When someone complains about outrage culture I usually can guess they have the skin color of privilege.
Imagine if it’s exhausting to hear someone crying out in pain “outraged” , how much more exhausting it must be like to be the target of marginalization continually.
Instead of thinking everyone is entitled to their own opinions, and people should stop labeling your view as hateful or being “unkind” in disagreeing with you, ask yourself if it’s possible that your opinion causes others to not be able to live or work in safety. Perhaps the cost of the comfort you wish in having your point of view left alone, is causing someone’s oppression to go unchecked and unchallenged.
Perhaps your privilege causes you to idolize your comfort at the expense of the marginalized groups and it insulates you from being able to see the pain and damage of your positions and view. But how do we change that?
To be an ally to the marginalized does require a lot of work. The first step is to move past the need to feel comfortable or be validated as one of the good ones. We all have cultural prejudices we need deprogramming from. How can we see it more clearly?
Realize it goes beyond you. There is systemic oppression embeded in the structure and fabric of our society and until we are willing to listen to hard truths that highlight how we benefit from that, it’s hard to be part of the solution.
It’s important not to be a perfectionist and get upset if someone calls you out for getting it wrong when you are trying to be helpful. Don’t complain if you get called out for not getting it right.
Part of the problem is we’ve been so conditioned to see ourselves “above”. As the all knowing teachers and leaders.
We do not even recognize the blindspots that exist due to our white privilege. We sometimes don’t even recognize we’ve been given those positions. It would offend us to know it isn’t only our hard work that gets us places!
I watched as a white man tried to school my Asian boyfriend on what racism was when my bf called him out for his racism with women of color. He could not be corrected and that is a big part of the problem! White man had that “I can do no wrong, let me tell *you* what racism *really* is” attitude.
Nah. Sit down. Listen. If someone is telling you that you are getting it wrong listen and learn from others who have had lived experiences on this topic that your privilege ensures you will never have. It doesn’t mean you don’t have hardships or other discrimination of your own to deal with, but your skin color and race are not one of those reasons.
The voices of those who are marginalized gets to count more than *yours* on this subject. Their experience matters. Don’t let your fragility or ego get in the way of learning.
White people we need to let go of our need to be the teachers here. It’s time to learn and unlearn.
White people we need to let go of our need to look perfect on this one. We are going to get it wrong. Time to get over ourselves!
Say “thanks” that a marginalized group took the time to do the emotional labor of educating you when those conversations never get to be a safe space for the ones who are already oppressed.
We all have a lot of unlearning to do alongside the learning and the listening.
But being comfortable listening to the pain of others without dismissing it as “outrage culture” is critical.
We can’t tell people to just “move on”, from bringing attention to injustice until all are treated with equality.
You can never move forward with justice and love while being dismissive and turning a blind eye to others.
“Can the eye say to the hand, ‘I don’t need you!’?
…there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have *EQUAL* concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.
Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.” 1 Cor.12:21, 25-27.
Or as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. put it:
“In a real sense all life is inter-related. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be…
This is the inter-related structure of reality.”
