Protest and ProModernity

The podcast discusses the relationship between protests, political organization, and the Black Lives Matter movement. It explores the concepts of refusal, contemporary racism, and social media activism. The hosts analyze the writings of Deva Woodley, Simpson, and Du Bois to highlight the role of protests in challenging social norms and promoting change. They emphasize the importance of systemic solutions and the need to address the oppression faced by Black Americans. The podcast also touches on the power dynamics and hypocrisy within American society. Hi, this is Sam, Sage, and Melissa. This podcast is titled Protests Are Pro-Modernity. This episode begins with an analysis of Deva Woodley's discourse on organizing protests and makes note of how political organizations relate to the Black Lives Matter movement. We then transition into a discussion of refusal and contemporary racism, in addition to social media activism. We examine this through the thinkers Simpson and Du Bois in order to provide an analysis of modern protests. In Bennett's Modernity and its Critics, she explains that the two aspects that make up modernity are intellectual tendencies and institutional structures that bring these ideas to life. Bennett says that the intellectual tendencies to criticize and reflect on social norms is a pillar of modernity. Additionally, in Wallen's piece, she says the definition of modernity revolves around crisis and how people respond to it. Crisis breeds a lot of political theory, and we learn a lot about political theory during instability. So looking at protests helps us to understand a direct and immediate response to crisis through organization. Protesting and Black Lives Matter are connected to the larger theme of modernity because modernity reflects social norms. Therefore, protesting and refusal are a rejection of social norms and an attempt to change what is considered modern. This example of Black Lives Matter is a refusal of the way Black Americans are and have been treated in this country. It calls for a change of what is considered modern and how our society functions. Our first segment will discuss Woodley and introduce political organization. Welcome to our first segment, Woodley, You Like to Protest? Here we will discuss ideas and concepts from Deva Woodley's book Reckoning, which explains the importance of organization and protest within modern politics. Woodley introduces the idea of protest as a method of political change and asserts that the act of organizing itself is inherently political. Protest and organization intersect to define the role of citizens and what is expected of them. Protest is a defiance of social norms and an attempt to change either a small aspect of society or upend a whole political system. The Black Lives Matter movement is an important example of organization, and within the context of the BLM movement, we picked a quote from the Woodley reading, which is as follows. The justice system's struggle of acceptance in the face of the violent, unnecessary deaths of Black people at the hands of vigilantes in the state mirrored the unconcern that seemed to suffuse all the institutions of power as they witnessed the post-recession suffering of ordinary people of all colors and seemed to do little or nothing in response. This quote kind of illustrates the widespread police violence against specifically Black people that led to the start of Black Lives Matter in 2013 and kind of got re-sparked in 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic. Yeah, and Woodley, in a New York Times article, also discusses why the protests were so large in number. And she cites social media as one of the causes and the root things that got people involved, because although the Black Lives Matter started the campaign, not every protest was directly organized by the movement, and most of them were actually from social media. Yeah, and specifically the spreading news over social media helped organize a lot of these protests, especially after news of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor made its way to social media. That definitely sparked a lot of, I don't know, just sparked something in people. And within the context of the pandemic, you know, everybody was like sitting inside and just on their phones a lot. So this became something that people were suddenly much more aware of. So over the course of summer 2020, BLM was kind of at the forefront of a lot of people's minds due to the spread of social media and just everyone being trapped inside. And so this ended up being one of the largest protests in history. And really, it's changed a lot and has made progress and really brought this to the forefront of a lot of people's minds. But there's still a lot more progress to be made. And this is kind of what Deva Woodley discusses in Chapter 5 of her book. She has a lot of statistics about the movement and kind of just really relates it to protesting and organizing and her foundation that she already started in the introduction of her book. So a second quote we pulled is, The movement has developed an approach to organizing that is avowedly rooted in the notion that in order to change politics, they have to be willing to not only imagine the world as it might be, but also imagine themselves as they must be in order to bring the new world into existence. So she's basically saying how important our mindset is when protesting and organizing. You need to have a look of change and evolution and practically be the change in order to see the change that you actually want reflected in society. And I think kind of going off of that, BLM has changed the way that we think about protesting and organizing, especially as it relates to social media in the sense that it's much easier with social media to get more people involved since on the internet you can reach anyone and everyone. Overall, protest is a reaction to crisis and a need for change. It is an attempt to change what is considered both modern and right within society. Be sure to stay tuned for our second segment, which