( I would encourage anyone who thinks that this Amplifying Melanated Voices challenge sounds good, to try it. You might be the only one doing it that week. But it really changed my outlook… my feed. Everything.)
Day one:
#AmplifyMelanatedVoices
I’m muted.
At least I am on Instagram, but see I process through writing and communication. I always have. So I thought I’d record my process and maybe by the end of the week, there’ll be something worth sharing here.
So if you aren’t familiar with the whole muting-your-instagram-and-amplifying-melanated-voices-thing … Two black women created and posed a challenge. Mute the white influencers, friends, and organizations you follow for a week. Listen to, reflect on, and amplify the voices remaining. Below is the start of this week, this journey, and my first day step-by-step for starting to hear the voices that need to be heard.
Step One: Mute Myself.
I did this by simply posting saying that I was muted, why, and linking to their feeds so that others could check it out for themselves. I created a highlight where I also shared my muted post, and where I will be sharing content posted by POC for the rest of the week.
Step Two: Mute White Influencers
This was eye opening. I went through who I follow, paying special attention to who I interact with least and who shows up the most. I wasn’t surprised by how many people I follow have the same color skin I do. I think I was more surprised by how few people of color I follow. I’m not even sure if that makes sense. I was also really excited about getting to ‘keep’, for lack of a better word, the POC I do follow, because I can honestly say that many of them fall into my top 50.
Step Three: Follow More POC
This was by far my favorite part of the day. Now at first, it felt a bit odd looking through tags based on skin color… But here’s the thing, you can’t read what they have to say if it never makes it into your feed. You can’t amplify their voices if you can’t hear them. And you can’t become more aware, more in touch, or fellowship with people if you don’t find a way to connect.
I started with a list of creators someone had posted and went from there. I wanted to be purposeful and mindful while I did this. I made sure that I was reading their bios and watching any highlights entitled ‘welcome’, ‘watch first’, etc. This helped me to find people who are sharing things that while sometimes hard to hear, are well written. I found artists whose work I love. I found some that didn’t resonate with me. All together today I probably spent two hours finding and following people of color.
I didn’t just go down every list I found of black content creators and follow them all. And here’s why. Maybe I’m right, maybe I’m wrong. I’ll let all of you decide for yourselves… I want these to become lasting connections. Not people that I follow for this week and then slowly unfollow because I no longer find them interesting, they don’t speak to me, or I just don’t vibe with them.
A while back I realized that my feed was full of stuff that I didn’t care about, didn’t like, didn’t find aesthetically pleasing, etc. Getting rid of that stuff was cathartic and has made Instagram a more meaningful and fun experience for me. I want this to add to that. I want these creators to have a home in my feed like my favorite white creators. And I think they will… they’re doing some really cool stuff.
Step Four: Start Listening.
Now we’re a week into this most recent battle. We have all been hearing from so many people about so much. So before I really delved further into the Instagram community, I wanted to check my privilege, to start doing the work. Listening, liking, sharing, amplifying, supporting online… It’s important and good work, but it’s nothing compared to looking into yourself and facing the biases and racism we all have inside us. It’s nothing compared to taking a stand in a public way, to facing the systemic racism that’s propping up our global and local societies.
I started by returning to an account I had followed, @iamrachelricketts. Her ‘Read FIRST’ highlight almost scared me off, but that’s part of this journey, confronting what is ugly and uncomfortable. Her website has an AMAZING anti-racism resource page. I spent an hour reading through and taking notes on the first 5 articles. It wasn’t easy reading and I’m not sure if anything said was new exactly, but it was being said differently. The first thing I read was called ‘Welcome to the Anti-Racism Movement-Here’s What You’ve Missed’. In some ways, the title alone was hard to swallow at first, but by the end of the article I felt guilty-as-hell, but ready to move forward.
Step five: Keep Working (You’ll notice each step is taking longer to read… it doesn’t get easier.)
With-in some of my preliminary listening, I had seen a few calls to action. Unemployed and Quarantined isn’t maybe the ideal personal position to be in when deciding to support a movement. But no excuses and also discontent breads changes?
I started by emailing my city commissioner, twice. Auto-replies don’t cut it in my book. Next I started looking for some local businesses owned by POC. I found an artist, whose stuff I loved and commissioned something. Next I got a list of groups I can donate to to further the most immediate movement… and I’m going to do some research and pick which two to send some money to.
Next I did some googling and then after several sold-out options, found a book about talking about race and racism, ordered it and it should be here in two days. Lastly I sat down and started writing this. This isn’t the end. The work I do tomorrow won’t be the end. When I unmute my Instagram account next Monday, it won’t be the end. This is life-long work. Work I started in my own ways a while back, but work that must be done outside of oneself.
*at Midnight before passing out for the night I posted my blackout to my story and blacked out my profile picture on instagram and facebook. But will continue to keep my feed muted and to post those voices that need to be heard to my story
Coffee & Conundrums 