2020 has been an incredibly hard year, and many social justice issues, racism being the most prominent, have exploded into the popular conversation sphere. Instagram has become a hub for sharing information on racism, how to deal with systemic racism and bigoted people, and how to practice anti-racism.
The one topic I did not see being discussed was how to talk about racism with those you care about in ways that are actually constructive. So much discussion on racism is aggressive, defensive, and destructive — ultimately detrimental to the cause.
I joined the fray with my strongest skill, UX design, and created my first infogram (which is what I'm calling these more-than-infographics that live on Instagram) to address conversation in the context of racism. My target audience was liberal non-black people with bigoted on uninformed family members whom they are having trouble communicating with. It was, as an understatement, a success.
On Instagram:
Most importantly, the post sparked hundreds of conversations, most of which I personally engaged with. There were plenty of dissenters whom I was happy to speak with, utilizing the same skills and techniques represented in the post. I made some mistakes when writing the post (even with 15 rounds of revision and edits by socially educated friends) and readily admitted my wrongs. However, even more conversations — in both comments and DMs — were with people who needed advice specific to their situations. People with particularly difficult family members, people with minority relatives for whom a different style of conversation is necessary, people who didn't have the respect from their elders to be able to even have these conversations.
The original post garnered over 87,000 likes, was reposted dozens of times (possibly more that I'm not aware of) and it was shared on user's stories thousands of times (can't say for because I wasn't notified of shares by reposts). It was reposted by @shityoushouldcareabout, a massive instagram account with over 2.6 million followers. Their repost garnered over 130,000 likes and more than 70,000 shares. Ok ok, I'll stop bragging about numbers. I really like numbers
Accessible Text-Based
I received several requests for a text-based version of the post that could be viewed by people with poor internet connection, and even one request for a printable version that could be mailed to one person's grandparents. I already had my DIY blog posts set up to be nicely printable and light on images, so I created a text version of the post (which gave me the opportunity to fix a few mistakes in the original) and posted it there.
This post (and the antiracism movements that propelled it) taught me so much and enabled so many incredible conversations, not to mention the countless people it was able to help. I'm eternally grateful.
