renewed outrage every time a racist incident or scandal happens, people do not listen. Progress against racism has only been made through self-organised community struggle against racist groups, individuals, policies and states. White (and non-Black) allies have helped this struggle by using their positions of privilege to materially or institutionally support these struggles and by dismantling oppressive structures and systems which they benefit from and participate in. But “ally activism” in 2020 simply consists of non-Black people tweeting about an issue or sharing a video of an incident, patting themselves on the back for “raising awareness”, and going back to their day. This fails to put even the smallest dent into racism, white supremacy and police brutality.
For Black people though, when the social media outrage blows over, white supremacy and state violence will still exist. We will still be dehumanised. We will still be seen as violent, angry and stupid. We will still experience the fear and anxiety that comes with living in a society where you know that white (and non-Black) people and institutions look down on us & will discriminate, abuse, brutalise, and gaslight us and our communities. We will still have to put our free time & labour into educating other people about racism and mitigating the effects it has on our communities. Sharing videos of brutal, racist murder does not make dealing with any of this easier.
Non-Black people who are shocked and outraged by the scenes that they see, and who genuinely wish to see a world without racism, must understand that there is immense work to be done in dismantling anti-Blackness, white supremacy and state violence. It is not as simple as sharing a video and telling people that they should care. If people wish to see a society free of the racism which causes incidents like the murder of George Floyd, they should be asking themselves what they are actively doing to dismantle white supremacy and/or anti-Blackness in their own minds, families & friendship groups, workplaces and organisations (etc). Because these are systems which all white people (and many non-Black people too, with regards to anti-Blackness) unconsciously participate in and benefit from, at the expense of Black people, in every area and aspect of global society — in the courts, education, workplace, on TV, in sport, language, culture and the current and historical organisation of the global economy. White supremacy and anti-Blackness is persistent and global. In fact, they are important foundations of the world in which we live.
Raising awareness of these issues helps — people cannot do anything to help if they do not know about the real effects of racism, white supremacy & police brutality. But if your contribution to the anti-racist struggle consists only in you posting a video of a Black person being murdered by police, ask yourself whether you are actually helping to destroy white supremacy, or just contributing to the repetitive spectacle of Black suffering, where non-Black people participate in collective outrage against instances of brutal racism, consuming and sharing images of Black suffering without taking any real steps to consider or dismantle its root causes.
If white and other non-Black people actually want to see an end to anti-Black racism and police brutality, they should educate themselves about white supremacy & anti-Blackness, especially with regards to policing, prisons and the history and functioning of racial-capitalism & colonialism. They should actively interrogate their own position within a system which is to a large extent, based on the historical and structural oppression of Black people, challenge oppressive, racist structures where they have the power to, and actively uplift the voices of Black people struggling against white supremacy and state violence. Sharing videos of the brutal, racist murder of a Black person is not useful, respectful or productive and though well-meaning, tweeting a few times about racism will not dismantle the dominant white supremacist ideology that lead to the murders of George Floyd and Ahmed Aubrey, the Windrush scandal and the Grenfell Tower fire (etc).
Parallels can be drawn between the responses of non-Black people to anti-Black racism & police brutality and other societal responses to issues affecting certain groups or sections of society — like the responses to Grenfell, Windrush, global inequality and poverty, refugee crises and climate change (etc). We need to move away from short bursts of shock, outrage (often performative)and sadness when incidents like these happen — where suffering is a spectacle for those unaffected — towards responses where the anger, shock and outrage of people unaffected by an issue can be transformed into sustained, meaningful activity that supports those affected and consistently challenges the systems and conditions which produce these incidents and crises.
Perhaps it is a symptom of a neoliberal world where people are conditioned to be concerned only with themselves and their immediate interests and a time in which social media simultaneously provides entertainment, news and education (with the lines between these becoming increasingly blurred) whilst also acting as a place to build social capital. Regardless, people who are in a position of privilege (in whichever sense) in 2020, who see everything that is going on in the world (white supremacy & state violence; the ruling class’ disregard for the lives of working class people, POC, immigrants and disabled people; inaction on climate change and continuing struggles against colonialism in Palestine, West Papua, Kashmir and elsewhere) and still remain “apolitical” or only talk sporadically about these issues without doing anything to aid the fight against them where they can, are actively contributing to the oppression, suffering and violence that plagues our world. And if people genuinely do want to help fight injustice, then they must go beyond mere participation in the unproductive, repetitive spectacle of suffering that serves to hinder progress in the struggles taking place.
This is dedicated to George Floyd, Ahmed Aubrey, and the countless others who have died at the hands of white supremacy and state violence.
