We are talking about a town that has never elected a Republican at any level in my 49 years of life and really doesn’t even have a local Republican party.
I guess I’m having a failure of imagination. If some shit is going down (like a random guy yells at me to “Go back home!” while riding the bus), what is the safety-pin wearer going to do that I and the other folks on the bus can’t do? Join the shouting match? Why do you need a safety pin to do this?
If I’m at work at a jerk-off coworker says something jerkish about my minority status, I’m going to my boss. Or HR. Not the resident safety-pin wearer, who I may not even like…who may not want to get involved with some he-said, she-said thing in the first place.
I mean, I can imagine a horrible situation where a person is so outnumbered by racists that they need back up from whomever is in the vicinity But the likelihood of a random safety-pin wearer encountering this situation is slim. It’s even less likely that the random safety-pin wearer will actually make the racists stop whatever havoc they’re wreaking. Racists have never had a problem beating/yelling down non-racists.
Wouldn’t it just make more sense to just try to be a nice person to everyone you meet? If you’re worried about the random racial minority being afraid of all the white folk, why not make a serious effort to be more friendly? Make eye contact and smile and all that jazz. People are much more likely to notice that than a safety pin.
I really don’t think wearing a safety pin obligates you to fight off a motorcycle gang of KKK bigot ninjas, any more than we’re expected to cure breast cancer when everything has pink on it during breast cancer awareness month.
Isn’t a safety pin rather small? It is not at all something that could easily be noticed by someone who needed a support person.
I came across someone wearing one this weekend, and I noticed it. I was speaking to him, though - I wasn’t just passing him on the street.
I thought the same thing too. They’d be too small to notice. But maybe if you’re on public transportation together, you have time to notice.
I agree, I haven’t seen many marginalized people very happy with the idea. A few, but not many. It mostly seems to be allies who are really into the thing.
I mean, in the LGBT community especially some of us can be kind of hard on allies and play the “you don’t get a cookie just for not being an asshole” card. I don’t like to do that, we need allies, and a lot of them are sweet people even if they’re not really activists.
But this just seems… like, okay I guess? It’s inoffensive, but it’s kind of a vapid gesture. Sweet, but vapid. Like I said before, it’s mostly just a way for middle class, cis, straight, white liberals to feel like they’re part of a special good people club. And I guess it’s nice seeing people silently supporting you (though I haven’t seen any pins myself), but it doesn’t really help me and doesn’t even signal that I can expect help from Random Stranger 27A if someone is harassing me because I use my name or pronouns in public.
If you want to do something easy and get free virtue points I’d rather you just print out a form letter from whatever activist organization you choose and send it to your Congressman. You then have my permission to brag about it on Facebook and get yourself a nice big helping of ice cream. Hell, PM me and I’ll personally thank you if that’s what you want. Form letters aren’t exactly effective at accomplishing much, but at least it shows a person in power that their constituents are interested in change and is a gateway to more substantial activism that can actually help me.
Like, if you personally chose to do the safety pin thing I’m not maligning you. You’re probably a very sweet person and I appreciate the gesture of solidarity; it’s just not really on my list of “things that make me feel better about the current state of affairs”.
If people are going to be wearing safety pins at least they should be put to good use. Why not have buttons that say “I’m better than you”? That way the message is less likely to be missed.
In 2008, the head of the USA Communist Party endorsed voting for Obama. In 2012 he repeated his endorsement (although no longer head of the CP).
“White supremacist”? Cite, please. With his actual statements.
My very first thought. And judging from the ridicule on Twitter, lots of people thought the same.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but you seem to be assuming none of those bystanders voted for Trump.
So let’s say you’re on the subway, and most of the seats are empty, including one next to you. I, noble white person that I am, enter the car and look around. I see you - a minority! - make eye contact, and give you a huge grin. Then I sit down next to you, or maybe in the row next to you, and strike up a conversation. Because we white liberal people have to show that we lurve people of color!
