There’s a larger lesson to be learned from the mini fiasco that played out on social media during “Blackout Tuesday”
There’s a larger lesson to be learned from the mini fiasco that played out on social media platforms two weeks ago during “Blackout Tuesday.” Excessive posting of black squares meant to show alliance with Black Lives Matter activists ended up drowning out the very Black voices the campaign was designed to support.
Now that this truth has become evident, we’re in a rush to make it all better. For women in particular our instinct can be to smooth things over because, in the absence of real power, that’s what white women have traditionally resorted to doing. Much of the reflection happening, for both individuals and institutions, is inward-looking. We’re scrambling to reconsider everything from old social media posts to movies offered on platforms like HBO.
The ugly strands of racism woven through the suffrage movement and later-era feminism are particularly disquieting considering the cause had its roots in the abolitionist movement and began with multiracial support. Were it not for Frederick Douglass speaking in favor of women’s suffrage at the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention for women’s rights, the measure might never have made it into the convention’s Declaration of Sentiments.
From the woman who falsely accused Emmett Till of assaulting her, to the one who called the police on a birdwatcher in Central Park, to the 53% of us who voted to electwhite women are processing all the ways our own actions, and those taken in our name, literally endanger the lives of Black Americans. We must accept that the white male patriarchy has long provided refuge to white women, which makes it all the more important that we defy it now.
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