Catchy chants, painted posters and distressed voices fill the streets when social inequality pays an unwelcome visit. Activists say, “We’ve had enough! No more will we stand for this!”
While activists raise questions about the status quo, they fail to hit the intended target.
There is something fundamentally wrong with activism.
There is a lack of consistency that is troubling with most activists. These issues — whether questions of equality, discrimination, humanity, or whatever Twitter decides is important now — did not suddenly appear in the 21st century.
People only seem to care about these issues when tragedy occurs or when injustice rears its head. People wrestled with these questions for centuries and will continue to do so precisely because nothing has changed.
Calls of change more commonly occur in minority spheres and under represented communities. A few examples are the Black Lives Matter movement, LGBT rights activism and Occupy Wall Street. It seems as though these cries for change often fall on deaf ears.
It doesn’t help that many of the poster children of these movements are privileged, non-committed young people. We don’t need flaky millennials to abandon racial equality every time a new iPhone is released. What activism needs is dedicated, passionate individuals who will stop at nothing to see a visible and authentic change.
That means more than attending a few rallies and protests and only to later post the pictures you took there on social media to show your friends how you are so for the cause.
The point of activism is to condemn the existing institutions, ideologies and their practices. Activism does not fulfill what it sets out to do. Instead, it reveals something more profound.
Calls for social change do not place enough emphasis on the internal workings that allow the current state of affairs to reproduce. In the Western world, power is contained in the hands of the government and exercised through institutions such as the police, the army, and other government agencies.
However, 20th century French philosopher Michel Foucault suggests government agencies are not the only ones exercising political power.
For example, he sees universities as a place to practice and create political power as universities educate and place into positions of power those who already benefit from society’s organization.
The real political task is to uncover and criticize organizations without obvious political power, but still control society in certain ways. By better understanding how these organizations work, we can protest them more effectively.
Why do these issues still exist? Is oppression a necessary evil for progression? To be more effective, we have to do less and think more.
Trying to “change the world” too soon is what put us back where we started. Sometimes, you need the master’s tools to dismantle the house.
Eli Minor is a philosophy junior from New Orleans. You can reach him on Twitter @eliminor_TDR.