Virtue Signalling is Democracy
These last two weeks have been some of the the hardest abroad I have experienced. Watching people of countless backgrounds out on the streets of over 700 American towns and cities march in solidarity stirred in me a wellspring of emotions. From a deep sense of empathy for the Black community and their too-oft ignored screams of frustration over police brutality throughout American history, I was also struck by an intense helplessness at being unable to march with them as I absorbed images, speeches and stories from the safe distance of my apartment in Munich rather than out in the streets of D.C. or Omaha.
Like any good Millennial I’ve inevitably turned to the internet to advocate for structural change in U.S. policing as its the best I can do from across the Atlantic. Trying to better myself on topics of race while trying to encourage support for friends protesting back home, I’ve been overwhelmingly encouraged by most of what my friends at home (and abroad for that matter) have been doing in support as well. However, that has not stopped a few “bad apples” across my social media from showing antipathy towards there being such a blanketed and stern rebuke against the Minneapolis Police Department from people the world over. Amongst those I’ve come across:
“A lot of you went from COVID experts to racial justice ones real quickly.”
“While I appreciate the views and fairy tales of the millennial keyboard warriors scattered across my news feed. I prefer and find the views of some of my favorite black celebrities a lot more interesting.” [Attached video collection of interviews with black celebrities asserting that racism doesn’t exist anymore]
“You know Antifa reminds me of Stalin’s black shirts, or Hittler’s brown shirts, or fidel’s young pionners…in America we vote to resolve issues, we respect private property, and we do not condone lawlessness…”
The power and catharsis of a march is that you aren’t confronted with the particular psychological anguish that pangs through your system when you read stuff like this. And while protestors definitely do stand at a higher risk for experiencing a different kind of pain while marching, there is a sort of psychological comfort afforded to one burying their identity in something larger than themselves when out on the streets (this can be both dangerous or meaningful depending on the circumstances).
Yet much of what the criticisms above aim to do, rather than reckon and confront seriously the hard and complicated issue of American police departments’ continuing to disproportinately murder people of color, they seek to delegitimize the style in which proponents of having that discussion instigate it. From Colin Kaepernick taking a knee to protests devolving into lawlessness, watching netizens like the ones above direct their ire at the eruption of citizens clamoring to have this discussion are just carrying out the first line of defense they may be using to protect police officers from accountability. Of course the Internet is not the best place to go for nuanced political discourse, from what American media I’ve consumed, multiple news sources also seem bent on reinforcing this ad hominem discourse into their cycle.
Ask yourself this question seriously: Is there really any doubt in your mind that the overwhelming majority of people that support Kaepernick kneeling before NFL games also believe police brutality disproportionately affects Black people? Do you have any doubt that those that do not support him kneeling also deny that it is an issue? If I were to draw out a Venn Diagram of those two groups, the parts where they overlap would be a sliver as thin as a papercut. Yet looking at the media coverage it was laser-focused on the periphery issue of kneeling during the anthem (in fact the story for why Kaepernick was kneeling only came after it was reported by a Black journalist that had cared to interview him about it while other news outlets didn’t even bother to ask). Obsessing over this only loosely-connected “issue” in the context of the real root of our disagreement, that is whether or not policing in America is systemically racist, drives two very serious problems in modern political discourse.
First, it dumbs down our conversations almost entirely for the profit-driven sake of being accessible to a larger audience. Questioning the symbolism of kneeling is a much more reachable kicking off point in the minds of viewers for debate and thus more accessible to cable news consumers because it doesn’t require a degree in criminal justice to fully participate in. As a result we find ourselves obsessing over the superficial rather than the substantive in some adult-version of a high school drama. As Jon Stewart perfectly described in a recent interview for the New York Times:
There are issues, but again, we point a spotlight on the anecdotal and pretend that it’s universal. What that does is feed the narrative for people who want to use it for their own purposes. That’s what drives me bananas. We’re basically having giant public fights about symbolism, while the reality of our situation goes unexamined.
Aunt Jemima, Confederate statues, a reporter challenging Trump’s latest racist remark at a press conference; so much of our attention is focused on this stuff that it has shaped us to think of politics in almost entirely performative light. That is not to say that questioning these culture war symbols holds zero value but because of their disproportionate representation in the media, bad policymaking barely occupies a space in our mind when contemplating politics. This has the dual-effect of blurring the lines between whether an athlete can peacefully protest during the national anthem or if they should because police brutality is a serious problem. In turn the media inadvertently moves the goalposts about what constitutes legitimacy to a much more opaque position and desensitizes us to the appalling breaches of norms and rights that we see happening on an almost weekly basis in this era.
The second problem is that it gravely exacerbates our disdain for one another because the hypocrisy of the other side always seems self-evident when two different sides are participating in the same political act. Whether its protesting lockdown in Michigan during a pandemic or protesting police brutality in Minnesota during a pandemic; when you make it about the legitimacy of protesting during a pandemic rather the concerns of the aggrieved you not only escalate derision from the opponent’s side for being hypocritical about protesting, you also become trained to ignore the pain of the marchers. It is intensely less personal to have a disagreement with someone over tax policy than it is to have a disagreement about whether or not a person should be allowed to tell you their opinion on tax policy. In turn, a culture of gamesmanship creeps into becoming the new norm. One in which both sides are more preoccupied with pushing traditional limits but also decrying the hypocrisy of the other side once they do the same thing. This entrenched culture may seem sustainable until the logic of suspending elections indefinitely becomes inexorable.
