Tweeting for Racial Justice: Millennials Take to Organizing Online

Stereotypes of millennials are being turned on their head as racial justice conversations are now taking place in a new arena: Twitter. The Internet has recently provided young activists of colour a platform from which to amplify conversations around appropriation, accountability, and allyship. 

{Young}ist contributor Suey Park is one such online activist, and has started the ironic hashtag #POC4culturalenrichment in order to facilitate a dialogue around harmful constructions of white allyship and the unequal sharing of knowledge and resources between whites and POC in the academy and elsewhere. Park’s hashtag - which went viral - is just one in a string of conversations that networks of women of colour like herself, and Black women in particular, have cultivated on social media. 

In her own organizing work, Park has been told that she focuses too much on a message of critique instead of educating and supporting allies. She disagrees with this analysis, noting that it is problematic to center the needs of white allies in racial justice organizing. It’s not about them.

“The problem with this conceptualization of allyship is that the person of color has to give up survival goals […] to shift into educating white allies. This limits allyship to being based around self-improvement of white people, rather than actually supporting a radically transformative agenda.”  

Park created the hashtag in part to counter these ideas and to speak out against the appropriation of the struggles of POC by self-proclaimed allies in organizing circles and in higher education. 

“In higher education, people of color are used as tokens and educators for the cultural enrichment of their white peers. Researchers have shown that white students benefit more from people of color being in their courses than those students themselves,” said Park.  

In using Twitter to speak back to racialized power dynamics, in school and elsewhere, Park and others are making social media work for them where they would not have a voice otherwise. 

“Twitter allows us to capture racism and other-isms in 140 characters or less […] it is a great medium for people like me who otherwise have to fight to be heard. Like #solidarityisforwhitewomen, #POC4culturalenrichment points out the limited capacity in which people of color have a voice. We are used as diversity sprinkles and unique perspectives to add to an otherwise whitewashed agenda.” 

“In a supposedly post-[racial] world, it becomes increasingly [important] to hold people, especially educators in positions of power, accountable for their words and underlying biases,” she said. 

{Young}ist has aggregated the best of the conversation for you:

The overlap between #POC4culturalenrichment, #diversityinsff & #solidarityisforwhitewomen…same problems, different people.

— Mikki Kendall (@Karnythia) September 8, 2013

When it’s more inappropriate to call out racism than to be racist. #POC4culturalenrichment

— Suey Park (@suey_park) September 8, 2013

When you’re expected to educate for free, but everyone else wants to give Tim Wise 500 bucks. #POC4culturalenrichment

— Cassie (@mahougirlz) September 8, 2013

When white people think they create access for you and take no responsibility for creating an exclusive system. #POC4culturalenrichment

— Suey Park (@suey_park) September 8, 2013

when diversity means more blk/brown faces on a brochure but not more blk/brown people with authority & resources. #poc4culturalenrichment

— RVCBard (@RVCBard) September 8, 2013

When we are told to excel in institutions that systematically defund our already “elective” identity studies #POC4culturalenrichment

— kirin_rosemary (@kirin_rosemary) September 8, 2013

When you support drone strikes on Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, but wouldn’t where to find them on a map. #POC4culturalenrichment

— Rania Khalek (@RaniaKhalek) September 8, 2013

When you think about racism differently after Louis CK makes a joke on a late night show, but POC BEEN SAYING same #POC4culturalenrichment

— Royce (@Seven_Duece) September 8, 2013

When “progressive” media outlets call themselves “progressive” but don’t diversity their fuckin’ staff. #POC4culturalenrichment

— Adam Hudson (@adamhudson5) September 8, 2013

When ppl want ally cookies for being decent human beings #POC4culturalenrichment

— Native Sista (@JustaNativeSis) September 8, 2013

#BlackTwitter —-> @DaniParadis: When @BuzzFeed treats your social media use like some strange bizarre club #POC4culturalenrichment

— April Davis (@April_Davis) September 8, 2013

When most prominent show on radio network you work for sends email asking you to read a voiceover in a Latina accent #POC4culturalenrichment

— Aura Bogado (@aurabogado) September 9, 2013

Hashtags like #DiversityInSFF and #POC4culturalenrichment exist because white folks still don’t get it.

— Joyce Chng (JDamask) (@jolantru) September 8, 2013

Follow Muna on Twitter @Muna_Mire.