Every few weeks, someone pops onto the internet to inform us all that we have been treating Sarah J Maas very very unfairly. And usually, I just laugh at them in the group chat and keep it pushin, but this time just hit different. So let's talk about it.

If you haven't seen the video I am referencing, you can view it HERE.

"Let's talk about the Sarah J Maas controversy and let's do it through a critical lens."

That is how she started her video. And to be honest, I was already irritated, because what do you mean?

It is unbelievably frustrating to have people come onto the internet every few weeks to acknowledge the harm done to the Black community, to even agree that the harm was real, and to then lecture us about expecting people to care about it.

That is what I want to talk about in this essay. And I want to be clear, this conversation is not going to be about this creator, and it is not going to be about Sarah J Maas. But it is going to look at both of them as an example of how we collectively refuse to create space for actual change within our communities.

In my most recent essay (read HERE ), I discussed the way that we often issue criticism with no open door for community. Which leaves the people who have done wrong with no way to actually change course and grow, becuase we have no intention of--or have at least not expressed an intention of--allowing them back into community with us once they've matured. And I hold to that opinion. On a collective scale, our criticisms need to include room for people to actually hear us and change.

With that said, it is equally important that we develop a desire to be the kind of people who value one another.

I have spent a lot of time in communities just like booktok. Spaces where people are attempting to develop community around common interests, while also doing their best to be good and moral people. And here is what I have observed: a lot of us care more about distancing ourselves from who people think we could be than actually making sure we are not those people. And at its core, that will always turn into empty activism and wasted shouting. Because you can't effectively advocate for anyone while you're primary concern is yourself.

When I run into Sarah J Maas supporters, they are typically not people who openly hate others. They are not Trump voting, confederate flag waving, openly hateful racists and homophobes. In fact, it's quite the opposite. They are often relatively progressive peoplem who passionately support the 2SLGBTQ+ community and speak up against bigotry when it is perpetuated by the state. But they are so consumed with the asthetics of their advocacy that they are incapable of hearing when actual work needs to be done.

What do I mean by that? Consider this situation. That creator did not make her video because she thinks Black people should be grateful when white creators use our trauma to sell books. In fact, she agreed with us that what Sarah J Maas did was wrong. But at the end of the day, it was more important to her to defend Sarah J Maas's intentions than to work toward changes in her thinking and behavior. A priority that was also reflected in the way that she tried to make ammends for her own failures. Because today, after spending the night arguing with, blocking and accusing Black and brown women over her bad take, she posted an apology video where she prioritized pointing out that her intentions were pure and acknowling how being harassed had woken her up to the experiences of Black creators being harassed over this conversation... be so for real.

And before you go to yell at her, I want you to stop and really consider whether she did something super out of the norm here. Because, from my perspective, this is pretty much the standard for how people handle criticism. A lot of white liberals/leftists advocate very loudly, not because they have truly examined their thinking and wrestled to find a better worldview, but because they have recognized their complicity in systemic problems and are desperate to distance themselves from their societal positioning.

If they are mean to racists, they think it will prove they are not racists, rather than doing the actual work to just...stop thinking like a racist.

And I think this problem has created a standard of building community around the ways we have collectively proven our goodness, rather than around mutual compassion and care. When we center the ways we have proven ourselves to be safe, we will resist any suggestion that we are unsafe. But if we center our compassion and care for one another, we are capable of hearing when the most vulnerable in our community express the ways that they need us to become safer. Because becoming safer will be our actual priority, rather than just proving we are safe.

This is a lot to sit with, but I hope you're really considering what I'm sharing here because I think it is incredibly important. As long as our biggest concern is not being perceived as a bigot, we will not only fail to reach the necessary vulnerability to actually change, but we will also blindly follow people who actively harm members of our community simply because we relate to the parts of them that look safe.

Oh, and since we're here already, let's settle this: If Sarah J Maas's advocacy for Breonna Taylor had actually been about her compassion for Black women, we would not still be waiting for her to address this four years later. Her "advocacy" was about herself, even if she posted it with good intentions. And, by definition...that makes it worthless.

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