The side effects of cheapening our interactions to mere team sports are vast but the one I’ve wrestled with the most this week is no doubt because of all the time I’ve spent online. At this point I feel like it’s worth reminding everyone that we live in a democracy. There is an exchange of ideas that gets debated in the public realm by citizens and then recommended to policymakers that are duly elected by citizens to carry out those recommendations. There seems to be such a breakdown of that understanding in modern political discourse that we have come up with an entire lexicon of hackneyed names for each other to delegitimize actors functioning properly inside of that political framework. A citizen correcting how their friend refers to an ethnic group? Social Justice Warrior! Legally carrying a gun when going to the store? White supremacist! Political organization pushing to implement eight data-driven policy reforms to police departments across the country? Sinister actors attempting to co-opt the BLM movement! Using the world’s greatest communication device to share your political opinion with your friend online? Internet Keyboard Warrior! Expressing support for a political cause or a voice you admire? Virtue signalling! Here’s another term for everyone above - people engaged in civics. Maybe I am becoming an anachronism in the era of Trump but words and language still matter.
I hear you loud and clear that it is important to not normalize certain ideologies but I will also tell you that using this language absolutely does not break through those bubbles because it is immediately dismissed as hyperbole. I’ll again refer to Stewart’s NYT interview (if it’s not apparent yet he is my political spirit animal) again because I was blown away by his answer to a question about whether or not we should demonize anything that perpetuates racism:
The moral high ground is absolutely there, but we can all achieve something higher. It’s too easy to point at the low-hanging moral fruit without doing the work that those who are supposedly on the side of the angels need to do. There’s all this talk of being on the right side of history, but what does that mean? ‘‘The arc of moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.’’ Who’s bending it? What are we doing to further that? If you just get rid of Trump, that doesn’t end this. It’s too easy to say: ‘‘I support this other guy. Therefore, I’m part of the solution.’’ Or: ‘‘You support that guy. Therefore, you’re the problem.’’ Now, that is in no way exculpatory to the supporters of those policies or that regime. My point was: What does that judgment get you? What is the accountability that we have for those who really do believe this is unjust but still accept the tacit societal arrangements?
The problem with all of these names is that you are giving yourself the easy way out by not engaging with the topic or person in a more complete way. Instead of challenging yourself to do the hard work of picking up a book, we are instead going for the dopamine rush of patting ourselves on the back because we clapped-back in a tweet that got a thousand likes. This is going to be hard to read, but it is a sad fact of history: Justice, in any traditional sense, rarely ever comes to those who were complicit in the horrors of their era. The sooner we start acting like parents managing their child’s temper tantrums for the sake of educating them about how to be a better person, the sooner we can begin to build a better future.
The paradox of making our discourse more participatory and less refined is that it has likely increased the amount of (angry) participants. The 2018 midterm elections had the highest voter turnout in a century and before the coronavirus hit many were predicting the largest election turnout in American history for this November. While joining 25,000 others at a BLM demonstration a few weeks ago a girl showed up to take selfies with her BLM banners to show off online to her friends and I’m conflicted about how to feel about her even weeks after watching her engage in the slightly self-indulgent session.
Democracy is inherently a coalition-building system, one in which achieving results is contingent upon building a consensus amongst a broad swath of otherwise disparate groups of people. Movements need people and politicians that implement change need votes. At the end of the day, shaming people that take the time out of their day to dress themselves, construct signs and actually show up to a demonstration seems to be the application of a strategy of exclusiveness rather than the necessary one of inclusiveness. Pushing out potential collaborators because they don’t adhere to a stricter doctrine of self-reflection is both, on the one hand, self-defeating yet also the only real act, i.e. shame, we can really do to challenge people to look within themselves and do better.
I have found myself simultaneously infuriated by George Floyd’s murder and incredibly motivated to push for changes, yet also supremely disheartened at how little of an impact I feel like I can make in the enormous wave of support sweeping the world. Our democratic way of government really only allows for me to advocate vigorously for reform to lawmakers, sign petitions, speak up in the communities I’m a part of and positively encouraging my friends to do likewise, research and donate money to organizations pushing for the right things, joining demonstrations and voting. I tend to enjoy the prospect of being part of the BLM movement in this manner but not needing to be a distinguished professor in race relations in order to participate. Shutting the fuck up and raising Black voices to speak of their experience while I listen, consciously work to correct my behavior and stand there in support at a rally is a role I relish having; yet critics online still despise this approach because I’m not “policing my own community” or I may be “once again putting all the pressure on Black people to speak up when it is our responsibility to enact change”. You’ll have to excuse my white fragility but it is daunting trying to do what is right but receiving conflicting messages about what exactly that is. I am listening.
The reason the use of the term virtue signalling as a pejorative bugs me so much is because it infers that active citizenship is somehow insufficient. I do not suspect that any protest in history has entirely been made up of strict adherents and it’s foolhardy to expect that today too. At the same time, encouraging friends and family to become anti-racists is also a necessary condition given the perniciousness of racism as a social issue. Whether Selfie Girl posts her photo online for clout or for real, if supporting Black Lives Matter becomes “cool” and police are held accountable for murdering Black people because our society deems it morally unacceptable then I will also stand by it, craven or not.
