Social Movements Necessitate Sacrifice

Free Nelson Mandela Protest in West Berlin, Wikimedia

CHESTERTOWN, MD -- Among our readings for my class "POL 294: Civic Engagement & Political Advocacy", there has been a great deal of disagreement over the necessity of one to convince other peoples of your political positions, and whether it is your personal responsibility to inform others of political issues. Personally, I am inclined to believe that it is necessary and a moral responsibility of people to discuss their politics (and where it’s linked and appropriate) their identity.

For example, if you’re an immigrant (or, like me, the child of immigrants) it could be very important for you to inform your friends who may support the actions of the Trump administration of your personal experiences with living under the fear of ICE. There is less of a strong case that one should make an active effort to convince strangers of your political beliefs and to care about how politics may affect your identity. There are thinkers from the reading that has been most recently reviewed in class who believe that not only do marginalized groups not have a moral responsibility to talk to non-marginalized peoples about racism, or misogyny, that saying the marginalized group has a responsibility to educate the non-marginalized is adding an extra burden upon that group that simply does not need to exist for any reason. 

It is necessary for some to inform the non-marginalized of the existence and pervasiveness of discrimination, while non-marginalized people may be vaguely aware of these problems, they aren’t aware of the extent. I believe that there are some people who should be informing the non-marginalized of the marginalized’s tribulations because without this, and without the outrage against the system that the non-marginalized may then develop, it becomes quite literally almost completely impossible to change the system in any positive way. 

That salient point being stated, it is necessary to acknowledge the validity of a large chunk of the arguments that are being made by the other side. Eddo-Lodge remarks in Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race “entering into a conversation with defiant white people is frankly a dangerous task for me.” astutely making the point that discriminated against groups face risk when they express their dissatisfaction with the current systems of racism to any given white person, as they may and often do violently disagree. There is also danger for other marginalized groups, it is still the case in some countries that it is not only illegal, but punishable by death to be a homosexual, in this case it is absolutely permissible for a queer person to not only not inform others of the dangers of homophobia, but also to hide their queer identity. 

This being stated, on the other side of this debate, Chepp argues very well that expressing your identity freely when it is safe, and tying politics of equity into that message in art and particularly spoken-word poetry can be a vital and often overlooked tool for activism. Chepp gives us an example of this in practical action, saying that the posts and works of a spoken word poet in the mid 2010s resulted in “over 78,000 Facebook followers around the world . . . What started as a spoken word poem has evolved into a multi-issue social justice advocacy organization” (Chepp, 2016). This shows the necessity of personal experience in effective attacks against hatred.