The Marketing Failure of Social Justice
So many self-owns and missed opportunities
If you owned a restaurant and had an idea for a delicious new menu item that you wished to call the “shit sandwich,” I would sincerely hope there’d be someone sensible nearby to try to dissuade you from embarking on such a horrifically misguided (and guaranteed market flop) naming choice. I mean, I don’t care how much bacon and secret sauce it has on it. Who wants to bite into a piping-hot shit sandwich?
When it comes to messaging in the realm of social justice activism, for some bizarrely myopic reason, there seem to be a lot of so-named sandwiches on the menu. It’s amazing no one in management or in the kitchen seems to have noticed.
Luckily, despite such activists’ typically staunch, anti-capitalist bent, good old capitalist consumerism may, in fact, have just the guidance they need to better align their means with their ends.
You see (and this is by no means my area of expertise, but the principles are pretty self-explanatory), for companies hoping to make money from their business enterprises as opposed to just operating them out of the goodness of their non-bleeding hearts, it’s important that the products or services they sell be attractive to the people they’re hoping will buy them. That’s kind of Business & Marketing 101.
In service of that goal, they employ all kinds of overpaid “experts” with fancy titles and degrees, who advise them on how to name their products, what messaging and tone to use in their ad campaigns, etc., etc. These experts run “focus groups” whose job is to serve as guinea pigs for ideas before formally launching them and learning the hard way that they completely suck. It sort of makes sense. After all, there’s a lot of money at stake.
So one might think that, in the world of social justice, where a lot more than just money is at stake (you can’t put a price on human dignity, right?), you’d think activists and movements would follow the same principles of the business world, and test out their concepts and endless neologisms and redefinitions in a “test space” before unleashing them on the unsuspecting public. But no. Alas. Down with the capitalist pigs and their privileged “common sense,” right?
But be that as it may, I’m going to go ahead and offer up my wholly unsolicited advice on the matter. And I can pretty well guarantee that everything I’m about to say will come across as overtly snarky and insensitive to certain readers (if everything I’ve said so far hasn’t already), but so be it. There’s that whole “omelets and breaking eggs thing,” and I like to cook; so let’s get cracking!
The following is a selection of groups, slogans, and phrases that, in recent years, have become equally part of the public consciousness and part of the never-ending culture wars. I’m going to be that clueless white guy who has no business discussing such things (if the anointed ones who are allowed to discuss them are to be believed), but who’s going to go ahead and discuss them anyway, because I believe that’s every human being’s fundamental right, and that to deny it is the worst form of tyranny.
So in that spirit, I’m going to present the group, slogan, or phrase in question, highlight its obvious and unfortunate shortcomings, and then suggest simple alterations that could have had profound changes in impact, receipt, and effectiveness had they been considered before committing to the choices they did. Such a shame, but tant pis pour toi. Perhaps elsewhere in the multiverse. Anyway, it is what it is, so here we go.
Black Lives Matter
This one is downright tragic. For, perhaps only in 20/20 hindsight, but it’s now clear that simply adding one extra word to this powerful movement, slogan, and 2014 Word of the Year to make it “Black Lives Matter, Too” would have avoided all manner of ridiculousness and misunderstanding. It would have handily sidestepped the entire “All Lives Matter” and “White Lives Matter” shitshows. To quote from John A. Powell of Berkeley’s “Othering and Belonging Institute”:
Because it can be easily misunderstood, I’ve even been critical of the term “Black Lives Matter.” What that term is really saying is that “black lives matter too.” But that nuance gets lost to many whites when you don’t explain that, and you instead risk engaging in what I call “breaking.”
Breaking language frames efforts for equality and justice as being “us vs. them,” a zero-sum game where one group’s benefit comes to another group’s detriment, and inevitably gives rise to a backlash. The “all lives matter” retort is an example of that backlash.
As an alternative, what I advocate for is “bridging,” meaning we want to engage with other groups, and we are willing to hear their story and their suffering. Their humanity is not called into question. We can be part of a shared fabric. To recognize someone’s full humanity does not entail either agreeing with them or measuring against our own. We understand that racial justice and equality are not zero-sum games.
Amen, John. Truly a bummer that all-so-important “Too” got left out.
White privilege
This is one that, for many white people, immediately triggers a natural, defensive reaction. Or to put it more simply, it pisses them off completely. But like the others, it didn’t have to be this way.
It’s an undeniable fact that, in general, white folk are far less likely to get shot during encounters with police than our Black brethren. That certainly needs to change (as in, less everyone getting shot by cops, not more white people).
Yet, had activists chosen to refer to this phenomenon as “white immunity” or “white benefit” instead of “white privilege,” it would have avoided all the perfectly understandable, “I was born in a trailer park and was never handed anything, so fuck you for suggesting otherwise” retorts. Seems like kind of a no-brainer.
And that’s not just my personal opinion. As the results of one university study concluded:
Overall, mention of white privilege seems to create internet discussions that are less constructive, more polarized, and less supportive of racially progressive policies. The findings have the potential to support meaningful online conversation and reduce online polarization.
Again, what a lamentable missed opportunity. What an easily avoidable blunder. Did whoever coined it seriously think people weren’t going to conflate it with the normally understood meaning of the word and thus, take umbrage?
“Racism” redefined
Here’s a brief recap of how this one went down.
