Je Suis… (Part 1)
This post was originally written the day after the Paris attacks-November 14, 2015. I am publishing it now as the precursor to a second piece in this series.
It’s an unfortunate reality of our world: Tragedies, violence, and destruction are often the only things powerful enough to catalyze us into conversations about what really matters. I’m sure that by now, anyone on social media has seen a flood of Paris-related posts. Some of them are as simple as re-filtered profile pictures, some are article shares calling for support, and some even use this as a way to call for greater social action in favor of a specific agenda. So often, these posts — regardless of the motivations behind them, and for various reasons — evolve into conversations that divide more than unite. I recently saw a post in my Facebook feed that made me additionally reflective.
“I hate how something happens. And Facebook makes some cool design for you to change your profile pic to a colored filter to show support. Sorry I know a lot of you might get offended but that’s not showing support. That’s just following the latest tragedy trend. Pathetic. Sorry if you get offended but that’s .. Not gonna make a difference on the world.”
While I acknowledge the spirit of where this person was coming from (I think they were coming from a place of “true change requires more than a change in profile picture”), this was an indication in a mentality that I found very dangerous. Their assumption that showing support should somehow exclusively be available to those who are taking extra steps to enact change is what I often see held across most of the people who speak out in this nature. I recognize that I’ve felt the same way about similar topics in the past, and typically that was driven by a personally-held assumption that most of the people showing what I considered to be ‘surface-level’ support just did so to look more socially aware than they really were — and who knows, perhaps some of those times I was right. I fell into the same trap as many others who consider themselves to be at least somewhat socially aware, which is to see other people finally seeming to pay attention to more than their iPhone and display a frustrated, knee-jerk reaction, remarking that their baby steps aren’t enough.
You see this shine through in posts like, “Yeah, but what about [insert another atrocity]?” Make no mistake, the vast majority of us do not dedicate nearly enough attention to social justice; but nullifying someone’s support for one cause by naming the other times they didn’t show support is the least constructive reaction. As I pointed out in a previous post, problems are not solved by naming other problems. In fact, doing so might be the single-most effective method for making excuses to do nothing throughout human history. You solve a problem by taking action to solve it.
What happens in the process of disqualifying others’ feelings, is that we shift the focus from the event or the people who are truly being affected and move it to ourselves — our beliefs, our biases, our interpretations. We forget that the various experiences that each of us have shape who we become, and the variance between these experiences can cause massive disconnects between how we each perceive the world around us. Setting aside this fact to focus on ourselves and our feelings is incredibly easy to do, which is why it happens so often.
What we forget in this process is that “not doing enough” by our own standards should not disqualify someone else’s ability to show support for a cause. I remember during those days & weeks right after 9/11 how great it felt to see other countries putting the American flag on display across their monuments, at their events, and in their media. I don’t ever remember being concerned with how much the people holding our flag really “meant it.” I never once thought to myself, “Yeah, but what are you really doing to help?” It just felt nice to know that people other than us cared. It was good to not feel alone. Statements of support & encouragement are often the most immediately available methods of comfort to give; yet too often giving these gifts is seen as lazy or shallow.
So, before jumping to conclusions about what peoples’ motivations are and what is an acceptable threshold of action is, try to remember that this isn’t about you. This is about the victims, their families & friends and how they feel. It’s about attention being brought to issues that really matter (and trust, there are enough out there to go around).
So, I’d like to leave you with one last thing — my hopes for these days ahead. I hope that we point fewer fingers. I hope that we make fewer snap judgements and accusations. I hope that we can stop recycling hate. I hope we start to care more about supporting victims than justifying our own opinions. But I mostly hope for some relief for those with heavy hearts. In times such as these, it’s important to recognize that a group of people died — they weren’t just Frenchmen, they were human beings. Fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, friends, and mentors are now gone because of prejudice and anger. They do not need more anger. They do not need more prejudice. They need love. They need support.
