5 Ways to Creatively Combat Racism on Facebook

It can stop you dead in your tracks. Your cursor blinking expectantly, waiting for you to unleash a whirlwind of words. You could do that. You could comment. You could engage.

Or…

You could use your time a little more creatively. Here’s a guide to some more imaginative ways to  fight racist comments in your Facebook feed.

“THE REVEREND MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. PREACHED NON-VIOLENCE!”

Instead of writing a treatise on how Dr. King’s words are often co-opted by the very system he was trying to fight on your Aunt Trish’s wall, find your own way to get closer to the words and struggle of MLK.

Write a puppet musical based on the life and times of Martin Luther King. The emotion! The sense of history! The drama! Worried about portraying such an important figure in black history as a white person? Lean on symbolism to avoid any Franklin-G.O.B. missteps. Re-imagine Alabama Gov. George Wallace as a shark and Martin Luther King as a passionate seal. Martin Luther King was a man who understood that non-violence wasn’t the only kind of protest. Riots were a reaction to the horrible conditions caused by racism. When people feel that they have no options left in a society that doesn’t care about them, they can act in sadness, anger, frustration. Hasn’t everyone thrown a remote control against the wall when the DVR didn’t record Bones? Now imagine that your remote control stood between you and justice, peace, economic stability and a good education for your children.

Have the seal deliver a rousing speech of Martin Luther King’s own words: “And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard.” Just because a seal doesn’t have ears doesn’t mean it can’t listen to the voices of the people.

Record your opus and post it on your Aunt Trish’s wall instead.

“BUT…BUT…REVERSE RACISM!”

It’s very tempting to explain to your ex-boyfriend’s new boyfriend that reverse racism isn’t real in a long, passionate Facebook comment, but there might be a more innovative way to illustrate your point.

The idea that racism goes both ways–white and black–is not a novel concept, so why not use new technologies address this argument?

Learn to code, and develop a new app to address his flawed argument. People who believe racism isn’t real tend to equate personal feelings or hardship with systemic and/or institutional oppression. Use Objective-C and build an app like Tinder, where you swipe left on being bullied for having red hair and swipe right for being 21 times more likely to be shot and killed by police.

Use Javascript to build a website that generates GIFs of RuPaul’s Drag Racecontestants rolling their eyes and throwing shade every time your ex-boyfriend’s new boyfriend claims the #blacklivesmatter hashtag puts white people down. Although…it *might* be hard to find a GIF of Latrice Royale explaining that demands by African-Americans for their lives and deaths to be taken seriously by white mainstream media and politicians aren’t also demanding the subjugation of white lives. Black Lives Matter in addition to White Lives.

Take every dollar earned off app store profits and Google AdWords revenue and donate it to BmoreUnited, a local Baltimore charity providing bail for protesters and lunches and safe spaces for children whose school days are affected.

“SHOULDN’T WE BE MORE UPSET ABOUT BLACK-ON-BLACK CRIME?”

You’ve told yourself you should unfriend Carol about a thousand times now. Between her endless Candy Crush Soda Saga requests and the non-stop videos of Dr. Oz popping a giant foam pimple, your lab partner from high school is a Facebook menace. Her presence in your feed would be easy to write off–if it wasn’t for the racist vitriol masked behind faux concern about black-on-black crime. Why not reach out to Carol and satisfy her desire to see some kind of memorial for its victims?

Take up sculpture; carve a marble frieze. Like the greats Rodin, Giambologna and Michelangelo himself, capture the emotion and pathos of the human condition as you liberate the human form from the marble.

Then, build an equally large statue for the victims of white-on-white crime, because 84% of white victims are killed by white offenders, nearly identical to the percent of black victims killed by black offenders. Imagine the opportunity to create two grand sculptures for the victims of intraracial crime.

Build a smaller (but no less significant) sculpture honoring the concept of misleading statistics that criminalize black people and divert focus from police brutality in inner-city communities. Maybe a statue hewn from bronze of a politician plucking statistics off a cherry tree?

“THERE ARE BIGGER TRAGEDIES IN THE WORLD TO WORRY ABOUT.”

It can be infuriating to see someone demand we focus on tragedies abroad instead of tragedies here in America. Daniel, that annoying guy you took one improv class with six years ago, definitely thinks everyone should be focusing on real tragedies and not phony ones here in America.

You could just tell Daniel that many people are able to follow multiple news stories at once and devote their free time and resources to many worthy causes, domestic and foreign…

Or…

You could enroll in your local clown college. What better way to manifest the mental act of shifting focus from one cause to another than to take up juggling? Spend months studying this 4,000 year old skill, then invite Daniel to a private juggling exhibition at your home. Wait until June 15th, though, that’s National Juggling Day.

Gather your juggling balls. Let Daniel see each one before you masterfully toss them into the air. On each one is the name of a place where unrest and strife is breaking out – Baltimore, MD; Kathmandu; Nepal; The Sambisa Forest; Nigeria; the Panera parking lot where someone stole your hub cabs. (Hey, you can still care about yourself.) As you pick up more and more balls, stare deeply into Daniel’s eyes and whisper, “people can focus on more than one thing at a time.”

“WE HAVE A BLACK PRESIDENT NOW. RACISM IS OVER.”

Just unfriend this person. They’re not even worth the trouble.

Ali Barthwell is a member of the Second City Touring Company. She recaps campy TV for the internet. Follow her @wtflanksteak where she tweets about lipstick and Captain America's behind.