builds upon protest through the act of refusal. Welcome to our second segment, Simpsons for Refusal. In this segment, we will discuss Simpson's writing and kind of how it relates to refusal and protest. We're going to do this by quoting her book, Mohawk Interpretive, and kind of her discussion of refusal as a tool for making change. In her book, she uses indigenous people as an example of this and kind of how they both refuse the larger sovereigns that they exist in and how the people themselves refuse harmful actions from others around them and kind of just assert their own identities. And the way that we see this kind of relating to BLM and that the BLM movement is largely about refusing to accept the bare minimum and demanding real equality from a systemic standpoint. Yeah, and Simpson discusses how we usually celebrate institutions and freedoms, like freedom of mobility, but these things aren't available to everyone. So on page one, she says, We see that a good is not a good for everyone. And I think this relates a lot to police violence and these institutions that are supposed to protect us, like the criminal justice system and the policing system, because although they do protect certain communities, they're also very harmful to marginalized communities. And we see this a lot in the Black Lives Matter movement with George Floyd. Yeah, that kind of makes me think about Bennett and her definition of modernity and with that she's kind of saying how industrialized Western countries that we think of as really wealthy, kind of like the United States and Canada, they are the people who are defining modernity and what's good for them is not going to be what's good for everybody. So in that case, that's kind of how we're seeing white privilege and how that's affecting black people in America and the case of police violence and kind of what's creating this mass protest in the country and people are kind of calling for change and they're refusing that act and kind of just showing that it's not good for everybody. And I think it's important that we see refusal as protest and as power in itself. There aren't like necessary guidelines for what is protest and I think just the very act of saying no and refusing to celebrate institutions that marginalize communities is protest in itself. Yeah, and I think also kind of going back to what you're saying about refusal as power, I think it's a very powerful thing to do to put your foot down and go out and protest and refuse to keep allowing yourself or other members of your community to be treated in a way in which you're not part of a nation, especially this is shown when black people are disproportionately victims of police violence. It kind of, I don't know, kind of makes it seem as if they're less than any other member of society. Yeah, totally. I think also the sheer scale of these protests too is also very powerful and like the amount of refusal that's going on too is really just like encouraging more and more people to get involved in the organization and protest and it's just making everything seem more powerful that's going on. Another quote from something that this kind of reminds me of from page 115 is to be within a state is to some extent be of a state and here I kind of like think this is saying that everybody in America is kind of really a part of the country but not everybody is benefiting from that in a good way and that's kind of another reason that black Americans are kind of refusing the system because it's not made for them and it's really not benefiting them in a good way. And I think this is like what you were just saying, it kind of reminds me of the system of mass incarceration and there's really no doubt that the United States would not be what it is today without prison labor and I don't know, it's just making me think about like how the whole issue of mass incarceration is that black people are disproportionately locked up and used for prison labor so it's kind of just emphasizing the importance of refusal and refusing to allow it to keep happening. Yeah, it's kind of almost as if like we're all a part of this system but the system is explicitly against some people and that's kind of just not working out for a lot of people in this country and causing these mass protests. Yeah, and black people are often after they're incarcerated or disenfranchised which means they cannot vote and that is an integral part of being active in society and the laws are still affecting them, they just aren't able to change the laws and actually speak their minds and change the society. Yeah, and kind of to jump off of your point, I think also, I want to draw attention to the fact that even if you live in this country and even if you can't vote, you're still subject to the laws and the implications of the law even if you don't have a choice in helping to make them or in choosing your representatives or whatnot. Yeah, going off of that, I think it's really important to note that this kind of refusal is really just an attempt to change what is modern and kind of what our society is prioritizing because by protesting and all these mass organizations occurring all over the country it's so many people refusing the current system that we operate in and everyone is just trying to change social norms so that modernity itself can change and our society can just kind of evolve past that these people are being hurt and brutalized by the police and it's something that a lot of people don't want to happen anymore. So overall, the Black Lives Matter movement is about refusing to allow this oppression to continue through refusal and also exposing how institutions might not benefit everyone. Welcome to our next segment, Dubois with da boys, taking on protest and racism. In this segment, we continue to dive into the Black Lives Matter movement through A Ruling of Men and Souls of White Folk by Dubois in which he discusses hypocrisy and hidden avenues of oppression in modern institutions. I would like to start this segment off with a joke. Why did W.E.B. Dubois cross the road? Why? To get to the other