OPINION: Technology Brings Light to Social Issues—But Can It Implement Lasting Change?

The Black Lives Matter movement in the United States sparked global protests and conversations about the treatment of typically “othered” groups. Despite pressure on social media, education and effective policy reform are still needed to achieve justice for all.

A Black Lives Matter protest sign in London. Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona. Unsplash.

Following the deaths of Black Americans like George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor, Black Lives Matter surged into the spotlight with renewed vigor. Nationwide protests against police brutality and systemic racism revived conversations about the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion in public spaces. To avoid the consequences of “cancel culture”—the boycott of businesses that fail to embrace social change—many organizations reaffirmed their commitment to racial justice.  

On its Twitter account, Netflix emphasized “speaking up” and standing with Black Lives Matter. The ice cream chain Ben and Jerry’s posted “We Must Dismantle White Supremacy” on its website. Some brands even reinvented themselves. Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben’s came under fire for reinforcing backwards racial stereotypes of Black individuals. Their respective parent companies, Quaker Oats and Mars Inc., acknowledged the problematic history of these marketing depictions and committed to changing them.

While many have lauded these actions, others remain skeptical. “Woke washing,” as defined by diversity and inclusion expert Marlette Jackson, is when companies make “public commitments to equality” but fail to create the infrastructure that actually supports Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) staff. For example, Bon Appetit, a monthly American magazine dedicated to global cuisines and recipes, was outed for its empty promises of change. Priya Krishna, a former Test Kitchen star, revealed on Twitter that she was not fairly compensated for her work. She added that staff of color were “tokenized” and framed as “monolithic experts for their communities.” Krishna has since left Bon Appetit. 

A billboard for the skin whitening company Fair & Lovely in Bangladesh. Adam Jones. CC BY-SA 2.0

Despite instances of smoke screen marketing, Black Lives Matter has sparked questions of colorism and colonial legacies in countries like India.

In India, lighter skin is considered more desirable. This age-old belief has created a lucrative market for skin whitening products. Not only does the existence of this industry foster a culture of body insecurities, but the products themselves also contain dangerously high levels of mercury and hydroquinone. Since the rise of Black Lives Matter protests in June, many Indian celebrities like Priyanka Chopra have condemned racial injustice in the United States. However, Chopra herself filmed an ad with Fair & Lovely, one such skin lightening product.

According to activist Kavitha Emmanuel, many Indians are “blind to colorism, caste discrimination and violence against religious minorities at home.” Muslims have been lynched in increasing numbers since the ascension of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party’s Hindu nationalist government. However, many feel that Indians have been more critical of American injustices than the ones happening in their own country.  Ultimately, the question remains: are conversations alone enough to achieve lasting peace? 

Despite posthumously gracing the cover of Vanity Fair, despite hashtag trends, and despite over 11 million petition signatures as of Oct. 2, Breonna Taylor did not find justice. While the instant and global nature of the internet cultivated efforts to educate and reform, these gestures will not be enough. Unless individuals reexamine the internalized racism and national narratives that so often rule their reactions, ostracized populations will find no reprieve. Until governments step in with effective laws and limitations—ones free of loopholes—Black and marginalized individuals across the globe will continually be devalued and delegitimized.

Rhiannon Koh

earned her B.A. in Urban Studies & Planning from UC San Diego. Her honors thesis was a speculative fiction piece exploring the aspects of surveillance technology, climate change, and the future of urbanized humanity. She is committed to expanding the stories we tell.

In India’s Assam, a Solidarity Network Has Emerged to Help Those at Risk of Becoming Stateless

The state of Assam in India is currently burning with violent protests against a new citizenship law passed by both houses of the Indian parliament in early December.

The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) will ease the Indian citizenship process for undocumented migrants in India who come from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh – but only for those who are not Muslim, undermining the promise of equality by the Indian Constitution. The international community criticised the new law, with the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights calling it “fundamentally discriminatory”.

Since its parliamentary approval on December 12, the law has triggered massive protests across India including in the capital Delhi.

Concerns in Assam

Assam is directly affected by the new law. It significantly undermines the National Register of Citizens (NRC), a listing process that has been underway in Assam since 2015 through which residents have to prove their claim to citizenship based on documentary evidence. The NRC is designed to update a first list conducted as an all-India exercise in 1951 to combat illegal immigration flows, primarily from neighbouring Bangladesh.

More than 1.9 million people in Assam – many of whom are Muslim – have failed to make it onto the NRC’s final list which was published on August 31. They now face the risk of statelessness. But at the same time, the large numbers of Hindus who were excluded in the NRC system can now become Indian citizens under the CAA.

The way the CAA is written makes way for Indian citizenship of all non-Muslims who lived in certain areas of Assam, such as the Brahmaputra Valley, before or on December 31 2014, even if they don’t have documentary evidence, and while rendering Muslims stateless. It contradicts the cut-off date for inclusion used by the NRC, which was midnight on March 24 1971.

