Since I've started writing articles, I’ve tried my best not to step on too many toes. My aim has been to educate people about differences without seeming like I’m just some angry person yelling at people from behind a screen. But alas, I’ve kind of had enough. Some of you are reading hoping I’m gonna spare your fragile little millennial hearts but not this time. It’s 2017 and it’s time I stopped holding my tongue and coddling people. I’m about to break down all the reasons why the world just can’t seem to get over its problems.
Problem #1: Marches for gender equality
I just want to say I boycotted the Women’s March so hard and didn’t attend. It’s not because I was conveniently in another country but because I am totally against doing that much exercise in one go. All these people showed up and stayed on their feet and for what? Most of them probably live comfortable lives. Can’t they just look the other way when gender-based violence happens around the world? Who cares if someone less qualified than them gets paid more for the same job? Why fight for your daughters to have a better life than you? Isn’t that your daughters’ problem? Why should women of color be treated like they’re people with rights? Marginalizing WoC is a global tradition. You can’t just undo that kind of tradition because it makes minorities uncomfortable.
Problem #2: Black Lives Matter
Nothing bothers me more than those three words. It started when Trayvon Martin died. Three black women were sitting around reading their Twitter feed and notice that all they’re seeing is a bunch of snowflakes mourning death of a teenager who had the nerve to step out of his home on a cold day in a hoodie to go buy Skittles. He had the nerve to walk down the street in his own neighborhood. He had the nerve to have a pulse. He had the nerve to be black in “post-racial” America. These women saw the hurt and pain circulating and decide to bring love, hope, and validation into space. That, friends, was the birth of #BlackLivesMatter. Sounds like the birth of every terrorist organization, right? Somehow these black folks got a kick out of being reassured that their humanity is valid, that their voices are valid, that their entire lives are valid. I can see why this one rubs a lot of people the wrong way. Many of us underestimated its power and thought it was just a hashtag. Before we knew it, it became an entire movement– an entire organization. There were organized protests and different avenues for advocacy. If this goes on, black people will get closer and closer to feeling like their livelihoods aren’t at stake. Here’s why that’s problematic: we’ve seen parallel situations where this sort of thing is unproductive. Remember when those worldwide campaigns to fight malaria started? It was awful because people everywhere stopped caring about treating any other illness or medical conditions. Malaria was the only thing that constituted as being sick. People stopped going to the hospital. People stopped taking vitamins. The only people in the world who mattered anymore were the people who had malaria. With that being said, it makes total sense that someone would oppose Black Lives Matter. If black people start to matter, if black neighborhoods get safer and have better schools, if black people have access to better healthcare, if more black people go to college, if Flint has clean water, it may be the end of us all. If Black Lives Matter, no one else will have the right to live. Stay woke, folks!
Problem #3: Refugee Advocates
Refugees are the worst. One day, they’re just normal people minding their own business until a foreign country bombs them and destabilizes their country. How dare they originate from countries with rich resources? Don’t they know that war is a business? Don’t they know that western superpowers benefit financially from bombing them? They should’ve thought of that before they were born into certain countries. What’s more is that they expect that some of the countries that create the refugee crisis to host them. Rude! Just because I walked into someone’s house and took stuff without asking and destroyed it, doesn’t mean that they can just ask to stay at my place. I can’t believe they have the nerve to ask. It’s simple logic.
I’m tired. I’m exhausted. For years and years, I've had to listen to people voice legitimate concerns and I’ve had it. I wanna stop hearing about it all the time. I wanna stop seeing people crying. I wanna stop all those protestors, all the black allies and the refugees. Here’s how I plan to do it.
Strategy #1: I’ve been reading some history books and I found that the older generation really knew how to deal with the trouble making marchers. The answer is simple: take away their fun. Your read that right. They have such a great time marching for hours on end all under the premise that they’re fighting inequality. Take away their precious inequality. Deprive them of misogyny. They’ll have no choice but to stop marching. They can go back to lives they can’t complain about. Our streets will be clear and we’ll finally get what we’ve always wanted.
Strategy #2: My initial plan was to promote a hashtag that everyone could get behind. A few of my friends and I went with #AllLivesMatter for a while but it backfired for a number of reasons. We couldn’t get much done with #AllLivesMatter because we realized it doesn’t do much besides being a hashtag. There’s no meetings, no organizing and no mobilization of resources. It’s just not very engaging at all. You can attempt to shut someone up when they say #BlackLivesMatter but it doesn’t work once they point that, “all lives matter” can’t in fact function as an opposite statement to, “black lives matter”.
That’s when the idea hit me. What if we actually made sure black lives mattered? What if we used money to replace Flint’s water? What if we eliminated the prison to school pipeline? What if we stopped murdering unarmed black people? They’d have no more hashtag because their systematic oppression will have been systematically dismantled.
Strategy #3: The only way I see us getting around the refugee crisis is to cut it off at the roots. I can’t stand the thought of hosting a stranger in need. We need to stop bombing each other. Then everybody would just stay where they came from. No civil unrest, no refugees. Poof!
Trust me, guys. My plan is fool proof and super effective. The best part is that we can all join forces to make it happen. We can rid ourselves of the groaning, the protesting and advocacy. Dismantle everything that the snowflakes love to yell about. That, friends, is what true victory looks like.
