You reached a breaking point where you could no longer take it. Your eyes have opened too wide to no longer see it. You couldn't sit back anymore and say nothing. You've found your voice and the words to use so you no longer stay quiet. You've always cared, but now you're moved by a need to take action. Thank you. Welcome to the fight against racism and bigotry. Welcome to the fight for human rights.
I've watched you stand up and step up and speak out. I've felt my emotions waver between pride and trepidation. Pride because I see your strength and I am moved by it. Trepidation because I'm starting to realize we've traded places, you and me. There's been a shift in our roles and the past few weeks have opened my eyes to something about myself I hadn't been aware of.
Being vocal and opinionated is part of who I am and speaking out on critical social issues is not something I shy away from within my personal network on social media. On rare occasions, I'm met with dissent or counterarguments, but mostly people either agree with me or respectfully ignore me altogether. Either way, I still reach a lot of people when I share information in effort to push my liberal agenda of human rights and civil liberties for everyone. My reach is not substantial by millennial standards, but thanks to my at-least-tolerable personality and nomadic lifestyle that's allowed me to live and travel all over the world, I have a great group of diverse friends. Still, I'm pretty particular about what kind of people I let into my life. As I grow older, I'm less inclined to keep toxic people around who create negative energy. Naturally, my friends tend to be...kind of like me. Open-minded, adventurous, educated, hard-working, creative, kind, good, tolerant, considerate. My friends also include people of many religions (or none), different sexual orientations and gender identities, different races and ethnicities, different socio-economic statuses, different nationalities, different ages. The commonality across my network of friends is they're mostly all pretty nice people.
That's not to say they all share the same liberal views I have. Many of them don't. Most of the people who don't share my political views also don't share my loud-and-in-your-face personality, either. They silently ignore my posts with which they disagree, and they continue to like the travel photos that I post. There are also many friends about whom I'll never know their political stance because for them it's just a private part of their life they have no intention of sharing with acquaintances on Facebook. That's cool -- their choice. They stay away from engaging with any post that would expose their position -- but I like to think maybe they're still reading my posts and privately taking away a message.
Recently, I've realized how safe a space my social media world is that I can spout off about my views and not risk alienating people I truly care about. My real life is pretty liberal too which came to light when I visited family who live deep in Trump country just before the elections and realized I'd never seen a Trump/Pence sign in person before because there are so few conservatives around where I live. I don't live in a red state. I don't work for a Trump-supporting employer. I have no fear of repercussions in my neighborhood, my workplace, or in my family because of my political opinions. The only family member I have who supports Trump is someone with whom I have only minimal interaction once or twice a year at most because I simply do not like him and don't see eye to eye with him on anything, let alone politics.
I live in a liberal bubble and I have a completely safe space to be myself and express my views.
All around me, I see people struggling with commentary from their conservative family and friends who are criticizing them for protesting, dismissing racism and misogyny, and telling them they're over-reacting and to "get over it". Other people around me have to come to terms with the racist and hateful people in their lives who are vocal and pushing back and making them feel horrible. As I watch my friends taking the role of not just an ally but a defender, and taking a stronger stance against the vocal bigots in their lives, I'm realizing they've graciously pushed me out of the way and stepped up to the front lines while I'm safely in my bubble preaching to the choir.
I've had friends who are unable to reconcile how their parents or siblings can see the world so differently than them. I've seen several people post in Pantsuit Nation about marriages being tested through opposing viewpoints. I've seen multiple friends unfriend or be unfriended on Facebook due to an inability to find enough common ground to outweigh the moral differences with the bigoted people in their lives.
Over the years, I've only had to unfriend one person because of his racism and inappropriate comments. Although he was someone I'd known since my early childhood, I felt no guilt about unfriending him since I had little respect for him in the first place. His illogical arguments coupled with having nothing better to do than troll liberals made him a toxic presence I didn't need in my life. I was recently blocked by a bigot I once dated. No loss to me, he wasn't someone worth keeping in my life anyway and he's not someone who would ever change his views because he lacks the intellect or empathy to look beyond his blinders. Other friends with little regard for civil liberties have been unfollowed, although not unfriended. I can choose when I visit their timeline and engage with photos of their children, and I can otherwise avoid having their anti-BLM, anti-muslim, and pro-Breitbart posts show in my newsfeed.
So yeah, I find myself in a liberal bubble and I am coming to terms with the fact that most of the people who are defending marginalized people like me are doing it bravely from outside that bubble. They're not in a safe space where their views are welcome. They're not surrounded by open-minded, tolerant, intellectuals who share their values. They're fighting off the bigots and the racists and the misogynists in their lives and they are doing it despite knowing they're losing relationships they may have once cherished.
I've had several friends reach out and ask me how to cope with intolerant family members and the damages to their relationships over opposing viewpoints. I find myself at a loss and unable to offer any useful advice because my experience of debating with people I love has been so limited. My heart hurts for them and I am sorry for the anguish felt by anyone finding themselves in that position. As I watch other people raise their voices and take a stand against bigotry despite what they stand to lose, I realize how lucky I have been to live in my liberal bubble. And I will unapologetically continue to surround myself with people whose brains and hearts function like mine, but that's not a choice everyone is able to make. It's easy for me to reconcile letting go of someone whose ideology is rooted in oppression of civil liberties for others. It's not even a question in my mind -- but that's because I don't have to choose between my morals and someone I love.
#liberalbubble #safespace #beingvocal #humanrights #speakingout