side of inequality. I actually have a better joke, Melissa. Why did W.E.B. Dubois start a vegetable garden? Why? To cultivate change from the ground up. Well, now that we've broken the ice with those little jokes, we're going to move to something a bit more serious, which is Dubois. We wanted to start with a quote from his writing, Souls of White Folk. Just a little disclaimer, this quote is a little long, but I think it's really important, so we're going to read all of it. It says, It is curious to see America, the United States, looking on herself first as a sort of natural peacemaker, then as a moral protagonist in this terrible time. No nation is less fitted for peace than America. Then as a moral protagonist in this terrible time. No nation is less fitted for this role. For two or more centuries, America has marched proudly in the van of human hatred, making bonfires of human flesh and laughing at them hideously, and making the insulting of millions more than a matter of dislike. Rather a great religion, a world war cry. Up white, down black, to your tents, white folk in world war with black and party-colored mongrel beasts. Instead of standing as a great example of the success of democracy and the possibility of human brotherhood, America has taken her place as an awful example of its pitfalls and failures, so far as black and brown and yellow people are concerned. To me, this quote kind of emphasizes how a lot of people kind of envision the American dream and kind of really idealize America, but that's really just not the reality, and so many people aren't experiencing that, and America just kind of isn't what it says it is, I guess. Yeah, and to me this quote also kind of reminds me of the idea that the United States is the global peacemaker, and I think it's interesting that Du Bois talks about this, in the sense that the U.S. acts all high and mighty for the rest of the world, but then inside its own barriers there's a lot of injustice going on. Yeah, and like you're saying, America is usually seen as this place for freedom and everyone's equal, but under the sort of veil of that all, there's all this oppression, and especially black people and people of color aren't treated the same way at all. I think this also begs the question of, if America is so great and such a natural peacekeeper, then why are so many people being attacked and brutalized by the police, and not only that, just people that aren't white that this is happening to. So I think that's really just kind of encompassing of how America isn't necessarily what it pretends to be, and it's just kind of not a great place for people who aren't white to be. I also just want to say that I think the reason that America is able to assert itself as a natural peacemaker is because of kind of what Bennett was saying and how people get to create modernity and who gets to create that definition, and America as a former colonizer is kind of in that role to be able to define international norms, and so they are able to define themselves as a quote-unquote natural peacekeeper, even if they aren't. And relating that idea back to the Black Lives Matter movement, I think issues like mass incarceration and police violence all point to the systemic issue, because every institution in America has this racist baseline that we're starting from, so obviously black people are going to be oppressed if the baseline you're starting with is an oppressive system, so we need to come at it from a systemic standpoint. And on the topic of colonialism and that sort of idea, I think that directly relates to another quote of the Ruling of Men in which Du Bois says, Who may be excluded from a sharing of the ruling of men? Time and time again the world has answered. The ignorant, the inexperienced, the guarded, the unwilling. And I think this ties back to what Sage was saying about how systems have been designed to work against certain groups of people and how systemic solutions are necessary, just because a certain demographic of people is so much less likely to have an opportunity to participate in democracy and in the ruling of men. Exactly. And using this excuse of freedom and the lack of regulation from the government, saying that people are too ignorant to participate, is just a justification for them to continue this perpetuated oppression. And I think it's also connected to the idea of redlining and gerrymandering and that sort of thing, in which people in power tend to suppress certain groups of votes which they deem unworthy of being heard. So there's just a connection that I was making when you were saying that. Yeah, I feel like this all really relates back to this idea that I've been coming back to all semester, that to define modernity is to have power, kind of. And the people who are in charge of these systems and in turn oppressing other people, it's just like they're going to continue to be in power because they've started with that power. And it's like modernity and power are so entwined with each other that it's really affecting all these other people in such a negative way. And in so many ways, too. And I think the government obviously has this power, but they often pretend that they don't, so they don't have to fix these issues. So this is similar to what Du Bois was talking about, how they create barriers to make it harder for black people and poor people to vote. Back to what I was saying before about not having people being too ignorant to vote, when in reality the government has the resources to fix this. It's just the same root issue perpetuating inequalities with new tools. Yeah, that made me think of something else, too. I think it's interesting to think that the government has this power and kind of chooses to ignore it or do nothing about the systemic problem. And I think it says a lot about that, that so many people noticed and experienced this problem, that these protests broke out all over the country and kind of just came to the forefront of everyone's attention so quickly. And another quote that I'm thinking about right now from Souls of White Folk is when