For the protesters on Assam’s streets, the CAA gives legal rights to the large numbers of undocumented Bengali-speaking Hindus who have migrated from Bangladesh since 1971 and also those currently excluded by the NRC.

Their fear is twofold. First, indigenous Assamese feel that with the inclusion of the Bengali speaking Hindus by the CAA, the composite number of Bengali speaking people (both Hindus and Muslims) will outnumber the Assamese speaking people in the state. Census data shows that the Assamese-speaking people in the state declined from 58% of the population in 1991 to 48% in 2011. Second, the Muslims both excluded by NRC and those who have migrated later, risk becoming stateless.

A journey to the Pampara Char

I’ve seen up close the damage the NRC process has had on communities in Assam. In mid-November, I visited the state with the Indian peace activist Harsh Mandar and several others as part of an initiative called Karwan e Mohabbat, a human caravan of peace, justice, solidarity and consciousness as part of my research on citizenship in the Indian borderlands.

We visited the homes of people who have been excluded from the NRC, particularly from the Muslim community in Lower Assam districts. We listened and learned about their experiences of trauma, suffering and hopelessness with the filing of their documents and how they are coping with their exclusion.

Among the people we met in the Barpeta district of Lower Assam were inhabitants of the Chars, low-lying temporary sand islands formed by silt deposition and erosion. These sand bars, which emerge and submerge in the river beds of Assam’s Brahmaputra river, are uniquely vulnerable to disasters such as floods and cyclones.

Pampara Char, one of the silt islands on the Brahmaputra river, Barpeta district, Lower Assam. Google Maps

Wild grass, thatched huts and distressed residents

The Pampara Char is a barren wasteland, with wild grass growing all over the place and houses that looked like temporary huts. The only brick building, which was freshly painted in white and blue, was the primary school. It stood distinct from the other houses and seemed sparingly used. The people, toughened by poverty and harsh ecology, were left distraught by their experience of the NRC and gathered around Harsh Mandar and other social activists to share their suffering and tales of horror about the registration process. Many had to go through repeated verification across different drafts of the list.

View of the fields in one of the village visited in Pampara Char. Anuradha S.Mookerjee, Author provided

I observed deep anxiety among the people we met, such as the aggrieved 54-year-old Khaled Ali. Illiterate and landless, Ali is a river fisherman who sometimes also works as a daily wage labourer. Like many others he received a notice in early August that he and his 18 other family members needed to submit more documents or they would be excluded from the final NRC list. Their names had been included in two previous versions.

A reverification hearing was scheduled for the next day in the distant town of Golaghat, which is 460km away from the Pamapara Char. Overnight, Ali raised a loan of 30,000 Indian rupees (US$424 or €383) to travel to Golaghat, with all his family members and two witnesses in a hired bus. After an 18-hour trip, they reached Golaghat and were received by local civil society activists who arranged for them to camp at a community centre and also helped them to submit their documents.

After their reverification hearing, Ali and his family members found themselves excluded in the final NRC list. While they have 120 days to appeal against their exclusion, his wife lamented that they lack the money to produce more documents from paralegals to support their cases before the appeal deadline on December 29. Meanwhile, a distraught Ali told us that he still has a loan of 14,000 rupees (US$198 or €178) to repay.

Complex documentation process

Harsh Mander and other social activists listening to the plea of the Char villagers. Anuradha S.Mookerjee, Author provided

For marginal and illiterate residents of the Chars such as Ali, the NRC and the process of proving citizenship has become a very stressful and expensive burden. As we found out during our home visits, a new parallel economy of document production has flourished. Paralegals charged anywhere between 500 to 1,000 Rupees for each document, a very large sum for these poor people.

The highly complex documentation process, which includes requirement for family trees and residency documents dating back to before March 24 1971, is also to blame for the exclusion of large numbers of people from the final NRC register. The process is extremely insensitive to the difficulties of the large mass of illiterate and poverty-stricken populations who are finding it very difficult to make sense of how to navigate registration on their own.

Processes of verification and reverification have been implemented in a way that firmly establish a hierarchical relation between the state and its citizens, with the complete domination by bureaucrats and public office holders over the rights of the citizens and residents.

‘Citizen-making’ humanitarians of Assam

Many of the marginalised populations in Lower Assam, such as Ali and his family, have needed constant support to be able to file their documents and fight their cases.

Local activists are playing a significant role in helping people deal with the burden of proving their citizenship, understanding the terminology and filling in the application forms and claims. They are also offering guidance about attending case hearings, support in procuring documents for submission from paralegals and also offering psycho-social counselling.

