OK, White people…

We’ve all just witnessed what happens when one black man is viciously attacked, dehumanised, stripped of every bit of dignity, judged, mocked, lynched… and ultimately murdered by racism. By the press, by the public, by a world that watched what was happening and did not act.

And we’re all devastated right?

When I say ‘we’ I’m not talking about all white people. I’m not including the huge wave of white folks who are inconceivably celebrating a brilliant man’s death, crowing over their spoils, and actively demonstrating their pride in their own hate with abandon. I’m talking to the white ‘we’ who have sat on our sofas and cried for Jason Arday and his family and are wondering what we missed to allow this to happen and what the fuck we do to stop this from happening again.

Because what a lot of you now see, maybe a little more clearly now than you did a few days ago, is something that was inevitable and that will happen again.

It already is happening. If you didn’t already know.

It was happening before, it’s ongoing, and it’s not slowing down. This one loss of life just happened to get a lot of publicity because of the vicious hateful media campaign that preceded it. But black and brown folks are dying due to racism all the time, right here, right now, and it’s getting worse. There is a white supremacist movement that is actively growing in our country, not just in size but also in confidence, and its belief in its rightness. We don’t just get to witness it in what happened to Arday over recent months but we are witnessing it just as violently in the reactions to all of the outcries following it.

Show me a single person who has made a post expressing their outrage who has not had to delete, report and restrict comments from racist fuckwits who feel 100% justified in spewing their vitriol in the comments.

They believe it is absolutely within their rights to do this. And if witnessing this has shocked you, then welcome to the reality that has been building for some time. It’s been building against other marginalised groups too, equally shocking, equally violent, and becoming equally normalised.

And I get how awful it feels. I get how facing down a wave of vitriol in your own comments threads can feel overwhelming. I get that seeing it happening to others can make it feel harder to speak yourself.

I’m not here to judge whether you’ve posted about it or not, or the flavour with which you shared your reaction, or how you managed whatever fallout did or didn’t come for you, because public displays of affectedness are not compulsory.

But if you’re NOT sitting at home looking at your black or brown loved ones and feeling abject terror about the prospect of them merely walking down the street, just in case one of these emboldened racist fuckwits decides they’re justified in stringing them up because the world has finally woken up to the glorious superiority of their whiteness, then I’m talking to you.

Figuring out what the fuck we can to start to fix all of this may feel like an impossible task but in this moment, on this issue, it’s on us, my white friends.

Black and brown folks can’t move the needle on this one. It’s on us.

So here is my own, personal guide to a few things that I am doing that maybe you could do too. Other options exist. This is just the G take. But it’s a start.

Inaction is not an option. We’ve seen that play out. Acting in the right way, for you, for the people around you, and for the moment matters though.

I’m a pacifist. Confrontation is not something I manage well, so I’m never going to recommend getting into direct confrontation with someone who is on their own special roll of hatred. All you’re likely to do if you do is make them feel even more justified, angry and emboldened. So think before you engage. Think about who else is on the comments thread. Would witnessing a debate be helpful here, or more harmful? Is genuine debate even possible here? Think before you act.

Remember that hate speech is a crime. You can report it if you witness it. I’ll pop a useful link in the comments in case you witness hate speech (what am I saying, it’s literally everywhere) and can identify the person saying it enough to report it to either the authorities or – if you’re feeling spicy – to their employer. That can be a fun way to spend an afternoon, and you don’t even have to engage with them personally at all. Screen grabs are your friend.

Call me a hippy at heart, but love can do an awful lot. There are two aspects to love I want to mention here.

The first is to use it to hold. You could reach out to the people you love who are being impacted by these events to help them feel seen, loved and maybe, if you’re lucky, a little less isolated. If you do, though, please do so with care. Other people’s concern can feel like a weight as well as a comfort when you’re in the deepest dark of processing personal and collective trauma, so if you offer love and care, do so without expectation of a response or need for acknowledgement.

Putting love out to the universe and humanity at large is also powerful. One of the things Carrie Grant will be talking about at Disrupticon is the act of silent protest and it’s a beautiful thing. It still counts. If all you have capacity for is love, then please give it. It counts.

But there is another side to love here. I’m not going to go deep in this perspective in this post but it has a place here.

People who react with violence are almost always in pain themselves. Now let me be clear, there is no excuse for the behaviour we are witnessing, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t understand that some of it stems from fear. When a person has been fed nothing but lies and us-vs-them fear-mongering by the press and the people holding power around them, it fuels a fire. When you’re afraid for yourself, your family and your future and someone hands you a scapegoat and a sense of community if you join their chorus, it can feel like the only option. And by considering that we can understand a little of how what we’re now seeing has come about.

This leads back to the non confrontational approach, and the wielding of love as a tool for progress. We will never convince someone who is in mid flow of hate and fear that their perspective is wrong. It will almost always escalate if we try. But if we can love on them enough that we can make them feel seen, heard and validated, it can sometimes open them up to being able to hear another perspective. It can open a door.

This one’s a tough one though. It requires a lot of resilience and the ability to stay solid and calm through whatever may get thrown, so choose this path carefully if you choose it at all. But it’s a powerful tool if you can use it well.

And finally, for now at least…

You will undoubtedly have people in your life who are not very well educated on what has happened here, and who may be inadvertently spreading misinformation, trying to find ‘the middle ground’, or saying things like ‘why can’t we all just be kind?’ without fully comprehending the impact of what they’re saying.

If you witness this, this is your moment! Learn enough about what has happened to Jason Arday that you can speak confidently, calmly and with love to people who are still learning. The majority of people, I would say, are in these middle areas. Which means not only do they have the potential to become better allies with better education but, sadly, they also have the potential to be turned into hateful bigots should they be exposed to those kinds of perspectives and justifications more loudly.

Don’t let that happen.

Bring light, knowledge and love to the people in the grey areas. Don’t let misinformation go unchallenged, but challenge it with love when you do.

Allyship is powerful. Let’s use it for good.

Now, before I sign off from this huge post, a final point.

I recognise that everything I write here comes from a white perspective. I am not an expert in allyship or racism, I’m just someone that always aims to learn to do better and to help others do the same. I’m very aware I am saying things in the post that probably sound meaningless and naive. But I did not look at my kids this morning and wonder whether they would be murdered if they dared walk down the street with their skin colour on show today. That privilege has afforded me the emotional resilience to act in my own ways already and to make this post in the hope it helps other white folks who want to do better to be able to do something too.

It’s imperfect, but it’s not nothing.

I am not going to ask my black and brown friends to sense-check this post before I share it because they are dealing with enough white fuckery right now and I take full responsibility for my own words and any fallout that comes from them.