Taking Ego out of Activism
Sarah Smith
On June 2, 2020, Blackout Tuesday, 28 million black squares were posted on Instagram, with captions like “blm” or a black fist emoji. At first, I was pleasantly surprised with how many of my friends and peers seemed to be getting behind the Black Lives Matter movement and were showing their support. That was until I saw one of my classmates, an avid Trumpie, “All Lives Matter” supporter, and leader of the school’s conservative club, post a black square. And therein lies the true meaning of Blackout Tuesday, as well as the meaning of the majority of today’s social media activism — an opportunity for us to turn on the stagelights and put on a performance so that we don’t get called out for being racist.
During the week-long period that protests and looting broke out in my town, nearly half of the stores and restaurants plastered “Black Lives Matter” signs onto their windows. Yet as soon as the looting came down, the signs came down with it. This happens for the exact same reason that many companies will change their online profile pictures to Pride flags during the month of June, yet continue to silently donate to anti-LGBT politicians and groups. In today’s era of faceless interaction, we have the ability to show people what we want them to see, and can hide behind a fabricated version we create of ourselves. As a result, when we decide to post something political, we have to question whether we genuinely care about what we are posting, or if we are just being social media activists out of fear of being called out, or because we want to hop on the trend.
And what makes performative activism so dangerous is that often, we don’t even realize we are doing it. Up until I learned and researched the meaning of performative activism this year, I would find myself posting thread after thread on topics like how to be antiracist, support the LGBT community, or fight rape culture. Now, whenever I see something political pop up on my feed that I want to repost, I have to ask myself whether I genuinely want the people who follow me to read and share this information, or if I want to repost it because that will say something about myself and help build an image of myself that I like. I am still working on becoming a better ally and taking myself and my ego out of my activism, and it might be something I have to work on for the rest of my life. However, if I ever want to be able to think of myself as a true ally or activist, that’s what it takes.
