I don’t mingle well with drama. But just this once, I will.
Only the internet can romanticize racism into the act of posting selfies. Frankly, the word racism is becoming so mercurial but at the same time so cannily tossed around that the first feeling I experience upon hearing or seeing the word is exhaustion.
Someone trend #Yellowout so development of a three faction war TBS game akin to Civilization can begin with a stunning resource management system that consists of three pivotal assets:ANGER, PRIVILEGE and last but not least SENTENTIOUSNESS.
Honestly though, Blackout worked. I’m happy it made people confident in their appearance, people getting courage from others is always a great thing to see - that’s how it should be. But is a movement combating black portrayal in media, which is already exaggerated as much as the movement itself, because that is what media does. Exaggerates, romanticizes, the media has always been tedentious. Yet I’m completely willing to ignore that fact because it made people feel beautiful. It made a LOT of people feel beautiful. There is no way you can argue against a movement that brings so much positivity to how people think of themselves.
But now whiteout posters and the tag itself is completely overdramatized. There isn’t nobility in forming a movement simply out being excluded out of it. Yet ignoring that, it’s sentiment isn’t inherently bad as everyone claims it to be. It’s just White people posting selfies on Tuesdays (Is it Tuesdays?). If people want to do that, let them do it. If they want to feel pride in white beauty, then that’s fine. Getting upset over the potential that people can post and find worth in posting their pictures in that tag, just as Black posters did on Blackout, should not be a problem. Attaching those who felt ‘excluded’ to make a Whiteout might be partially true, but that doesn’t mean it was wholly born out of spite, there will be honest posters suffering from the same apprehension of their image as those on Friday did, let them find ease in this tag.
Regardless, there will be toxic people, on both ends, people who don’t want confidence and comfort to be extended to everyone. People who want to attach racism, combat with others and drain the positivity just to soak up in the negativity. That’s the internet these days, but I just hope the genuineness of both tags can outlive the negativity. I don’t really care who you are, but you shouldn’t put down other people’s attempt to share their pride, no matter who they are, because you’re never in the position to do so.
You’re an individual, feel proud about it. They’re an individual, let them feel proud about it.
So if Whiteout or the elusive Yellowout can make one person feel beautiful, make them feel confidence in how they look and fight against their anxieties, it should exist, because there is nothing wrong with feeling pride of who you are.
