I’m gonna vent. I’ve grown weary and impatient on social media. A friend once asked when I became so angry, and I had to bite my tongue to stop myself from saying how are you not?
I say “Black Lives Matter.” They respond “All Lives Matter.”
Someone else says “Blue Lives Matter.” They respond “Amen!”
It’s… it’s… it’s almost like the problem is “Black.”
There’s a meme going around depicting some clueless white privileged yahoo saying “You ever notice how police don’t bother you if you don’t do anything illegal?”
And it’s true, unless you’re one of 600,000 or so perfectly innocent Black and Latino New Yorkers stopped and frisked in a single year just for walking in front of a suspicious cop. Just like “all lives matter” doesn’t cover all lives, “police don’t bother you” doesn’t cover all of you.
Posting of the “You ever notice…?” meme now gets an automatic disconnection from me on social media: no questions asked, no exceptions, BYE. Nothing you have to say is any longer of any interest to me. You’ve been advised.
“Stop using social media to argue politics!”
I get that one now and then. It’s comical how that only applies to one side. The other side can spread lies, ignorance, misinformation, disinformation, hate and fear, but I’M the one who’s out of line for standing up to it. GROW UP and stand up to the people spreading ignorance as enthusiastically as you stand up to those correcting their garbage.
And hey, maybe stop using Facebook to show how little you know about the world that exists outside your bubble. And stop letting unrepentant white nationalists wrapped in the flag dictate the acceptable way to show your contempt for bigotry.
You… you *do* have contempt for bigotry, don’t you? Or do you save your contempt for people who remind you bigotry still exists?
Yeah, I’m angry. Because it’s YEARS later and people are still acting like there’s two legitimate sides to topics like white supremacy, the Holocaust and whether it’s a good thing the North won the Civil War.
“Are you willing to lose friends over politics?” they ask me.
No. Absolutely not. White supremacy is not politics. The reality of the Holocaust and its impact on the worldwide Jewish population are not politics. Caging toddlers is not politics. I am really disappointed in people who think these are political differences.
I will not lose friends over politics. But when you speak, you are telling me who you are. I am simply responding reasonably to the information you’re providing.
Rafael Olmeda for SPJ Vice President 