Carmen James on the Dos and Don'ts of Online Activism
Ahead of Juneteenth, a Montessori teacher turned blogger and activist shares her experience.
Welcome to So Many Thoughts, a semi-weekly newsletter about royal style and the other parts of life I want to think through with you. You can subscribe here and follow me on Instagram at @EHolmes. Thank you!
One of the things I love about having a newsletter is the chance to share other voices and experiences. Today I am thrilled to feature a piece by Carmen James, a Montessori teacher turned blogger and activist. I admire, and am grateful for, both the anti-racism resources and insight Carmen shares on Instagram as well as the guidance she offers on how to best interact with educators. Ahead of Juneteenth, I asked her to share some thoughts with us and compile a list of tips for how to be responsible, engaged followers of anti-racist educators. More below!
You can find Carmen on Instagram at @theGoodCarmaBlog, where in addition to anti-racism education you will find the most adorable pet bunny vids and gorgeous wedding pics. Thank you, Carmen. xx
The Dos and Don'ts of Online Activism
By Carmen James
Being an educator comes naturally to me. I have been a Montessori teacher for over a decade and grew up being confident in my ability to teach and lead others. One of the things that has kept me motivated as a teacher is seeing the excitement my students have to learn and absorb new things around them. Their excitement gets me excited!
This is how I felt in early 2020 when I decided to take my skills over to social media and use them to share about my experience as a Black woman. I was overjoyed to see people excited about learning! Over time this turned into me becoming an unofficial anti-racism educator and I found an eager audience of intelligent women to teach. It felt liberating to have a platform to discuss a topic that used to be so taboo and overlooked.
As we know now, that quick-lived moment in 2020 when everyone appeared to be on the same page turned dark. Don’t get me wrong, there were still a lot of bright moments. But it felt like the momentum we were gaining as a society came to a standstill. My platform continues to grow but I noticed I began to see more and more pushback. People questioning my experiences, belittling the knowledge I was sharing, and wanting to argue about the existence of racism in our culture. I began to worry. I felt the need to be faultless as someone with a platform and my people pleasing personality did not want my content to become indigestible or to make anyone upset. My building anxiety reached a tipping point when I started to receive negative DMs whenever I spoke about topics related to race. hese DMs were condescending, overlooked my experiences and disregarded my expertise.
I had to make a decision: Continue to let these negative messages dictate how I move in the world or fight back. I fought back. How did I choose to fight back? I continued to teach, sharing my fears and worries instead of keeping them to myself. I became comfortable with knowing that not everyone was going to want to hear what I had to say but my goal was for my accounts to be a safe space for myself and people from other marginalized communities. I have been able to achieve this goal and reduce my anxiety by setting boundaries and gently calling out social media behavior that disregards BIPOC communities and the wisdom we have to share.
Here are some things I ask my audience to keep in mind to help me achieve this goal:
Follow people who are different from you. And don’t just rely on one person to educate you. A good starting place for this? Think of a person you have never had in your home for dinner or shared a meal with. Find them and learn from them.
Know that you’re going to hear some hard truths. Following someone who is different than you means you’re going to have your eyes opened to situations that you may have not heard of before or experienced. It may also come with realizing the world operates in different ways for different people and that you might be guilty of (unintentionally) causing harm to someone else. Instead of denying these things I encourage you to push past the uncomfortable feeling, accept these truths, and use them for the benefit of yourself and those around you.
Don’t expect the people you’re learning from to act like your personal Google search. As you learn and grow you might have a lot of questions. Do not put the burden of teaching you every little thing about being anti-racist on your educator.
Be ready to continually be humbled. I say this with love and from experience. There is always going to be something new to learn. This may feel overwhelming but don’t let it discourage you; it’s a marathon not a sprint. I find myself feeling thankful that we live in a time where this information is available to us and that we have the space and freedom to change.
Take the time to say thank you! Sharing about social justice issues and anti-racism can be draining. Social media platforms also don’t do a great job of boosting those educators’ platforms. What can you do to counteract this? Favorite their accounts, like and share their content, send them money for a coffee through Venmo or take time to email them letting them know all that they have helped you learn. A thank you goes a long way!
Thank you, Carmen! Check out her website at The Good Carma Blog and follow her on Instagram at @TheGoodCarmaBlog. Among her many talents: Photoshopping the royals into her pics.
Before I sign off, I wanted to share with you a beautiful piece in Vogue by my friend, Grief is Love author Marisa Renee Lee. She has written an essay about how her family plans to mark Juneteenth:
“As parents we all want something better for our children than we had for ourselves, and this Juneteenth I am doubling down on my commitment to my son. I will do everything in my power to give him something I didn’t have as a child: pride.”
You can read the full piece here. Take care, friends. I will see you back in your inboxes next week.
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