rockinlibrarian | Reminder about Who Tells the Story

First, I apologize for people who might only follow me through this blog, and not on social media or elsewhere. I realize I last left you here with the statement that I probably had COVID-19, and then you never heard from me again for two whole months! What the heck?! Well, obviously now that I AM here, I am better now. The test incidentally came back negative, though my basic message stayed the same, ie BE CAREFUL. I’m really kind of concerned about how people are acting around here just because we were on “yellow,” and tomorrow we go to “green”— people are like “YEAH WE CAN GO OUT NOW, LET’S GO EVERYWHERE, I HAVE NO CONCEPT OF SOCIAL DISTANCING.” And too many— it seems to be overwhelmingly men?— seem to think a mask is for protecting ones chin? This dang guy working at Lowes the other day, had his mask over, like, his lower lip?—he kept scooting closer to me than necessary to help me, and then he stuck his hand on the handle of my cart for awhile— I was really rather grossed out by that. Goodness knows what he thinks NOT social distancing looks like.

Anyway, I’m here today to talk about a different matter of current events, although some of what I say can also be applied to pandemic information.

You know how yet another black man was murdered at the hands of the police and there’s protesting going on?

You know how I’m a white woman who grew up in an extremely white community and I have absolutely no credentials to be talking about race? And whenever well-meaning white people try to find something to do in situations like these they hear seemingly contradictory advice, both “Shut up and let the people affected talk! Don’t center the conversation on you!” and “You need to speak up! Silence is acceptance!” and people like me (not white, but shy with deep self-esteem issues) who have always had issues believing anybody ever needs to hear them anyway are like, “But, but…WHAT?”

See, the thing is, majority people shouldn’t speak FOR minority people. Majority people certainly shouldn’t pretend to be experts and TEACH the people actually experiencing the problems about their own problems. But majority people SHOULD speak to others in their majority. And it occurred to me that I DO have a certain expertise about one ASPECT of all this, and it’s my vocational DUTY to speak up.

Look, I may be clueless about a lot of stuff, but I have a Masters degree in Information and Stories. And what I see a lot of majority (in this case, non-Black, but in other cases it could be Straight, Middle-Class, Non-Immigrant, Mainstream-raised-Christian, whatever) people getting stuck on, over and over, are matters of Information—what information you have and whether that information is valid-- and Stories— the narratives woven based on whatever information is presented, personal experience, and, most importantly, who it is telling the story.

To be honest, I’ve talked about this before. I wrote about how history is taught with bias here, and specifically how both news stories and our own perceptions can bias what we understand here. But I feel it’s worth bringing up again, before the point is lost in the fog of side arguments and defensive reactions.

In this case, we as non-Black people have been privileged to not experience the systematic injustices and the countless microaggressions, so it’s easier to believe the people who say “It’s not really that bad, they’re just being dramatic,” or “White people get killed by police, too!” or “But not all cops!” or “These protesters are looting and destroying property and that doesn’t make it right!” We have to be aware of who we’re getting our information from and who’s pushing certain narratives over others.

The fact that people on the scene have noted that the protests are primarily peaceful, and violence is either found to be incited by outside opportunists who come in just to start trouble, or by overarmed “peacekeeping” forces— militarized police teams and National Guardspeople— who attack the crowds with violence over the slightest excuses, well, it shows how necessary it is to look carefully. Are you being swayed into writing off all protesters as violent, so you don’t take their message seriously? (Remember how the football players tried to peacefully protest this very issue by taking a knee during the National Anthem, and people were like “Well, that’s just DISRESPECTFUL!” and then when people protest the issue in a more disruptive way people are all like, “Well they should find a more PEACEFUL way to protest, we’d have listened!” and you’re like “But they DID! And you didn’t listen then!”) Is your attention being drawn away by the “Not ALL white people” or “Not ALL cops” or whatever pleas? (Yeah, you SHOULD note that there ARE good cops out there, and the good ones have been spotted standing in solidarity with the protesters, not saying they shouldn’t bother protesting!) Do you latch onto evidence of anything the protesters do wrong as justification for the excessive force used by the police? (Remember the other week when people protested lockdown restrictions by storming government buildings with guns and spitting on people during a pandemic, and law enforcement did NOT subdue them with tear gas or rubber bullets? Also, did you notice THOSE protesters who the police did not violently subdue were all white?)

I thought this was an interesting observation. Three sentences in a tweet from the NYT describing violence at protests, and the sentences are structured differently depending on who’s doing the violence. The one sentence describing an injury caused by protesters themselves is in active voice— “Protesters did this”— but the two sentence describing (incidentally more serious) injuries caused by police are in passive— “Person WAS HURT in protests.” The result gives the impression that the protests themselves are violent, but NOT that the supposed “peacekeepers” are the primary instigators of the violence. You see how this subtly reinforces the notion that the protesters are responsible for the violence by protesting, even though the facts say otherwise.

So, that’s me speaking up in a way in which I have authority, to people I have the right, nay, responsibility to speak up to. Don’t let the spin keep you from seeing what is truth and what is propaganda. Listen to the stories of those whose voices have been written off by the primary narrative. (And I’ll link to this article one more time): be aware of biases and don’t let the biases make your decisions for you.

Reminder about Who Tells the Story

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