This week my Facebook was filled with thumbnails of the French flag in the wake of multiple attacks by ISIS in Paris, which were followed by criticisms of the eurocentric responses to the attacks, which were then followed by debates about whether or not the government should be allowing Syrian refugees into the country, or how thorough the vetting process should be, and it continues and morphs faster than my basic-phone self can keep up with (I prefer basic phone over "dumb phone," thank you very much). Profile pictures are changed, blogs are written (clearly), hashtags are used, and we all feel a little bit better and a little bit worse for having participated. Sometimes part of us wants the injustice to end just so our online lives return to an elusive peaceful norm and sometimes we want it to spring up again so we can revel in the chaos, drawing battle lines around statuses and making our loyalties known with likes and retweets.
Social media is a drug, and the highs are even higher and lows even lower when a crisis is involved. Maybe it's because we want to change things, or because we want to make sense of things, and maybe we just want to feel validated. That's not to say that people don't care deeply about justice. Many, many do. But each of us is barely a single person and none of us are quite whole, and our motives and desires are mixed and often mysterious even to the most self-aware. This is all of us, to varying degrees, at different times, in different ways. I believe that the vast majority of people want to see more good and justice in the world, but the world is a messy place and the meanings of goodness and justice are evidently not always self-evident. Justice is a trendy word, almost too trendy to be meaningful.
Despite their issues and ambiguities, modern conceptions of justice and social media crusades should not be left behind. Social media can act as a gathering place for oppressed and scattered voices and has been a powerful vehicle for the nation's biggest movement for racial justice since the Civil Rights Movement. Social media solidifies and amplifies our voice by giving us a platform and a virtual audience. For people who have been denied a platform, this is truly liberating, truly Gospel bringing. When used by those who have less access to other means of social engagement, social media can lift up stories and injustices that may otherwise be ignored and bring glimpses of a kingdom where "the last will be first and the first will be last."
But when this platform becomes the main platform that most people use to engage with social issues, those with power can perceive these echoes of equality as a sign that the roles have actually been reversed. And if you are first, a kingdom where "the last will be first and the first will be last" is not good news for you. The powerful see in these words a reflection of a world where their power will be taken away, and they feel their power must be defended. Statuses and tweets and likes and comments suddenly become infused with importance not because there is power to be gained but because there is power to be lost. This is nothing new; spaces claimed by those experiencing oppression have always been claimed by people who benefit from it,
And then in all of this are us problematic sometimes-white-savior-y people, who have largely been on the receiving end of privilege and see that that's injustice and try to use the increased power we have on this platform to lift up the voices that have been historically pushed down. And I tend to think that's a good thing (why would I be writing this if it's not?). But in a world where posts and power are seemingly so intertwined, changing our profile picture or tweeting a hashtag to support a noble cause can give us the feeling of having done something. But is this really a way to give up our power to the powerless, or is it a way to take power from them? Are we really just using the backs of the oppressed as stages from which to preach about their liberation? Are we "really seeking good, or just seeking attention?" (I couldn't resist the Wicked reference) I constantly hope this isn't me, but my motives are as mixed and mysterious as anyone else's.
Maybe the more important question is this: what do we do when there aren't hashtags? Do we risk? Do we serve? Do we struggle with others in their powerlessness? The answer to these questions won't always be "yes," but we must at least be trying. We must at least do the most we can to center the voices of the marginalized, to lower ourselves, to listen. Only then can our calls for justice be "Jesus-shaped."
I've talked about social media's downfalls, but here is one of its potential strengths. When used correctly, Twitter (and Facebook, but I think to a lesser degree) can become a powerful tool to invert our reality by maximizing the presence of voices that are scarce elsewhere in our lives. I'm being completely serious when I say that beginning to use Twitter for this purpose a little over a year ago has been one of the things that has radicalized me the most. As blogger Caris Adel noted, when I joined Twitter I was unaware that it would "up-end my life." The simple act of re-orienting ourselves around the stories of the oppressed through social media is Jesus-shaped enough to cause us to give up our safe worlds of protected power and begin the long and imperfect journey towards true liberation and justice.
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