June 2020

A recent series of murders of Black American men and women in the United States has reignited the Black Lives Matter (BLM) and anti-racism movements worldwide. This wave of protests has impacted me in a deep way. The outpour of grief and pain from the Black American community, burdened by a long history of racial injustice and violence has been so moving, it has forced me to really and truly check myself.

I guess I had always assumed that since I was no stranger to the struggles faced by visible minorities and people of colour,  I could automatically consider myself to be an anti-racist. I’m a Muslim woman with a long ‘foreign’ name and, especially when I wore the hijab, have been on the receiving end of my share of blatant and open discrimination. I’ve had those difficult conversations with people with hate in their eyes for me. I’ve had my resumé with my non-white name looked over in favour of less skilled, less coloured people – several times. I’ve been yelled at in elevators at work, called a terrorist, almost run over by a bunch of white guys while crossing an intersection in Ottawa when I was still in high school, and lived with the myriad micro-aggressions that people of colour often face on the day-to-day. Didn’t that make me an expert on all things racism? Didn’t the fact that I would always speak up, whenever I witnessed any form of discrimination or injustice, make me an ally? Or the fact that I was always willing to have those difficult conversations needed to learn and teach and share? Yes, to some extent it did, but when you really check yourself, check your privilege, check those habits you developed around institutionalized concept you didn’t bother fact-checking – the reality of the issues are not hard to see. It doesn’t matter how open-minded, socially conscious and brown you are – we all have old, engrained and learned biases that we need to examine and look at critically.

The flood of images, videos and deep-in-your-soul proclamations from the Black community this past few weeks has been captivating and loud and strong, brimming with pain and anger at the systematic and often indoctrinated racism that is killing Black men and women on what seems like a daily basis. Their message has been so reverberating, so extremely raw and real, that it made hard truths and realizations about my own privileged way of thinking impossible to ignore. The more I read, the more I learned, the more I realized how little I actually understood of the depth and magnitude of the hatred and racism that has seeped into the fabric of Western society. When you start to look closely at what ‘systematic racism’ means (instead of just using it as high level rhetoric) you start to unpack the layers of the long history of inequalities and violence against Black and coloured communities that has perpetuated Western society. This destruction of basic civil liberties seems to almost always manifest itself into bullets that land in the flesh of unarmed, young Black men and women. Perhaps worst of all, is the institutionalized racism in the form of unprecedented rates of incarceration, prison labour and  underfunded Black schools and communities that add insult to an ongoing injury. Reports of what can only be seen as modern day lynching reveals a glimpse of a society that is lost, in pain and chaos.

These thoughts have prompted me to take my time to unlearn. Dismantle and rebuild, so that I can be better at articulating, discussing and defending, and ultimately, amplifying the voice of Black communities. It’s the only way that we can collectively drown out the shrill of white supremacy. Two things that I’ve learned in the past few weeks, that I will share in two different posts are content exposure and unpacking white fragility:

*Exposure*

I never realized what a fucking vacuum my social media feeds were. Diverse in content, sure – I follow everything from comedians to interior designers, childhood nutritionists, hijabi fashionistas and Salt Bae – but the majority of it pretty damn white. Even the Muslims I followed were predominantly Arab or white converts. It wasn’t until I read a post about what it means to truly amplify Black voices that I realized how few Black artists, professionals and influencers (other than friends and community acquaintances) I actually followed. And none of this had even been on purpose – I just follow whatever it is that Instagram algorithms will show me that I find interesting and worthy of a follow. But when I dug deeper, I realized that the IG algorithm was probably just pushing me more content similar to the things I was actively seeking out – which meant that the responsibility to do better fell right back on me. And if you think about it, that is another big part of the problem: if we don’t actively seek out Black content, Black artists and Black chefs, Instagram and other large corporations won’t actively push you Black created content as part of regular programming.

So how do we combat this? We amplify the voice of the oppressed! Give them what you can – a platform, support, your time by reading content, your money by supporting their work, by buying from their companies, bringing Black art and soul into your daily life. The talent is real and genuine and colourful and I’ve been inspired every day with the discovery of another beautiful Black soul that now graces my IG feed with wisdom and good food, professional advice, poetry and decor. I’m also going to do an experiment – will monitor and see that as I continue to discover more content from the Black community around the world, will Instagram start pushing me a more diverse set of people to follow? Will report back. In the meantime, here are a few individuals that I’ve discovered and have been loving:

@sweetpotatosoul – vegan chef, colourful food, beautiful photography and cute sass and humor! Also been getting some great toddler food ideas from her.

@hiltoncarter – plant whisperer and interior stylist. His IG feed is full of hanging greenery, soft light hitting green petals and styled inspiration. He also seems like such a genuine person – it comes through in his content!

@thevitamindproject – this woman is the reason I was inspired to write this post. She is a writer, and her writing is poetic. I spent the better part of this morning soaking up her words and the whimsical way she describes the day to day. She also has this talent for creating warm physical spaces that really compliments the way she sees the world. A must follow for daily inspiration.

Photo Credit: Ying Ge (@yingzge on IG)