*This post contains gifted products*
It’s about time but I’ve got to get this obligatory post out so I don’t need to go here again. The social media and influencer world got flipped upside down recently, with Blackout Tuesday (as a result of George Floyd’s murder) being the catalyst. I’ll start by saying that I didn’t feel any way towards those that did and didn’t participate in it, because real action talks. If you were really down for the cause, I would have known long before all this.
I’m in a unique position in that I don’t really do the influencer thing, but my wife is deep in it. I have been blogging for over 10 years now and worked on the outreach side for nearly as long. All of that has taught me a lot about how marginalised groups always end up having their voices drowned out even further, even in a forward-thinking industry like this.
Fundamentally, there are barriers that black influencers have to overcome or bypass in order to be considered for the same opportunities as their white counterparts. Having to explain other people’s privileges to them – particularly when they want to argue against them – is tiring, so I’ll allow people to unpack this themselves.
In the week when Blackout Tuesday happened, a lot of white influencers were fearful of saying the ‘wrong thing’ when trying to show solidarity to their black counterparts, and were constantly embarrassing themselves in the process. It’s to be expected when you’re forcing an issue on individuals that otherwise would never have had to consider it before, as it actually benefits them to ignore it completely.
While this anxiety was driving white influencers crazy, so much so that loads stopped posting altogether, they have no idea that brands – including at least one high street one that I’m aware of – were offering black influencers paid opportunities, on the condition that they didn’t mention Black Lives Matter or anything to do with the inescapable conversation in their captions.
They are paying black people to shut up about black issues. They’re acting as though we have a choice in being ignorant to it like they can.
Growing up black and British in a suburb of Nottingham wasn’t too bad, if I ignore the bits where:
- “Go away wogs” was graffitied on my new home’s fence (age 3)
- Anti-South Asian racism was normalised (9-11)
- I first heard that there “Ain’t no black in the Union Jack” (11)
- Getting pointed at and called an African in the middle of a Co-Op (12)
- A new teacher accused me of plagiarising my homework, because “I wasn’t in the top English class” when I was and I hadn’t copied anything (14)
- Racism on online gaming (14-15)
- Getting boxed in the face and called the n-word by three strangers (16)
- Having endless “Why can’t I say n****r?” conversations (15-17)
- Enduring plenty of “You look like [insert black celebrity]” (15-now)
- Pulled over for the police for no reason (17-now)
- Hearing pro-BNP/EDL/Brexit people raise their voice in my presence (17-now)
This is without all of the instances that white people literally wouldn’t understand as examples of ways that black people get undermined, disrespected and isolated through media/British culture/authority figures/systems that we cannot escape.
It’s crazy to me that white people can live their lives not having to worry about their whiteness, when my blackness was forced to be my identity when I was growing up. I was told that I was mixed race in my home, but the world told me my blackness comes with a lot of baggage.
We’re not welcome in a lot of spaces, even though our culture gets a first-class ticket.
This social media awakening about blackness is probably going to pass by next year. I hope that we see the same happen with Muslim people, disabled people and so many other marginalised groups too, but my experience has taught me not to expect much to fundamentally change for a long time. It’s going to take generations to undo the biases and discrimination that we all live with, so I just have to be thankful that we had our moment.