For most of its hundred-year history, the word “racism” was both logically and semantically consistent, being as it involved notions of race, of heredity, of unchangeable, inherent characteristics and how it’s bad to discriminate against anyone — of any race — on the basis of these. It’s interesting to note that in one of the earliest appearances of the word, its potential for stoking conflict and division was prominently pointed out (my emphasis in bold):
This meaning of Nationalism in no sense implies any consent to the doctrine of Racism, which holds that unity of racial origin is the main principle of unity for civil society and that the members of each ethnical branch should properly aim at grouping themselves together into so many national States. Although it is desirable that strongly-felt national aspirations, which often depend on community of race, should be satisfied, as far as this may be compatible with justice, Racism or the Principle of Racial Self determination, as it has been called in recent years is a materialistic illusion contrary to natural law and destructive of civilisation. [James Strachey Barnes, “The Universal Aspects of Fascism,” London, 1928]
As recently as 2019, mainstream dictionaries defined racism as:
- “the belief that races have distinctive cultural characteristics determined by hereditary factors and that this endows some races with an intrinsic superiority over others,” and
- “abusive or aggressive behavior towards members of another race on the basis of such a belief,” with race meaning “a group of persons related by common descent or heredity.”
So far, so good. There are different groups of people from different parts of the world with different historical patterns of migration and intermixing who subsequently possess different genetic makeups that can cause them to differ in appearance even though those differences are mostly superficial and not useful as a means of classifying people. And treating anyone badly based on those differences is illogical and unjust. Or to put it simply, “Racism is bad and should never be tolerated.”
But then along came 2020. For various reasons, it was somehow, somewhere decided that there weren’t enough actual, hate-filled, violent, discriminatory, and oppressive racists around, such as neo-Nazis and Klansmen, so it was unilaterally decided that the meaning of the word should be broadened in such a way that suddenly, all white people are racist. Rad.
Now to be fair, the intentions were noble. This redefinition, at least in the eyes of its proponents, was not meant to be Orwellian. It was merely meant to better address the very real problem of systemic racism. That’s to say, of there being built-in features of American law, government, institutions, and society at large that unfairly yet consistently disenfranchise Black people.
The problem though, is that, as the old English proverb notes, “the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.” After all, if you want to bring attention to the problems of systemic racism, why not just call it precisely that? Why purposely conflate it with the previous, widely understood meaning of the word?
By doing so, and by giving credence to the absurd and hateful quasi-religion espoused by carpetbagging opportunists like Robin DiAngelo, it has created a totally avoidable paradigm of massive mutual antagonism that has probably done more harm to racial relations than anything since the advent of slavery.
How was this not foreseen? Did they really think that, through a sleight of hand of redefinitional magic, they could suddenly demonize an entire diverse group of people by collectively branding them with the worst possible crime of the modern age, and that it was going to turn out well?
And then they have the gall to complain when the word “woke” gets similarly redefined as a catch-all for all things irritating about preachy, judgmental, self-righteous, and perpetually outraged social justice warriors and the absurdities they try to force down everyone’s throat on a daily basis. Nice work.
So here’s my simple suggestion for working towards racial harmony. (I know, I know. The issue is way more complicated than any simple solution could ever hope to even begin to pretend to dream of achieving. But it’s a start.)
Change the dictionary definition of racism back to its previous, perfectly useful and sensible one so that such unconscionable evil can be rooted out from where it actually exists instead of chasing phantoms. At the same time, present systemic racism as its own thing, and then proceed to dismantle it accordingly for being the unjust horror that it is. Is that so much to ask?
LGBTQIA+…+
As even members of this diverse community have to admit, it can be a challenge trying to keep up with the ever-growing collection of letters that have been gathered under this single, massive umbrella. It seems to grow by the week as new marginalized communities earn their place in the lineup.
I have absolutely no issues with anyone belonging to the whole or any subset of this community. After all, besides having close friends who proudly claim one of the letters, I’m a libertarian (small “l”). To each their own. You do you. Anyone who has an issue with anyone else for who they fundamentally are needs to learn to mind their own fucking business.
Where I do have one major quibble, though, is with the current naming convention that’s been rather clumsily, or at least, haphazardly adopted and implemented as scientific understanding and societal conceptions have evolved.
I mean, from a purely aesthetic standpoint, can’t the LGBTQIA+++ community come up with an actually pronounceable acronym? I’m sure NASA would be happy to assist. And if that’s too nerdy, then surely there must be some artsy gay folks out there who could offer up something with a bit more pizazz?
Or perhaps it’s better to just keep it scientific, like has been done with those on the autism spectrum. Might I humbly suggest something along the lines of “cis/heterodivergent” to encompass the whole rainbow of possibilities? Surely anything rolls off the tongue easier than “Legibitkweeuh plus.”
I guess at the end of the day, it’s their community and they can call it whatever they’d like. But being as the rest of us still end up having to say it, it sure would be nice to do everyone a solid and consider perhaps revising the program.
Final thoughts
Well, there you have it, folks. One cynically hopeful social critic’s take on how to work toward making the world a better place without needlessly irritating and antagonizing precisely the people whose assent and assistance will be critical to achieving any of the social justice movement’s aims. Words matter!
So let’s skip the shit sandwiches, shall we? Anyone for a bánh mì instead?
Colby Hess is a freelance writer and photographer from Seattle, and author of the freethinker children’s book The Stranger of Wigglesworth.
If you enjoy my writing and would like to receive stories by email whenever I publish, please click here.