Today in my CAP program our entire stream was presented with a group lecture from our three professors plus a TA on the black lives matter movement. The discussion that followed our small group discussions was great but talking about such a racially charged movement got me thinking coincidentally about the paper I’m writing for geography. I’m writing a social, cultural, and political analysis centered around Hurricane Katrina focuses heavily on racial inequality exacerbated by the storm. Todays discussion got me wondering about questions we’ve raised on a theoretical level in ASTU about who is allowed to tell whose story? It made me wonder whether it was problematic for me to attempt to tell the stories of survivor who are often silenced. Where is the line between reporting/analyzing and appropriating and how does that line blur even more when social media hashtags like #blacklivesmatter allow everyone to participate in the conversation?

In my geography paper I stress the impact the racial makeup of the city had on the disaster preparedness and relief efforts coordinated by the federal agency FEMA or the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Most of the scholars I’ve read that I cite in my research relate issues of race inequality to the extremely poor handling of relief efforts that left corpses floating in the city and Astrodome “refugees” without food for five days. I did notice however though that the majority of the authors who have conducted this type of research are white men. On one hand the research they’re doing is amazing and extremely helpful in creating a broader understanding of how a natural disaster can illuminate the struggles of a minority group but on the other hand is there a line to be crossed when these scholars start speaking for the victims themselves? It seems dangerous to me to allow the academic discourse following this event to be dominated by white voices when the majority of people affected were low income African Americans. When the black voice in drowned out of reporting on their own struggle issues of appropriation arise. I don’t have an answer as to if there is a line and if there is one where it should be but I do think the examination of the Black Lives Matter movement in class today can offer some clarity.

One of the ideas my group discussed during class today was how with the increased accessibility of conversations about race through social media, more and more people without first hand experience or background knowledge are enabled to add their two cents. One of the reasons why awareness of the deaths of people like Tamir Rice and Michael Brown are at an all time high is because social media allowed people to post raw video footage and circulate ideas outside of the main stream media. However people who have seen a few hashtags or youtube videos now have just as much of a voice as those who experienced or suffered through the problems at hand. Its become possible to appropriate a racial experience through the click of a button  ever since these issues were brought into the realm of public discourse. This brings up questions of authority, who has it and how should it be distributed? Do the pros of increased awareness and understanding outweigh the cons of appropriation? In both the academic realm where my research paper has been taking place and in the general public realm where most of my free time is spent, questions of who is silenced and who gets to speak about racial issues are raised.

The only answer I can suggests in the face of so many questions is that critical conversations like the one facilitated by our CAP program today are not only healthy but necessary for those of us without first hand experience to understand rather than appropriate the types of issues we’re confronted with online and in academia. Facilitating constructive discussions that allow these types of questions to be explored have more power than we often realize and I think that when we recognize the power they have we can make bigger steps towards progress and maybe even answers.