Black lives matter. Colin Kaepernick. LGBT rights. #yesallwomen All have created controversy and rifts in our nation, and none of them should have ruffled a single feather. Sorry, baseball – the national pastime has become “taking offense,” which is a massive shame because of one simple but always-overlooked fact.
It’s not about you.
We’ve all grown up being told that we should stand up for our opinions and that free speech means that you should always speak out whenever you have one. But those sentiments are interrupting and fragmenting our shared values and shared humanity. On 95% of protests, movements, and hashtags you encounter, your reaction shouldn’t be visceral and your opinion shouldn’t be resolute. Because, again:
It’s not about you.
Like the song goes, I’ll start with the man in the mirror, beginning with a couple stories. I first came to understand the “it’s not about you” with a hashtag campaign a few years ago called #yesallwomen, in which women around the world reacted to a video of a fellow woman walking around a city receiving an inordinate amount of catcalling, whistling, and predatory/harassing behavior. For days on social media, women wrote using that hashtag. And as a ~35-year old white man seeing it through my eyes, I wasn’t having it.
“That’s creative editing,” I thought at first. Then, “maybe on this particular day, but how many days did they have to shoot to get all that footage.” Bringing it ever-more personal, I thought about myself. Did this mean I had to be more reserved in saying something nice after a woman got a haircut or wore a new sweater? How was I supposed to flirt if now flirting was seen as aggression? I saw it all through the lens of someone shy and awkward around women, someone who was already skittish about innocently complimenting a female coworker or neighbor for fear of it seeming untoward, someone who for 20 years had been struggling to finally hit “send” on a text or finish dialing that last digit in a phone number when calling a woman for a date.
Ultimately my angst could be summarized in two phrases. “How am I supposed to approach a woman if approaching a woman is now considered wrong?” and “hey, not all men who approach women are jerks!” And that was really the issue. At no point was the hashtag about “all men.” It was “yes all women.”
It wasn’t about me.
Had #yesallwomen been about “yes all women have flirted from time to time with a guy who then chickened out asking for a real date and instead invited her to hang out with a large group of friends, then like an idiot sat a few seats away from her and only interacted through a kind of weak, awkward hug at the end of the night only to wait a few weeks before summoning the courage to try this ill-fated charade again” then I’d have had every right to take personal offense. But it was about all women having been the victims of overly-assertive, unwanted advances. It was about my sister, my friends, my mother back when, my potential daughters in the future. But instead of empathizing with them, people I cared about who were directly affected, I immediately reacted by trying to make it about me. And I was wrong.
More recently, and even more embarrassingly, I noticed this again during the Stanford swimmer rape situation as it swept social media. Naturally, and importantly, I didn’t take his side, of course. But as the anti-Stanford-swimmer, rape-culture sentiment consumed Facebook for a week, I – a white, middle class, male former swimmer and water polo player who went to a really good college – started to see the situation through the eyes most like mine, making it about me. And since I could never see myself directly in the situation that he – who was convicted of rape – put himself in, I could only see it through mine (again, the guy too timid to put his hand on the small of a date’s back). As my mind wandered to what it would be like if I were in a related situation, I had to snap out of it – I’m not a purveyor of rape culture and I would never come close to a situation like that one, so the backlash wasn’t about “men who swim a little bit and went to good schools.” It was about one particular man who was clearly wrong, and about the millions of women who have to vigilantly watch their drinks lest they be drugged and who are implored to never walk alone lest they be attacked.
Now, let me be clear on that – I never for a second considered defending him personally. But when the issue – rightfully – led to a groundswell of feminist sentiment, my nature turned toward defensiveness. My instincts wanted to make it about me, and my conscious mind had to take over to recognize how ridiculous that was. Again:
It wasn’t about me.
And my point with those stories isn’t to showcase that my first reaction to social causes tends to be kind of selfish and often very terrible. It’s to highlight the awakening that I’ve had to have a few times and will continue to have to revisit: I know that when I’m faced with protests, outcries, and movements, there’s a large part of my human nature that tends to look for the “side” of the story that is most like me. And I think we’re all like that. But in order to be better citizens and better neighbors, we have to remove ourselves from those issues that we’re not directly a part of. We have to remember:
It’s not about you.
