I have followed, with some interest, the developing protests in the US and now across the world in relation to black lives matters. I’m certainly not one to speak about the validity of any such protest movement, nor one to explain its causes, motives or methods – there are far more articulate and involved individuals better placed to speak on those matters than I. However, the part that interests me is how these protests might be related to our conceptions of what active citizenship might actually mean. I’ve written before, at length, about the problems with the term ‘active citizenship’ – it’s far too woolly for my taste, but I will use it here because it dominates any such discussion. I think the interesting point is what we mean by active citizenship – and whether that includes any form of activism, or whether it is limited to specific, narrow definitions of what it means to be ‘active’. I think this also relates to the ‘how’ of active citizenship – too often, I think that it is limited to an individualistic, accountability and responsibility idea, rather than the notion of citizenship as an act performed in collectivity with others. Of course, my ideas here are strongly informed by Westheimer and Kahne’s ideas about justice-oriented citizenship, and i think the #blacklivesmatters protests demonstrate what happens when the typologies of Westheimer and Kahne come into conflict with each other. For example, it’s likely that most notions of a personally responsible or even participatory citizen would not acknowledge that damaging public or private property is an expression of citizenship; indeed, it would appear to be directly opposite that notion. However, a justice-oriented notion might allow such an approach, if it was targeted at challenging the systematic prejudices which lead to injustice and inequality.
Amother interesting aspect is the performativity of being an active citizen. There have been numerous examples of ‘influencers’, for want of a better term, either appearing at protests to ‘show their support’ and then leaving very quickly, or appearing at cleanups, with drills or mops in hand, getting the obligatory shot for Instagram, and then disappearing without ever having done any work. IN such cases, the appearance of being an active citizens seems to trump the role of actually being an active citizen – and I think that social media has a significant role to play in the way that this desire to be ‘seen’ to be an active citizen is formulated and amplified.