The Incredible Real Challenges of Protesting Detention Centers as a Privileged, White Female
By Heather Osterman-Davis (a privileged white woman)
Read article after article about the crisis on the border. Repost on every social media account you can with phrases like, “This is LITERALLY Breaking My Heart!” until it figuratively does break your heart. You decide you need a social media timeout because according to your Apple Watch, your resting heartrate is way up.
Group text your BFFs Ashlee, Ashleigh and Ashley about how they’re dealing with all this madness. Set your text notification to “applause” so it can inspire you as their responses come in.
Oh, girl, the struggle is real
I know right? Where is the outrage?
You can’t take care of others if you don’t take care of yourself
Truth!!!!!!
Decide the Ashes are right and decide you need to pull yourself together and take some action. Look up the closest yoga class, put on your best Lululemon pants, the one that makes your butt look extra perky and go sweat it out. As you lay on floor during Sivasana your stomach grumbles. You’re deep into the Master Cleanse so aside from gallons of Cayenne Lemonade, you haven’t eaten in four days. In between your hunger, your spine digging into the floor and the air conditioning blowing on your neck, you start to cry because you realize you’re getting a glimpse into what those poor kids must be feeling.
After yoga, pull out your IPHONE X to calculate the perfect tweet to explain your revelation but words don’t feel right. Wonder if an insta story would be more appropriate but worry your ponytail doesn’t give the gravitas you’re the looking for. As you toggle between Instagram, twitter, snapchat and Facebook, the irony that here you’re sitting here struggling how to convey their plight on social while there’s not even internet access in the detention centers smacks you in the face. You decide you’re not going to be one of those people who sit on the sidelines and tweet while the world burns, or freezes as the case may be.
Decide to throw a wine and cheese fundraiser at your BFF’s SOHO loft because he has space and light so all you need to do is order food. Panic when the catering delivery comes without gluten free crackers but manage to save the day through an Instacart order. Tip Juan, the delivery guy 20% even though you usually consider tipping a scam because you already pay a delivery fee and feel like it’s the company’s job to pay a living wage in the first place but today it feels extra important.
In addition to collecting money at the party set up a special Venmo account to accept donations for your new cause #internetcampsforall. Get really excited when your hashtag starts trending until you realize it’s because a) apparently people don’t think internet access is a top priority and b) if you read it quick, your tag pretty much reads like internment camps for all.
Delete your original tweet and add a long thread explaining that you really didn’t mean to offend but it’s really, really hard to know the right thing to do. Also, you know you’re not perfect but the important thing is you’re trying and so many people don’t do anything at all, so people should be patient if you don’t get things exactly right. Also you really, really respect people of color and their pronouns. Start to add all the hashtags you can think of but panic when you can’t remember if #alllivesmatter is a good or bad tag. On one hand, why would all lives not matter? But somewhere in the back of your head, you’re pretty sure it’s not right. Decide to leave it off just in case.
Sign off with #timetogetwoke and a quote by Maya Angelou “You may encounter many defeats, but you must not feel defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you will come out of it.”
Go to sleep on your new Casper mattress thinking how right Maya was, and tomorrow morning, despite it all, “Still you rise!” Wonder if you should add that to your tweet but figure it can wait until morning. Fall asleep on your Casper mattress under your bamboo sheets and sleep a solid ten because #protesting is hard.