Quarantine Diaries 04: Little Black Squares
It was June 2, 2020. I opened my eyes and immediately opened my phone, as I do on more mornings than I should. As I started to scroll through Instagram, I did a double-take—my feed was full of little black squares.
Some of the posts said "muted," "listening and learning," and, most commonly, #BlackoutTuesday. Through a haze of confusion, I started digging and learned that Blackout Tuesday was a collective social media action intended to center Black voices after the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor and support protests against racism and police brutality.
Social media was a big part of my full-time job at the time, so my first question was, how had people managed to organize this right under my nose? Little did I know, this was the first of many questions that would form in my mind over that week.
I kept scrolling.
I saw some of my friends posting little black squares.
I saw people passionately reprimanding others for not posting their little black squares the right way.
A few coworkers and acquaintances had posted little black squares despite their previous ambivalence toward social justice matters (or even mildly controversial issues), which I'd witnessed.
At first, the little black squares seemed harmless enough. This social media gesture was some people's first foray into publicly acknowledging what was keeping many of us awake at night.
But behind it, in some cases, was a sort of pressure to participate, to choose between appearing heartless and apathetic or just posting the stupid square.
Behind it, for many, was a genuine desire to show up for the Black community and add their name to the list of white people who care.
Behind it, overall, were results that turned out to be exactly what posting the square ultimately required of people: nothing.
What I remember most about June 2, 2020—outside of my initial deep confusion about my blacked-out feed—is the snowball effect it had on well-meaning regular folks, corporations, and celebrities. I remember the questions it eventually raised and the case study it turned into.
It was fodder for all of our reflections on performative allyship.
Blackout Tuesday fell on a random workday, a day when I also had a rare in-person meetup with the CEO.
He asked me what I made of it and whether our company should post a little black square. I surprised myself by saying that, while the action was a mostly empty show of solidarity in my eyes, I found that my thoughts—involuntarily and cautiously—shifted positively toward someone when I saw them post it.
I, like many others, wanted to believe that some tides were turning. I joined the chorus of people posting anti-racist reading material and stacks of books by Black authors, hoping against hope that the people who said they were listening, said they wanted to be a part of the change, actually would.
It was akin to a few of my friends agreeing that seeing a line of transgender flags at the front of their doctor's office would make them feel an odd type of comfort (because people who aren't transphobic typically aren't racist either—and that's a check you can take to the bank and cash with confidence). Seeing a little black square on someone's social media feed made them feel the slightest bit safer with that person.
At least, while scraping the bottom of the bare minimum barrel, they were trying not to be racist. And I can admit that I, perhaps naively, while living in Alpharetta, Georgia, being the only Black person working at my company, and being a woman in a leadership position that had met challenge solely because I'm a woman, I was constantly monitoring who was safe.
So many of us, without a shred of evidence that real internal work was being done, started doing the work for the "listening and learning" crowd in an attempt to take advantage of the moment. I don't fault us for wanting to help move things along any more than I fault those who posted a little black square with the best of intentions before realizing that it was a banal gesture, not a movement that makes any moves.
Blackout Tuesday brought me many questions—such as "Who is this helping?" and "Won't this quite literally blackout the critical messages that real activists and organizers are sending to push the real movement forward?"—but it answered only one. What does it mean to stand in solidarity in a meaningful way? I just knew the answer was, "Not this."
As far as the company's little black square, it never happened. Their social media accounts were run by one of the many Black people that Blackout Tuesday participants said they wanted to pause and listen to. And I was too tired to write a speech. I had seen too many raw videos of police violence and blatant racism to care that people might assume that the company didn't care.
Behind their expectation that we'd spin up a message about racial reconciliation, as some of our fellow Christian companies were doing, was an actual Black person whose marching shoes were starting to wear out at the sole.
If anyone asked, I was prepared to show them the face behind the social media accounts and share why holding myself together took priority over posting a little black square to perform corporate activism "in solidarity with" people like me. No one ever asked.
I learned a few lessons that day (and that week and that year), and I've tried not to keep track of the little black square posters' progress since. Still, a few things have been hard not to notice.
People will ask for book recommendations and never learn a thing.
People will post a black square "for Black lives" and then vote against Black interests.
People will post a black square, and then, as soon as I express something that makes them uncomfortable, they unfollow me on the very Instagram where they posted that black square and unsubscribe from this very blog you're reading right now (yes, it has happened more than once).
Every show isn't solidarity. Every declaration of allyship doesn't come with a side of action. Every social media moment isn't a social justice movement.
What advances a cause isn't always what's palatable to the masses. It's not copy and paste and go about your day. Genuine allyship will always cost something.
I'll never discourage humble efforts and small steps forward, but we always have to ask who those actions really serve. As for me, I won't soon forget the way Blackout Tuesday made me feel. Did we really have allies, or was it all an act? We thought if we really had allies, we had better hurry up and try to educate them and help them see us as humans worth fighting for before they change their minds!
Blackout Tuesday helped a lot of people recognize the difference between those who are doing their own work to make a real impact for a cause and those who want to look like they're sympathetic to a cause so they can continue on without scrutiny or guilt. As Jolynna Sinanan wrote in an article for The Conversation, "The black square allowed millions of people to engage with a politically charged issue without having to seem too political themselves."
I don't know where you were during The Great Instagram Blackout, as it's been called, but I hope you're further along in your journey now, whatever that journey was. I hope seeing a sea of black squares didn't convince you that the work is done or annoy you out of the movement.
I have not one bit of hope that Black lives started to matter to anyone just because they saw or posted a little black square, but I haven't lost hope as a whole.
I have hope in the ability of online movements to spark offline change. I have hope in some of humanity—Black and non-Black, religious and not religious, conservative and liberal, and anything in between—to still collectively recognize that something is wrong, even if they disagree on the exact means of fixing it.
And I have hope in the power of little things to teach us big lessons and give us a big push toward sincere activism that leaves empty performances behind—even those little black squares.