I think about every 5th post I've come across on my Instagram feed these past few days has been about the situation in Palestine. When that hadn’t come to the attention of the mainstream Western public yet, it was Black Lives Matter, the Capitol Raid, people willing to verbally murder Candice Owens for commenting on Harry Styles’ outfit for a high-fashion shoot (girl, dudes wore tights 200 years ago and were perfectly manly; get over yourself), the devastating Covid-19 situation in India with bodies burnt in parking lots due to the overload in crematoriums, oxygen sold on the Black Market and the individuals who claimed it all to be a media hoax. And everyone had an opinion about it. No matter how foreign the culture, the scene, or the event – everyone had something to say. And if you don’t speak up (aka, usually “speaking up on an issue” now means (re)posting an Instagram story, a Facebook post or a tweet with a comment on it), you are “ignorant” and “selfish” and “a privileged (white) person who can’t count their blessings”. The tragic thing here is – somewhere along the way we have started to call under-educated commenting on contemporary issues “raising awareness”. We have hit a point where saying something at all and putting a hashtag on it seems to matter more to us as individuals than actually caring about the issue itself and taking our time to study it deeply. Appearing like you care has become more important than actually paying attention. I know this because I too have been there. I’ll never forget a moment when I reposted an article about a Black kid being shot by the police for carrying a toy gun and commenting something along the lines of “is this what people pay taxes for in the US?” on it. My very first emotion was anger for a child killed (obviously, because I'm not a psychopath), and my very first thought was, “The policeman must be racist.” But is he? He’s definitely a murderer, no doubt. But is he racist? Was the kid innocent? I did not know then. And I did not pay enough attention to find out because I thought I knew anyway. I thought I knew because I saw words like “white policeman” and “Afro-American child”. In my brain that was enough information to tell good from evil. And that way of thinking is like cancer; it only gets worse. You don’t know until you look closely. Don’t ever tell yourself you do. That time a friend of mine called me out on my comment and sent me a whole bunch of articles about the shooting statistics in America, the role high-crime neighbourhoods play in all of the data we are presented with at the end of the day and how even the most insane things can correlate with each other – it doesn’t mean that there is always an actual connection. The number of people who have drowned in a pool from 1999-2009 in the US correlates perfectly with the number of films Nicolas Cage appeared in. The people who drowned after falling off of a fishing boat correlate with the marriage rate in Kentucky.
For a generation that claims to hate any sort of labels, we sure love to put things in neat boxes. A person of colour is shot? It’s automatically a racially motivated hate crime. No background check or further learning about the event is necessary. An LGBTQIA+ individual is being cursed at? Homophobic intent; no other explanation is necessary. But people are so much more than what we (still) label them as. We are not used to saying it in today’s society, but a person can be in a wheelchair AND be an arsehole. A person can be a person of colour AND be rude. A person can be gay AND be intolerant. These things are not mutually exclusive. However, the emphasis must always stay on the “can be”. It should never turn into the statement “is”. Check your crime scene with your gloves on and don’t make assumptions.

I am not “Anna, the disabled girl”. I am disabled, but I would never lead with that. I am a woman, an illustrator, a graphic designer, a wannabe writer, a reader, a student, a lover, and a fighter. And then disabled too. I am proud to be who I am fully, and I would never let anyone make me feel ashamed of any parts of me anymore. But I would also never make only one part of me my whole identity slogan. People sometimes interpret me not speaking up about my disability or not drawing attention to it on my social media as me “being ashamed of it”. And that’s not true at all; I simply believe there are things about me that deserve more attention than the condition I was born with. If we build a society where you are “first and foremost *insert a minority/social/political group*” and then hide all of your other traits in the shadows to appear more relatable or feel more included, then we are headed down a dangerous road. I can understand the temptation to do this and I would never judge anyone who does, though – human beings have been hardwired to look for a tribe since the beginning of time. It was simply a survival mechanism – without a community to rely on, our ancestors died. Our need for social inclusion is the biggest drive there is. We are pack animals, and that will never change – we need to feel included. The easiest way to do this is to put a neat label on yourself and call yourself “part of this group”. That creates a pretty illusion of a family and a home. But is that the right way to do this? We are often blind to the things our family does wrong because, first and foremost, we love them. They make us feel safe and accepted. And we don't want to see the bad in people like that. The faux idea of a family blinds us and keeps us from making clear-headed, individual judgements because we don't want to turn against our tribe. Our ancient brain says that this is when we die. But it's 2021 now, and that's not the reality anymore.

The society's focus on performative inclusivity has impacted the entertainment scene most noticeably. Now we have awards denied for movies with great writing, acting and plotlines just because they didn’t include enough POC, trans or LGBTQIA+ characters. What have we achieved this way? Let’s get one thing straight here – do we want more diverse representation in movies? Absolutely we do. I would have been so happy to see more characters on screen that looked like me when I was growing up. It would have helped me so much with my self-esteem and image issues that I struggled with for so long. And it didn’t exist for me, and that makes me sad. However, would I have wanted to see a disabled character for the sake of the movie having a disabled character? No. I would want her to be someone with depth and interests and so much more besides the way she looks and moves. I would want her to be written beautifully and her struggles to be portrayed realistically. That's empowering. I wouldn’t want her to just be there for the brownie points. Imagine if people started doing that in real life – “I’m going to ask my friend Kyle to go to the party with me because he’s gay, and that will let other people know I’m not homophobic”. So, is Kyle as low in your eyes as your designer purse that helps you carry your lipstick and wallet and lets others know you're not poor? Doesn’t sound too inclusive to me. But it happens way too often – just so the director can call their movie inclusive when, in fact, there is nothing substantially inclusive about it under the surface. When we take awards away from deserving movies for “lack of representation” and give it to those that take stories of diverse, deep individuals and degrade them down to the “funny black sidekick/gay best friend” trope without any real care for the community at all, we are normalising and funding the “accessory minority” movie shelf, instead of making people feel seen. Even if the minority character has the main role, it can still be badly written and half-baked – the same way a white dude character can. A minority character appearing on screen doesn’t automatically mean the movie is revolutionary or better than anything else made before – it’s how deep the production team digs into their stories and how thoroughly they wish to understand the character's struggles that truly matters. Even if the character is white. Or a man. Or, *gasp*, a white man. It’s the digging that matters. Look at the writing. And after that – at the inclusivity. Not the other way around. We want more representation, but not just for the sake of it. I’d eat a cake that’s made out of quality ingredients by a talented chef, even if the icing wasn’t too flashy – because that’s not what the freaking cake is about.