To not get the point of “Blackout Tuesday”?

[SachaStark]

Morning.

Just been on my Instagram, and it appears that a load of the (white) interior and beauty “influencers” I follow are posting an all-black square on their feed, and tagging it as BLM and Blackout Tuesday.

So, essentially, they’re going silent on their social media accounts all day, other than this image, to support the BLM movement.

I really don’t get it. Surely, this is not the time for silence? Surely, as white people with significant platforms, they should be USING their voices to amplify black voices to show solidarity?

AIBU to think that this is a poor show of support by social media influencers?

I did a black square and then added donation links and donated personally. It was the first time I felt like it was something I could do as I didn't know what was appropriate to share or not with everything going on but I knew I did want to help.

I have posted it. I grew up in a multicultural town, and I find it very saddening people are still struggling with racism in this day and age.

Rather than post a black square, use your voice to help platform black contributors

You can do both,
It's not about posting a black square and walking away. It's saying you're focusing your attention on this issue and not going to be posting your normal selfies/food/kids/whatever. Learning and raising awareness.

If black lives don't matter then no ALL lives don't matter. What is complicated????

It's not about posting a black square and walking away.

That's what I meant. Don't just post a black square.

People are talking about it so it's obviously raising awareness but these things tend to bring social media to a standstill for a few days before the next thing comes along and it disappears.

If you're going to post the black square don't tag it with #blacklivesmatter because people are using that hashtag to get information and it's annoying to see nothing but a black wall.

If people really cared, they'd have stopped things getting this far decades ago

As a society we've squandered our privilege in the same way lottery winners piss away their fortune and end up with a house that's falling down. Because rather than invest in it, they bought fast cars, foreign holidays and designer everything

Well said!

I absolutely agree that Black lives matter., as do Brown lives, White lives And any other colour lives. What has been in the USA is appalling. What I don’t agree with were the protesters in the UK during the COVID 19 crisis

A seriously bad take - straight off of facebook no doubt. Can you direct me to your thread when you complained about the hundreds and thousands of people at the Beach and Parks the last few weeks? Also why are you bringing up other races into this. It is not about them. Just for one day, it is about the oppression of Black people

I'm now seeing more posts from people who posted a black square earlier, clearly without fully understanding why...

*for some reason about half the posts on my social media have used the hashtag along side #blackouttuesday and when I clicked on the #blacklivesmatter I was faced with a wall of black squares.

I would say those are the ones that at virtue signalling as they clearly haven't been paying attention.*

So comment and educate them. They may be well intentioned and just not know. Sitting by and judging them for not "doing it right" but not having those conversations doesn't help anything

If you don't understand why people are doing black out Tuesday or you don't think it is helpful than you are part of the problem and need to educate yourselves.

Oh, I’ve educated myself plenty. Roughly three years of focusing my reading on own voices literature, both fiction and non-fiction, since my marriage to a black man, my DH. I wanted to make an effort to listen to his experiences of race and racism with intelligence, so I knew that I needed to inform myself properly. I’m only sorry that as a privileged white woman, it took me until then to educate myself properly on systemic racism and intersectionality.

Looking critically at the influencers who are just posting black tiles, and then shutting up for the day, particularly those who haven’t even linked to donation pages or petitions, or have actually said covert racist things very recently (like, last week recently), I just don’t see this Blackout Tuesday on social media to be a very helpful action.

For many of them, it actually seems to be performative allyism.

To be clear, I’m not talking about the original action which prompted this, i.e. the strike by black artists, because that does actually seem to be an important and provoking action.

Another poster linked to Moemotivate’s latest Instagram post previously in this thread, and she has some very important words in the caption of that post, which I personally think should be heard today.

Most people I see posting the black tiles have also been posting information, resources, facts, stories ect that all support and raise awareness to the Black Lives Matter movement- they were also posting all this stuff before George Floyd's murder. I think this may be the time to reevaluate who you follow if you aren't seeing many helpful posts about the issue. As a member of the BAME community I follow a lot of influencers who provide great educational resources in the subject include ways of helping. If all you see is black tiles but no informative posts it just means you aren't actively following the people who care and maybe should consider researching different types of people.

So comment and educate them. They may be well intentioned and just not know. Sitting by and judging them for not "doing it right" but not having those conversations doesn't help anything

I've not judged anyone, I was passing comment here about what I have seen, that all.

Within my friendship group there's been a lot of conversation about the movement today and in recent weeks, I hope this will continue, I plan to keep educating myself and sharing my findings.

I used black out Tuesday to find out what I can do to help, and to educate myself. I hope others have done the same, but if they didn't then many will have so it is not pointless. I couldn't afford to donate, but I did sign some petitions, links to which were all over Instagram. Yes the world is full of NHS rainbows, 'Be kind', and virtue signalling and narcissistic hypocrites, but that's life. I would rather people do the right things to look good than do bad things. There will always be people who disagree, but collective action is better than individual inaction right now.

My SM feeds were full of black squares but I also saw some really excellent and useful info and resources being linked to. I followed new accounts by black Instagrammers, donated to black lives matter, and read brilliant discussions online and via DM where I was educated. I used to think that not being racist was enough, but now I see it’s really not.

@Billyjoearmstrong I agree. Just another way for them to draw attention to themselves

That was the point, to hear out, educate and to bring to light the black history of inequality. Appears the people are doing the blackout to follow trend and not reposting information from black instagrammers

As an Irish woman married to an Italian- racism is not necessarily about colour.....

YABU.

They can use every other day from now until eternity to use their voices and platforms but taking one day out to blackout SM gets EVERYONES attention for the simple fact that it's not what everyone expects to see.

You're right. You just don't get it. You don't "get" how social media works.

@LadyWithLapdog

It’s to show solidarity. The few bands and charities I follow posted them and well done to them. I made a small donation to BLM. I feel that’s all I can do, apart from talking to my kids about it.

From all the things to be pissy about, you’ve chosen this.

why do you feel this is all you can do? why not call out friends/family if you hear them make racist comments, why not write to the police to question why black youths are more likely to be stop and searched, why not wrote to your local MP to insist more black history is taught in schools?

They are using their space to protest
I don’t see why you don’t get it

I’m now Mostly seeing people explaining they’ve deleted their black squares as it was misguided, anyone else ?

It's virtue signalling that's all. Look at me I'm so hurt I'm offering support. Have a black square.