Du Bois said, Ask your own soul what it would say if the next census were to report that half of black America was dead and the other half dying. And I think this connects to what you were just saying, Sam, because it's an issue. Black people dying at the hands of police all the time is so much of an issue that everyone sees and recognizes. And despite that, nothing is really being done except for the occasional thoughts and prayers from white politicians. That's just something I'm thinking of, like the fact that this is a genocide. I feel like even part of the problem is that white people have the privilege to not acknowledge this. And that's just such a prominent thing because as I was talking about earlier, power has so much to do with all of this and white people are inherently privileged and are in more positions of power and they aren't acknowledging that this is happening and therefore nothing is changing until these protests kind of came in. And what I love in general about Du Bois' writing is he's so good at pointing out hypocrisy and also having calls to actions to the readers. So I think a lot of white readers read this and realized that this oppression has actual deadly consequences for people. It's not just a theoretical thing that's happening. It's like people are actually dying due to these issues. Yeah, and I think that's something really important to note, especially because I feel like this isn't something that people who aren't black think about every day because they're not forced to think about it. And so Du Bois having this call to action, calling out this hypocrisy is really important and something that should continue to happen. And just within this discussion of black and white, there's another quote from Du Bois that I would like to bring up. I hear this his mighty cry reverberating through the world. I am white, well and good. Prometheus, divine thief, is not the world wide enough for two colors, for many little shinings of the sun. Why then devour your own vitals? If I answer even as proudly, I am black. I feel as if these protests as a whole kind of reflect this quote. They're saying, I'm black, I'm proud, I'm kind of here to advocate for myself. We're refusing everything that this government is doing and trying to make society and modernity a better place for everyone. Yeah, and it's so important, even just the name Black Lives Matter and being seen in the streets physically protesting, it's so important to be a physical reminder and representation of the issue. And I want to go back to what you said about the name Black Lives Matter and physically seeing people out in the street. I think it's so important to specify Black Lives Matter and to have people protesting black lives rather than all lives because it brings to the surface the reality that we know all lives matter, but you have to specify that black lives matter because there seems to be some belief or just a lack of recognition that black lives do actually matter. Yeah, I think that's a really important thing to note. And I think one thing I think about when I'm refuting the saying all lives matter is that right now it's black lives that are in trouble and black lives that are being brutalized by the police. So right now, yeah, their lives are, they should be really important, but people aren't taking their lives as important as everybody else's. So I think that the phrase is really important and should be distinguished from all lives matter. Overall, Du Bois is a powerful advocate for black lives and recognizing white hypocrisy. He helps us draw connections between protesting, refusal, and modernity to show how powerful this movement has been within American society. Welcome back for our final segment of this episode. This segment is called Control-Alt-Delete Racism. Thank you, chatGBT, for this wonderful name. In this segment, we're going to discuss social media as it relates to black lives matter and how black squares sort of came up into Instagram a lot and how those may or may not be controversial. We're also going to talk about our own experiences protesting and kind of how this movement got all of us a lot more involved politically and within our own communities. So just to start us off on the topic of the black squares, if you don't know what they are, basically in 2020 after the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and kind of black lives matter was picking up all this steam online, a lot of people who are allies or just wanted to help spread word for the movement decided to post a black square and it was called Hashtag Blackout Tuesday. And many, many people did this. Especially a lot of people from high school, which is how old we all were during this time. I saw a lot of people from my high school doing this. And it was just a weird way to show support for this movement. Yeah, I agree. I understand the sort of sentiment of shutting down social media to prove how important the movement is, but I know what got a lot of criticism was the fact people were tagging it with other hashtags and it would basically just push down any useful information with those hashtags. So before when you clicked Hashtag BLM, you could see actual important things going on, but then after Tuesday you'd click on it and it was just black, which kind of defeats the purpose. Especially considering that most of the people who are posting these black squares are not black, and so you're actually kind of getting, you're making the information and posts from black people a lot less accessible. I think a lot of the controversy was also the idea that it was a bunch of white high schoolers silencing black voices. That was my understanding of a lot of the criticism. And the idea that even though you may have the best intention, you're unknowingly kind of pushing other people's ideas, people who've lived through racism firsthand, you're kind of pushing those ideas down the feed. Yeah, this reminds me of something from high school, especially coming from a place in northern Maine where there's not very many people of color. I mean, maybe less than 