One can hardly argue against the wisdom of seeking ways to come together to solve the challenges that everyone is facing. The problem comes when some people are told that either their problems aren’t really real, that they don’t matter, or that they themselves have caused them. There would be no need for movements like #BlackLivesMatter or #MeToo if the problems those movements reflect were being addressed on an individual basis in a satisfactory manner. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the people who least like social justice movements are the ones who have created the need for them.
I completely agree that there are places where the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction (as in earring appropriation) and I also agree that everyone’s challenges count. But a white woman facing cancer is in most instances not also coming up against some kind of institutional barrier as well as a personal one.
“Black women are three to four times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “It’s basically a public health and human rights emergency because it’s been estimated that a significant portion of these deaths could be prevented,” said Dr. Ana Langer, director of the Women and Health Initiative at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston.”
So, to say that we shouldn’t take a look at the ways that primarily subconscious racial bias is literally killing black women is to condemn them to continued death just because we don’t want to admit that they do indeed have a different kind of experience within our society. I don’t find that acceptable, and I know that they sure as hell don’t!
If we want people to stop going overboard, we need to take their concerns seriously the first time because it is feeling hopeless and like nobody gives a flip about your pervasive negative experiences that drives these extremes. People who have traditionally had power in the society need to take greater responsibility for the ways that they have intentionally or unintentionally misused that position to the detriment of those around them with less power. Until all the vehement pushback against that lets up and those people actually take on the welfare of their fellow citizens as important, I don’t see the need for social advocacy letting up.
