Politics and Actual, Honest To God Friendships

This story starts with a friend that I no longer have.

Nothing happened to this individual. I just cut him off when I reached the end of my tether, and the story of how I did that, although it was something I should have done a long time ago and I readily acknowledge that, actually begins with the death of George Floyd.

Due to the lockdown circumstance, I was at home when I heard about the death of George Floyd last month. It shocked me to my very core. George Floyd was murdered by white policemen who were supposed to only be arresting him for use of counterfeit money. We are all innocent until proven guilty and it is inherently wrong to murder someone in the course of arresting them. In fact, looking back I don't think I was even really shocked, and that's awful. Since I was in Year Eight, I knew as a black person that I was more likely to be stopped and searched than my white counterparts and less likely to be found if ever I went missing. And I knew that this wasn't just a US problem either. In the UK where I live, names such as Sarah Reed, Cynthia Jarrett, Ricky Bishop and Mark Duggan dominate the British emanation of the Black Lives Matter movement. Even though there are far less black people killed by police in the UK (or so we believe) than in the US, even if there were no people killed in the UK, I would still consider this my problem. This is everyone's problem, it has never been enough to NOT be staunchly anti-racist, and we all need to do our part to end violence against black people. But it becomes much harder when you have someone in your life who contradicts all of that, who adopts racist views, seems to believe that the very notion of people saying that our lives are just as important are an attack on the entire white race, be it because that's what they really believe or because they are doing their darnedest not to conform. The person I am talking about had very selfish views. If I would post about Black Lives Matter, he would always come back with "but what about...?" He was the type of conservative (read: racist) who would use emotional manipulation to get me to agree with his profoundly racist bullshit, he didn't seem to understand that saying "it's okay to be white" is actually extremely problematic; because of the track record of people, including white supremacist David Duke, who used and spread this saying. It's not at all that I don't care about white people.It doesn't say "Only Black Lives Matter" or "Black Lives Matter more than Other Lives". The analogy is that if one house on the street is on fire, that will be the one you spray with water. If it were the other way around, then people who truly believe in real social justice (meaning "equality for all", not just what whiny inequality fighters say when you tell them how problematic their leaders actually are) would still support the cause. If this were happening to white people, damn right I would still be there for it. It doesn't matter who the disadvantaged or marginalised are, it's still the right thing to do to fight for them. This person didn't seem to realise that holding discriminatory views do not make you a disadvantaged party and that I wholeheartedly believe that all political extremes are just as harmful as each other. And most importantly, he did not seem to understand that freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences and that whether or not whole groups of people are treated as human beings and given the rights they deserve is not a political opinion. People's lives are not politics with a big P. And you cannot say that they are, and that it's this easy to play with people's human rights, while complaining that people disagreeing with you is some sort of infringement on your freedom of speech. Especially when all you do is disagree with them. So I decided one day that I'd had enough of his patronising attitude, racist nonsense, and use of "sources" to explain why he believed that "no one says that black lives don't matter" (clearly without considering that actions speak louder than words), and blocked him on everything. I realised that I could not possibly consider him a friend if he was okay with the oppression of the race that I belong to. A friend to none is a friend to none after all. And he did nothing but contradict himself. I can't any longer be associated with "I'm not racist but..." people. It seems ridiculous to me now that I ever was. He would say I was a social justice warrior, but since social justice means fighting for the right things and a society where nothing divides us, it seems that the right label is being used in the wrong context. And it's made me think about how anything considered political can affect friendships.

I mean, my entire reason for breaking off the friendship was because I don't believe that people's basic rights are up for debate, and I don't believe that the notion that people's lives are not political debates should be up for debate, if I am making sense. What's funny is that old Remy would have felt really bad doing this, but now I really don't. Not at all, maybe it's to do with having become an adult but honestly it seems more important that I be true to myself than let people manipulate me because I don't want to lose friends. So, my advice to anyone who's coming to the end of a friendship because of a marked difference in politics is this; we are living in strange times. Self care, being true to yourself and rejecting anyone who doesn't let you be yourself are just small parts of a new norm in which we fight for a fairer society. The more able people feel to do these very small, simple things, the less normalised racist, sexist, homophobic and other discriminatory views will become. I have cut off friends from all the wrong extremes recently, because I want to pay more attention to fighting for what is right and fair, investing myself in happy, healthy and politically balanced friendships and doing more of what makes me happy. Cutting off these people is directly conducive to improving your own happiness and mental health, and makes it easier to fight for the world you want, to be the change you want to see.

And that is nothing at all to ever feel ashamed of.