In Barpeta, volunteer Shahjahan Ali Ahmed receives an award from social activist Uma Shankari in recognition of his work helping people left out of the NRC. Anuradha S.Mookerjee, Author provided

Volunteers and human rights groups of Lower Assam have also connected with civil society actors in Upper Assam to help residents commute from Lower to Upper Assam for hearings and verification, and on some occasion even raise money, creating a solidarity network.

Such a humanitarian network is crucial at a time when marginalised people feel threatened with the changing legal regime which seeks to redefine the basis of Indian citizenship. These networks of solidarity in India’s north-eastern borderlands attempt to draw out the real Indian body politic, reinforcing the plural fabric of the Indian constitution.

Anuradha Sen Mookerjee is a Research fellow, Graduate Institute – Institut de hautes études internationales et du développement (IHEID)

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON THE CONVERSATION

13 Instagram Accounts About Social Impact

Social media can be a source of toxicity. So often our feeds are saturated with ads, photoshop, unrealistic body images, and fake representations of peoples’ lives. However, many activists are using social media to promote issues that they are passionate about, in order to reach a wide audience. If you’re looking to bring more heartfelt messages to your feed, here are some accounts to follow: 

1. Global Citizen: @glblctzn

Global Citizen is an organization dedicated to eradicate extreme poverty. But, their Instagram feed educates their followers on a range of social issues. Their goal is to create a global community of people who want to change the world. Their feed helps to connect that community with photos from around the world.

2.  Michael Moore: @michaelfmoore

A filmmaker, author, and activist, Michael Moore raises awareness about corruption in the US government and large corporations through his work. He calls his followers to join him in the polls on his Instagram stories, and is vocal about his political viewpoints through his permanent posts. He sheds light on candidates and social issues in the US.

3. Nicholas Kristof: @nickkristof 

Nicholas Kristof is a progressive journalist, and columnist for the New York Times. He uses his Instagram mostly to relevant pictures or quotes from his column that he writes. His feed will alert you of important issues or interesting points in history, and encourage you to read and learn more.

4. @everydayafrica

Everyday Africa is a beautiful feed that features contributions from photographers of pictures that highlight everyday life in Africa. They steer away from the extreme and violent images that often saturate the media.

5. UN Refugee Agency: @refugees

The UN Refugee Agency protects over 70 million refugees or displaced people. Their feed is educational, hopeful, and inspirational. It features photos of the people they help and the work that they do, prominent UN activists and ambassadors, as well as important quotes and statistics.

6. Christie Begnell: @meandmyed.art 

Christie Begnell is an illustrator whose mission is to break down the stereotypes that people have about mental health and eating disorders. Christie is going through recovery herself, and uses illustrations to convey a more accurate, realistic depiction of eating disorders and anxiety. Her account encourages body positivity, empathy, and acceptance.

7.  Leanne Lauricella: @goatsofanarchy

Leanne Lauricella runs an animal sanctuary and nonprofit that takes care of handicapped and abused animals. The account, @goatsofanarchy, features cute and funny videos of the goats they take care of. In addition to being adorable, the account raises awareness for the sanctuary, and compassion for animals in general. 

8. Leighton Brown and Matthew Riemer: @lgbt_history

Leighton Brown and Matthew Riemer started @lgbt_history to educate followers about important events and figures in queer history. The account is completely objective—the goal is simply to educate users with facts. Leighton and Matthew stay relevant by coordinating their posts with current events, linking past to present.

9.  Shivya Nath: @shivya

A self-proclaimed “vegan drifter,” Shivya Nath is a nomad. She has no home base. She travels her entire life—and posts beautiful pictures wherever she goes. Shivya uses her platform to encourage a sustainable lifestyle—specifically veganism and conscious traveling.

10. @nastywomenquotes

A mix of quotes from badass feminists (men and women!) and witty relevant screenshots from Television shows, a scroll through Nasty Women Quotes will have you feeling empowered.

11. Mona Chalabi: @monachalabi

Mona Chalabi is a data journalist. She creates illustrations and infographics to help visualize data, and to make facts more understandable and relatable. She tackles all issues, from countering racism and ageism, to raising awareness for animal rights and wage gaps.

12 @indigenousgoddessgang

The accompanying Instagram account to its magazine, Indigenous Goddess Gang posts memes, quotes, art, and pictures that further their goal of “reclaiming knowledge from an indigenous femme lens.” Make sure to check out their magazine as well.

13. Kuchenga Shenje- @kuchenga

Journalist, author, and Black Lives Matter activist, Kuchenga’s page is full of empowering artwork and photography, as well as advocacy for trans representation and diversity in general. 

With their stories and permanent posts, these Instagrammers give daily inspiration and empowerment to their followers.

ELIANA DOFT loves to write, travel, and volunteer. She is especially excited by opportunities to combine these three passions through writing about social action travel experiences. She is an avid reader, a licensed scuba diver, and a self-proclaimed cold brew connoisseur.