The act of valuing white lives over the lives of people of color has a long, drawn-out history, that we all know too well (I hope). I will save you the history lessons of French colonialism, Western Slavery, Imperialism, Neo-colonialism, Neo-liberalism… the list goes on. Therefore, when discussing the varied reactions that people of color have had to the attacks in Paris, let’s refrain from invalidating their experiences, anger, hurt and frustration.
The reason why so many of us are up in arms about the Facebook filter displaying the French flag is not because we care less about the attacks in Paris, not necessarily because we take issue with what the flag represents, not because we want to police how our Facebook friends are grieving, but because of the politics of power that are at clearly at play.
Because Facebook is a major corporation with local, national and global influence, they are expected to respond to issues, be philanthropic and donate their time, money and energy to things that matter. Facebook exists in a world where it would be almost impossible for them to create a filter every time a major global event happened, which is of course why they only create filters when real tragedies happen when important people die, when the world is genuinely mourning.
In case you didn’t catch my sarcasm, Facebook ain’t got the time to display filters for brown and black folk, like ever.
I don’t take issue with whether or not my friends on Facebook use the filter, I take extreme offense to the fact that Facebook uses its wealth, power and influence to imply when tragedies are actually tragedies.
As a black Muslim woman I have seen way too many people who look like me and pray like me be slaughtered by the terrorism of Western armies, terrorism at the hands of dictators, economic terrorism, environmental terrorism, and frankly too many other forms of killing and disenfranchisement to even list. Hooray for intersectionality.
Because of the inordinate amount of suffering that has happened to so many different countries and communities, it’s infuriating to witness what Facebook is blatantly implying. Facebook did not release a filter last year when 141 people were killed in the Peshawar attacks in Pakistan, 132 of which were school children. Facebook is clearly creating a hierarchy of which lives deserve mourning and which lives don’t. So hell yeah I’m going to have a visceral reaction when there’s a clear disparity.
Let us be clear that the point is not, as has never been to, scream, shout and fight to be seen as worthy by the western media, or by giant corporations such as Facebook. It would be infantilizing to imply that those who take issue with the Facebook filters are yearning to be seen as worthy. Due to the long history of devaluing our lives (as mentioned above) it’s pretty clear that selective grieving has and always will occur.
The point should be, however, to have these difficult conversations about white supremacy, worth and global grief. I don’t need Facebook to validate the deaths of thousands in order to grieve properly. But I will, however, always remain critical of power structures and how they influence public opinion.
