A conversation on white silence and white privilege

Since George Floyd’s death on Monday, May 25, protests have erupted across the nation and social media has been saturated with content. A lot of that content has provided actionable ways to put money, time, energy and personal reflection toward the fight for Black lives, but many posts and gestures have also been deeply performative.

It might seem like it’s easy to get so lost in all the posts, tweets and story updates that who said what becomes a blur, but it’s quite the opposite. The sheer volume of people speaking up for Black lives has inadvertently drawn attention to those who have chosen to stay silent – and their silence is deafening. 

From my perspective as a white ally, I want to talk about the white silence, white privilege and performative allyship that I’ve observed in the past week.

If you use and consume social media on a regular basis, there is no excuse for not using your platform to speak up for Black lives. If you can tell your 1,000 Instagram followers when you’re “grabbing lunch with the girls!!!”, you can tell them about police brutality. So please spare me any arguments about how this “doesn’t belong” on social media.

The ability to mull over whether you should or shouldn’t speak up is inherently privileged. And if you decide not to, don’t call it “staying neutral” – all you’re doing is demonstrating that you had the choice to care about an issue that people’s lives depend on, and you chose not to. If you are silent, you are siding with the oppressor.

Let’s take that one step further. If you or your organization stayed silent for the better part of the week and only spoke or acted after mounting pressure from individuals or organizations around you, you’ve also been silent to a degree. If you sat and watched the conflict brew for days, fully aware of the gravity of the situation and only acted after people pushed and prodded at you to say something, your eventual outreach is ingenuine.

And even if you’ve been vocal all along but you’re in this fight for selfish reasons, you need to check yourself. White people shouldn’t feel like they need to prove that they’re “good allies” or “one of the good ones.” This fight is not about you and your virtues and your sympathy, it’s about action. If you’re only posting quotes and screenshots of donations you’ve made to have others pat you on the back or perceive you as good, you’re doing it wrong. You should show that you care about Black lives because you care about Black lives and want to raise awareness – not because caring makes you look good.

If being vocal on social media makes you uncomfortable, you have some internal work to do.

If standing up to both covert and overt racism in familial, personal and professional circles makes you uncomfortable, you have some internal work to do.

If you cannot say without hesitation that the police have blood on their hands, both in the murder of George Floyd and as an institution throughout American history, you have some internal work to do.

As a student and as a writer, I’d like to share a few segments of a tweet that I saw from Allison Scharmann, the Arts Chair at The Harvard Crimson: “If using your platform/position to speak out against state-sanctioned murder violates your personal code of ethics, I implore you to reconsider what exactly those ethics are. If you feel uncomfortable speaking out, consider why.”

“We are human beings first, always,” she writes. “Act before you are asked to.”

Discussions about Black lives, police brutality and the history of racism in this country are difficult, tense and emotional. They require us to connect to one another on a basic human level.

I can only hope that this week’s conversations, protests and outrage mark the beginning of some real change. While white silence has persisted for decades, Black people have fought tirelessly because their lives depend on it. This is not new, and this is not an isolated incident. It is a human rights issue, and it’s time to act.

If you’re not willing to place your humanity above everything else right now, for this fight, then when?

Odessa Stork serves as the copy chief for The Chronicle and is from Carpinteria, California. You can find her on twitter @_odesssa.