Which brings me to the causes of the day. Unless you’re: 1) black or 2) a police officer, #blacklivesmatter isn’t directly about you. Just like I had to recognize that “yes all women” didn’t mean “yes all men,” we all have to recognize that “black lives matter” doesn’t mean that white lives, blue lives, or any other lives don’t matter. It means exactly what it says – too often in cases like police brutality or voting rights, there can be a clear perception that, to many in positions of power, black lives either don’t matter or don’t matter as much as others. And that’s it. It doesn’t mean that “all policemen are racist” or “all white people are racist.” It doesn’t mean that most are, or that anything more than a small percentage of those groups are. So we don’t have to react defensively or try to yell louder that *ALL* lives matter. That’s not at issue. But what happens is that – like I’ve had to learn about myself – we see a movement and our first inclination is to see it through the eyes closest to ours. And if we’re white, or friends with a police officer, or maybe even just “not black,” it’s quite possible that our first reaction is to take a position: why do those lives matter more? (remember: no one is saying that…they’re just saying “black lives matter.” If I say “I’m hungry” it doesn’t mean that you’re not…) But policemen are mostly good! (which, again, isn’t a contradictory statement to “black lives matter.” To NWA’s “Fuck the Police”? Sure. But not to “black lives matter.”) Why are black lives getting special treatment? (um…the very fact that people feel they need to highlight this truth-that-should-be-self-evident as a cause means that they’re getting anything but special treatment)
Black Lives Matter isn’t about you. Its existence doesn’t mean that your life matters any less. Its existence
The reaction to Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling during the national anthem has been similar. Kaepernick was not protesting the military or the flag itself. He was drawing attention to the, to put it mildly, rocky relationship between the police and the black community. And no matter how much you value the cause, you cannot argue that he did an amazing job of highlighting it – sports and news media alike covered the story for months, in the middle of a presidential election and a busy sports calendar. In the spirit of John Carlos and Tommie Smith – whose anthem-based protest is widely admired now, nearly 50 years later – and of Jimi Hendrix – whose Woodstock version of the national anthem, like Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA, was indeed a protest even if we’ve now repurposed it as patriotic – Kaepernick used the most prominent symbols of the U.S.A. as his opportunity to essentially say “this country isn’t living up to its creed.”
Naturally, half of America revolted in horror. And that’s understandable. We’ve been taught that we need to have an opinion and that we must voice it, so when an issue hits we naturally find a quick way to see it through our own eyes. And if you’re like me – in the past 15 years I’ve been pulled over exactly once, exactly six years ago (it was Thanksgiving weekend) and although the cop and I agreed that he had me dead to rights on speeding, he just laughed at my joke (“hey I get competitive”) and not only gave me a warning but also flipped on his lights to help me cross back over the road to merge onto the highway instead of continue on the exit ramp I had pulled over upon) – it’s hard to viscerally find much hatred for the police. Or to identify with a millionaire quarterback or the black community. So we all find a lens through which to see the situation. And maybe we choose pro-police (keep in mind, though…Kaepernick wasn’t anti-police) or pro-military (which…he was nowhere near it) or pro-America (true it was an Olympic year, but he wasn’t anti-America either) and find a way to attack his actions. But remember:
It’s not about you.
Perhaps the most important reaction to nearly any trending cause on social media or any to any protest is a deep breath and a moment to recognize:
- It’s (probably) not about me.
- There are people – whom this is directly about – who care deeply and feel wronged by this.
- Before I react by seeing this through my own, probably-tangential worldview, I should pause and listen.
From my experience, listening and putting myself in the situation of those protesting/hashtagging tends to at the very least make me realize that my initial reaction was kind of silly, and almost always makes me realize that the proper response involves a good amount of empathy. When I do react angrily, it’s almost always because I tried to make a situation that wasn’t about me into one that was about me.
Now…some of these protests/movements/hashtags may be, at least somewhat, about you. I’ve been there. For example, another common social media buzzword has been “white privilege,” and I cannot deny that I’m white and at least somewhat privileged. And, in turn, I’m not immune to hearing that term and immediately wanting to defend myself (which…I probably did with that “at least somewhat” caveat just now). And I think I have a decent case! But the lesson holds: even if the issue involves me it’s not directly ABOUT me, at least not entirely. And here’s the (sinister, privileged) catch – it costs me nothing to listen. There’s a zero-percent change I liquidate my 401k and donate it to the United Negro College Fund. And no one is asking me to. I’ll let you in on a privileged, white, male, liberal secret: just listen and say things like “things are crazy,” “how did we ever let it get this way?” and “I hope we’ll see a change in our lifetime but I doubt it,” and maybe quote Bob Dylan, and you’ll have satisfied 99% of your “I’m on your side” / “I’m not a jerk” obligation. Even if you’re not sure you agree in the slightest!
Which means this: it costs you nothing to listen and to potentially empathize. Even if that empathy is fake, or just a placeholder for when you take the time to think about it. But it costs us plenty as a society when we take feminism and pit it against men, or when we take minority rights and turn it into a war on the police, the military, the flag, or Christmas. Nearly all protests and movements start with one common theme: people who feel that they have been treated unfairly are searching for a voice. Usually there’s good reason they feel that way. And even if they drift into hyperbole or create demands that are implausible, the core reasons for their outcry have merit. Merit that you very likely cannot see, because – again – the issue isn’t about you.
So take the “listen” part to heart. Because ultimately the overall lesson likely holds: it’s not about you, at least not only about you or directly about you. The people protesting/hashtagging tend to have a very valid reason for doing so, and it’s much more about them and what they’re lacking than about you and what you’re doing. The defensiveness you feel is natural, particularly in this world in which we’re encouraged to have an opinion about anything and everything. Your instincts tell you to take a perspective and that perspective will naturally be a viewpoint that’s directly through your eyes. But remember:
It’s not about you.
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