10 people of my entire high school from 800 people. And when all of this was happening, I saw a few people post white squares with hashtag whiteout Wednesday, and just that was very jarring, and it's like, yeah, the black squares were bad, but that was even worse. And I'm not sure how this is connected. And I think that also goes back to the idea of all lives matter and just really emphasizing how important it is to specify that black lives matter, since even though, yes, all lives matter, people are not always treated as if their life matters. And just to circle back to the controversy of the black squares, I think a big part of the issue with that and with the white squares is the idea that you should be promoting black voices rather than kind of suppressing them or using your perspective as a white person to try and be an activist or anything like that. Yeah, I think just like when white people try to advocate for black people, you're not going to get the story at all, and it's really just that's at its core what black lives matter is about. It's about elevating black voices and their stories and just elevating the black community. And I think it's important to kind of start with this example of a sort of fail of the social media use because we have so many more examples of the information on social media actually helping us and making us more interested in politics or actually getting us out and protesting. So all of these sort of benefits were hidden by this big display of black squares. Yeah, so kind of going in a different direction with that, I think social media on a good side was really used well to mobilize these organizations and protestings. Like, without Instagram and other methods, I don't think I would have known and been able to go and protest in my communities during 2020, and I think that was a big part of getting a lot of young people out there and effectively doing this work. Yeah, I had a really similar experience where I learned about protests through Instagram and all of my friends sort of were, like, finding this information on these websites. So as for myself, the first time that I protested for BLM was in 2015, and I think there's a big misconception, especially among Gen Z, who is, like, really little, like, during 2015 when I went out and protested. But the BLM movement didn't actually start in 2020 after George Floyd's death. It actually started in 2013. And so, like I said, I went out and protested in 2015, but the only reason that I knew that this movement was a thing was because I'm part of a mixed-race family. My stepdad is black and my brother is mixed-race, and so these issues really do affect them, and this is, like, a real worry for people that they might go out and get stopped by police and that something might happen to them. Yeah, I think this is a really good point, and just, like, an example of how without Instagram and other methods of spreading information, young people who kind of grew up in this, like, while it was happening, they didn't know until kind of news spread on social media, and they were kind of old enough to take that information and do something with it. Yeah, I definitely agree with that, and I think it also can help kids who might grow up with different viewpoints than their parents, too. Like, I know one of my friends growing up had a very conservative parent, and through social media, she learned about the Black Lives Matter movement, and she ended up, like, protesting with it, and I think it's a really good tool to kind of get people to, like, do their own research and kind of, like, form their own perspectives away from their parents or their environment. And also another way that social media really helped me during the protest was on Instagram and other websites, I was able to find ways to donate. Like, I donated to a program that would collect bail monies for black people who were falsely imprisoned. Yeah, and this also reminds me, another resource that I was able to find a lot of through Instagram was petitions to sign, and I know this was a big thing to do during 2020 when you couldn't go out and do a ton, so this was kind of, like, a big step you could take, and just, it became a lot more accessible through Instagram and sharing online services. Kind of, like, in conclusion, we just wanted to point out that all of these problems are still ongoing and social media is not a perfect tool to protest with, but it is really effective, and as modernity changes and different institutions and systems such as Instagram and the Internet have power, there have become a lot more ways to experience and perform acts of refusal and protests such as this, and I think Black Lives Matter is a really great example of this. Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do! As we come to the conclusion of this podcast, we just wanted to briefly recount what we've discussed. We began with Deva Woodley's discourse on organizing and protesting and kind of her basis and foundation on protesting and organizing and how that's so important in today and what modernity means. We then moved on to discuss Simpson and how refusal itself is an act of protest and how that fits into organization as a whole. We then finally discussed Du Bois and kind of modernity and protest through the Black Lives Matter lens and how this organization has changed so much in America in the past few years. And then finally, we discussed our own experiences and those with social media and how social media has greatly impacted protesting and how it might continue to impact protesting in the future. If you liked our discussion of race, BLM, and systemic oppression, be sure to check out Javeria's podcast, You Will Not Deny Us Mental Health and History, discussing mental health, racial trauma, and democracy. This has been Protests and Pro-Modernity with Sage, Sam, and Melissa. If you enjoyed, feel free to like, subscribe, and share with friends and family. Du Bois, we would love it if you did that. Thanks! Bye! Thank you for such a great semester, Professor Hanley. We learned so much. Have a great summer!