Honestly, wouldn’t you be happier if I just wore a safety pin and STFU?
What safety pin trend??? I voted Other.
As for white people, you guys are okay. I married one.
Seriously, it’s a harmless gesture. If they’re going to piss and moan about everything, fuck 'em. It’s not for you then. Go back to your pissing and moaning. As we’ve seen, that sways elections, and then *real *change happens.
While I have some sympathies for the general idea, I don’t feel like I, as a white male, need to make a show of how I’m a supportive person who can step in and whitesplain’ or mansplain’ something in the middle of unpleasantries, or play Superhero to step in, say something and make my holy righteousness the center of the incident.
My looks and facial expressions will make my sympathies clear and I would have no more problem interceding in a bigot attacking a brown person than I would intervening in your garden variety asshole assaulting anyone.
Actions speak louder than safety pins.
People are going to put on a pin and say, “OK, I’ve done my part” when in fact they’ve done nothing at all. If you oppose bigotry then do something about it when you see it. It won’t matter if you have a pin on.
At a time when 48% of the country has essentially declared war on minorities it can’t hurt to pick some symbol to demonstrate that you’re one of the 52% who hasn’t.
Under the circumstances bigotry isn’t something that you sometimes see and sometimes don’t manifested only through specific incidents that need intervention, it is just the default state of affairs 24x7x365.
If nothing else the pins might offer the wearers themselves some reassurance there is still hope even if those most affected don’t feel the same reassurances from the gesture.
The hyperbole on those numbers well exceed escape velocity.
Actually how about a hatpin? Then you have a weapon in case someone grabs your pussy on the train.
You can use a safety pin too but you might need to act fast.
I used to work with a guy. This guy starting hanging in my cubicle the moment I first stepped into the building. At first I thought he was just friendly, but I quickly realized what was up.
He wanted a black friend.
Why? Because he needed someone to laugh at his unfunny renditions of Dave Chapelle characters. Hanging around me made him feel less suburbany, more hip. He needed an audience to hear him rant about his horrible close-minded coworkers, neighbors, and even friends—an audience who would assure him that he was “one of the good ones”, so no worries.
I’m sure he’s latched onto the safety pin thing. It’s yet another way for him to feel better about himself and his identity.
I suppose everyone’s got their insecurities. But being around people who constantly feel compelled to broadcast how they’re one of the good guys gets old after awhile. Especially when these people let their guards drop and they reveal how they aren’t really that different from all the others. Once I made the mistake of talking to another black employee using my AAVE voice when my coworker was in the room, and he bucked out of his chair in a fit of laughter and started talking to me in mock slave dialect. You know what I did? I told him to get the fuck out of my office. The guy could have had a million safety pins pinned to his polo shirt, and I would have reacted the same way.
So I disagree the safety pin thing is harmless. There are way too many people who think they are sufficiently “down”…that it’s those hillbillies who shop at Walmart who are the problem, not fully-dentured Trader Joesians. No. Everyone is infected. Everyone needs to start realizing this and stop faking like they are more enlightened than some nebulous “they”.
When Trump starts rounding up Mexicans to deport, watch a lot of these safety-pin wearers defend it by saying “Well, they were here illegally.” And when localities start pushing through stop-and-frisk policies that always seem to target folks who look a certain way, expect to find a lot of these safety-pin wearers defend it by saying, “well, I bet there’s a good reason to stop them.” Yeah, there will be plenty of people protesting at first. But once the cameras are gone and the news cycle has moved on to the next bad thing, you’ll start hearing the rationalizations.
Yesterday I told a coworker that I was worried about the overt racism I keep witnessing on the news. She assured me that I don’t have anything to worry about since I’m so educated and well-spoken. I wanted to tell her so badly that Michelle Obama is pretty damn educated and well-spoken, and that hasn’t spared her from shit like this. But I kept quiet. Why ruin my relationship with this “ally” by challenging her bullshit notion that the word “nigger” only applies to certain black people? She’s one of the good ones, right?
