Blue bracelet is not required

It began after a controversial election in which Donald Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris to become President・elect. That's when TikTok came to talk. "Fellow white women, how are we now signaling to each other which side we are on?" he asked.Content creator Libby Louwagie, who goes by Libby Ray Lou on the platform, said.

Followed, somewhat curiously, by white Democrats and liberal women on the left who voted for Harris to show their alliance through DIY crafts, specifically friendship bracelets with blue beads and blue strings. The idea, when it came out in public, easily identified who was a Trump supporter and who was not, by checking his wrist for a flash of blue gem.

The idea took off. On Tiktok, a video promoting the blue bracelet friendship movement by content creator @witchywoosel has been viewed 510 million times. She and other supporters saw it as a symbol of solidarity with people of color against the backdrop of elections that have sparked an increase in racist harassment and virtual attacks on women. For white women, the blue bracelet also served another purpose: to separate themselves from those white women; 53 percent who cast their vote for Trump, despite accusations of sexual abuse and his previous tenure in office where he led charges on rolling back reproductive freedom.

But over the weekend, things began to unravel as a video of a woman stringing a blue friendship bracelet garnered millions of views. The tenor of the conversation has changed. The bracelet was initially accepted online as a symbol of support, but it was a sign that the wearer was a "safe person," and others immediately called this method another gimmicky form of performing virtue signaling.

"We see bracelets and other physical symbols like that as white people's calls to be reassured by marginalized communities," says Kellie Chudzinsk, the creator of news and entertainment content. "It's not anyone's job to verify your morality or character.

The blue friendship bracelet is not the first form of sky alliance to occur in response to Trump's election. In 2017, thousands attended the women's March, protesting the day after Trump's first inauguration and wearing homemade pink hats. The so・called "pink cat hat" was inspired by Donald Trump's bragging about sexually assaulting women in Hollywood access and was intended to be a sign of resistance. But they showed a very narrow representation of a person facing oppression by representing only the genitals, which are pink (white women) — essentially women of color, trans It centered on white as the only demographic that faced women's rights violations, and wearing did not necessarily involve concrete actions to support all women. It was a great experience.

In response to the brutal murder of George Floyd by a white police officer in 2020/6, many white social media users posted images of empty black squares on Instagram.Instagram has a movement launched by 2 black women to raise awareness of the music industry monetizing black artists. Posts using hashtags such as #BlackLivesMatter and #BLM also drowned out important information shared by organizers, such as where to protest and donate. It eventually became another example of a pragmatic alliance that lacked meaningful action to support the true cause.

"In the wake of political unrest, people are rushing to do the bare minimum — post a black square and wear a bracelet — so they can feel like they're part of the solution without actually solving anything," says content creator Mia Carr.

It's the same protest as patting on the back: showing that you're "1 of the good guys" doesn't actually make the world better, and instead, "Black women [and other marginalized groups] don't need bracelets — they just treat us with human decency." "

The reality is that craft projects cannot truly fight racism. But real action can. That includes devoting time to learning about power mapping, which reveals who is on your side through geography and who can sway at the local, state, and federal levels.Instead of co-selecting them, black and brown support mental health spaces.Having tough conversations with people in your life who may have voted differently than you. Candice Fortin, a climate justice campaigner and organizer, is an anti-racist group like SURJ (showing up for Racial Justice), where white people take on the labor of educating others."We don't need 'allies', we need accomplices and conspirators," Fortin says.

If anything, "anti-racism is not an exercise in branding," she adds. The blue friendship bracelet will read like a self-congratulatory performance if it is not coupled with action for social change.

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