Shalom Akolatse ’26 is a Math major and Chemistry minor. He is Co-Editor-In-Chief of Black Poets Society, and Internal Vice President for Pi Kappa Alpha. Rumor has it that he can be caught napping in his lab’s couch in the ISC.
Contact him at scakolatse@wm.edu
The views expressed in the article are the author’s own.
To many of us, the general disaffectedness and ultimately blinding individualism that drives neoliberal culture proves to be unsatisfying. We know that there are many interlocking systems that drive the problems that we face today. To be made to bear witness to such atrocities on such scales as genocides puts our moral engines into overdrive — we have to do something. And one of the easiest things to do in a state of moral stress is to start moralizing everything. But this moralizing, apart from being unproductive, ultimately proves to be the alienation of many (but certainly not all) those pointing out the aggravating nature of those who are “chronically online.”
A personal example: Many of you know that J.K. Rowling has created herself as a sort of face for the Trans-exclusionary Radical Feminist movement, a large force driving the onslaught of the transphobia we witness today. Because of this, many transgender people and allies have advocated for the boycotting of the Harry Potter series, as Rowling donates generously to organizations such as conversion therapies for transgender children. To me, a person well-versed in internet spaces where such ideas are discussed, to watch Harry Potter can feel like an admission of transphobia — like I am saying I don’t care enough about this issue for it to affect my behavior. And recently, I found myself in the position where I got into a heated discussion with my friends over watching Harry Potter for a movie night. I was arguing we were serving Rowling’s transphobic ends by watching what was a beloved movie from their childhoods (not mine, I will admit). They were essentially arguing that it wasn’t that deep, and that many movies were “stained,” so to speak, with the hands of bad agents. We ended up watching a different movie after my friends saw how much this was bothering me, but something stuck with me for days after the fact. A dissonance between the notions of morality I had internalized, where I had to avoid anything that could be seen as causing harm in some way, and the very valid point my friends had raised that many a producer and director have questionable morals. And it is here where we see the breakdown of this kind of moral framework. Should I be avoiding them too? Should I be doing more research into directors? I probably shouldn’t have that Disney+ subscription for multiple reasons. Am I a bad person for not caring enough?
And of course the answer is no. We know that the answer is no. But just as liberals find themselves in the pitfalls of placing responsibility for the physical failures of the system onto individuals, leftists find themselves internalizing and often displacing onto others the moral failures of the system. To me, an anxious person obsessed by the notion of moral perfection, it’s not a problem to accept that the system isn’t working. But, weirdly, a part of me is grieved by the fact that none of this bullshit is my fault. And if I’m a little cynically honest with myself, nothing I’m doing is changing something like the tens of thousands of dollars that Rowling is donating.
I believe that at the core of many a hopeful leftist is optimism. We want to believe that something can be better, that we can have a world without transphobia or racism or genocide or billionaire capitalism. And we should believe that, because it’s hope that spurs us onto action, but the devastating fact of the matter is that we do live in a world with powerful people that are transphobic and racist and genocidal and capitalist. And that it doesn’t do any favors to act like that is caused by ourselves or our neighbors. We are not our own enemies. Indeed, even your angry alt-right grandfather is not the source of the world’s suffering (I know he might be the source of some suffering. And we’ll get to that.)
This moral sensitivity, as I mentioned, also leads to ostracization. “It’s not that deep” culture, in my opinion, minimizes what is often either earnest enjoyment of something or genuine critique. But sometimes, the statement is true. To a frustrated leftist, seeing demonstrations of racism left and right may make one start displacing anger at the system onto anything that might possibly be a symptom of it, even if it is only tenuously related. It is this phenomenon we see criticized in the concept of the “Social Justice Warrior,” a sensitive, angry person that just needs to calm down.
Do not get me wrong — to be angry or sensitive are not things that I believe should be criticized, especially in the face of marginalization. But we do rightly feel that something is amiss when we see student body elections between two reasonable (not racist) presidential candidates at our college compared to Jim Crow-era racism. Because it really isn’t that deep. And I get why one may feel it’s that deep. There’s so much going on all the time in the world. And sometimes, the straw just breaks the camel’s back. But perhaps this energy is better directed elsewhere.
And that’s where leftists, while successfully acknowledging the futility of trying to bring about change in the minds of those far removed from themselves, can successfully diverge from the detachment from issues that permeates many liberals. It’s by realizing that certain things are in our control. I believe that this is where (as trite and overused this turn of phrase may be) “community-oriented” models of leftism really shine.
You can’t end transphobia by kinda derailing movie night for your friends. But you can make sure that your trans friends know that you support them, and maybe be a little bit more vocal the next time you notice someone close to you use the wrong pronouns for someone. You can donate to that organization that you noticed tabling when you have a minute and dollar to spare. You can’t end capitalism. But you can donate some food to the food bank around you. You can’t end climate change. But maybe you can volunteer at a garden. And in the process of doing this, of talking to people and interacting with the world around you, you find yourself in circumstances where you can do a little bit more — where you’re the one tabling, or you make a homeless friend or you organize a food drive. And then once you can do it, you’ll find that you can actually do it. And you’ll feel so much more satisfied and in tune with your community than any infinite amount of discoursing or moralizing you’d do in accordance with what people on Twitter dictate.
This article is, in some ways, a free pass to stress a little less about the world. But in other ways, it’s an urge to do more that’s actually useful that you know you can do. Not from a place of moral anxiety, but out of a place of wanting to do something concrete for the people around you. It’s small waves like these that pave the way for larger things like campus, city or even bigger change. But even if what you do in the world doesn’t end up creating large waves around the entire globe, you can still go to sleep knowing that you fed someone, made someone’s day a little less hard or pushed back on some prejudice that you saw. And that is, regardless of its size, something.
