This Washington Post extended editorial by Zack Linly is a biting, bracing discussion of his experience as a community organizer doing anti-racist work. What I liked about this is Linly’s pitch that folks who struggle for racial justice– particularly people of color– don’t need to achieve universal “white validation” for their efforts in order to move the ball (seems a timely metaphor). Given our recent discussions about social media and organizing for social change, I thought this discussion of anti-racist work and social media really compelling.

Two of our provocations questioned the “outrage machine” of social media and the ephemeral quality of viral memes– Linly takes this up in terms of the furious comments-sections debates that virtually every article or even surrounding race in America engenders. But what do these conversations achieve– whose minds do they change and what material gains do they win for anyone? Linly concludes that when people of color who fight racial injustice square off in the comments sections against “maybe not entirely oblivious white folks” they are in a lopsided debate. One side is coming from a position of genuine and deep frustration, and the other, Linly says, often comes from the all-too-internet phenomena of hypothetical one-upmanship and smug, anonymous, superiority. Real social change doesn’t need to convince “@Victimofreverseracism69” to change laws and policies regarding police brutality. It’s not activists’ job to educate random white folks about racial privilege via twitter. It’s a failed project from the get go.

Which of course is not to say that Linly argues twitter is a bad platform (full disclosure, I tweeted his article too). It’s just that it can be used strategically for social organizing, and it can be used for slacktivism or just inane conversations that don’t lead anywhere.

I also appreciated how Linly articulated the often troubling “centering” well-intentioned white allies do in online discussions (he cites “#Notallwhitefolks and #Idontseecolor). As a white anti-racist teacher and person, I found his discussion of white ally ship pretty spot on and he gives a good encapsulation of many of the common pitfalls white anti-racists fall into when working for racial justice.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/09/07/its-time-to-stop-talking-about-racism-with-white-people/?utm_term=.86e8160ff873