I guess the racial, religious, and sexual minorities should be glad that straight white Christians have something to be hopeful about. Lord knows they’ve had such a hard go at it, poor things.
By everyone, do you really mean “everyone”? Or just 100% of white people?
Because I agree with you, if you are really talking about everyone. It’s sad but there is doubtless some residual racism in all of us. Personally I think it is better to acknowledge it, and be on the lookout for the consequences, than to deny it exists.
I don’t feel like you are leaving someone like me a lot of room to ally myself with the forces of good, however. If I wear a safety pin, according to you I’m making a hollow, harmful, gesture and will ultimately back down rather than face an actual confrontation. If I smile at you and talk to you, I better make damn sure I get my tone/enthusiasm just right, or you’ll accuse me of being condescending to you.
It’s frustrating, and it grieves me to see that even among like-minded people with the best of intentions, discord is now being sown.
Why would you think I am just talking about white people? If I meant only white people, I wouldn’t have said “everyone”.
“Residual” makes it sound like we’ve all been dirtied by something, and we’re all gradually washing it away, but some of it is still sticking to us. That may be the problem, though the idea presumes people are consciously washing the dirt away rather than reflexively denying its there. But I don’t think it’s the ONLY problem. I think the bigger problem is that at the end of the day, we’re survivalists. And to survive, one must rationalize away upsetting things. So we will acknowledge intellectually that is wrong to discriminate against people for being X, Y, and Z. But when we’re confronted of actual evidence of it happening, we’ll find a way to make it not that big of a deal. Not because we’re OMG RACIST. But because it’s exhausting being outraged all the time.
I don’t know you from Eve, so I’m not making any statement about you.
But I do know some folks who are into these kinds of gestures. They’re into bumper stickers and t-shirts and mottos. And these folks are just as likely to inflict a microaggression as anyone else. And their black friends (or whomever) will put up with it because, hey, they’re a friend. You don’t challenge friends on their bullshit, not unless you want ruptures in the relationship.
If you’re going to talk to me like a character out of an Uncle Remus story, yes, I will feel condescended to. But if you talk to me like a regular person, no I won’t. I’m trying to figure out where this accusation is coming from, since I clearly remember saying upthread that smiling and being friendly were perfectly good ways to show your “ally-ship” to another human being. Were you whooshed?
Perhaps you wouldn’t feel so butthurt if you’d ask for clarification (because you’re clearly confused) rather than imply I’m being a big meano for not caring about someone’s self-serving good intentions.
I guess I just see it more like people wearing black arm bands or somesuch in typical displays of protest over an election. But the central theme of this administration is that they’re tired of being “politically correct” about racism, homophobia, misogyny and xenophobia in our society, and they managed to win the white house on that platform by stirring up these previously somewhat-suppressed tendencies in millions who’ve been living mostly in the shadows and out of the mainstream public awareness. The symbolism of a safety pin also serves as a message to those who are facing the full brunt of that shift in our society that there are at least some people, over half, who aren’t part of the mob.
I think this is more authentic than people just trying to make minority friends to tell themselves they are cool or assuage their own consciences in some way. We are probably about to see the worst overt racism the United States has seen in over 50 years. Although it hasn’t quite become fashionable to discriminate against blacks in Trump’s America; it is women, Muslims, Mexicans and immigrants and political refugees in general who might benefit more from seeing a sea of safety pins in the mall.
Other than a sort of abstract sadness over this turn of events things won’t directly affect me, too much. In normal times of normal discrimination I’ve never felt any need to justify myself to anyone. I just, as you said, try to live as a non-racist, normal person and that’s all that should really be asked of anyone. But I do see this turn of events in the US as being something way bigger that ‘normal’ racism. And as an American living in a foreign country I have frequently felt the need in recent days to find some way of making clear to people I meet that I’m not part of this movement going on in the US.