Best Answer
This is a difficult question to answer. In the era of COVID-19, when personal interactions with people are limited, especially with people outside of your immediate social group, being an agent of social change is more difficult than it is in other times. That is because social change agents have to be able to influence people. While some of that can be accomplished in a virtual environment, hence the popularity of internet “influencers,” that type of influence is simply not going to be enough to reach some people. People tend to go to places on the internet that will act as echo chambers and reinforce their existing views, rather than seek out information that will broaden their horizons and motivate them to change. As a result, I feel like social change might best be accomplished in person, which is not always safe at this time.
However, I was able to harness social media to influence a few people about a topic that is divisive to many: the Black Lives Matter movement. I did it, not by sharing stories of individual African Americans who were targeted by police, but by presenting a bare-bones fact-based analysis for a few people that showed that African Americans are disproportionately impacted at every decision-making point of the criminal justice system. I am not going to pretend to have “solved racism” or anything like that, but by remaining calm, respectful, and fact-based, I was able to convince some people that discrimination by law enforcement against the African American community is a real thing, even if it is not an intentional thing.
Some of the people I was discussing this issue with come from a background that is often described as “middle America” but really talks about lower-middle and middle-class working-class white Americans. There really does seem to be a perception by many people in this group that they are somehow under attack from other Americans and that improving living conditions for any other group somehow threatens their status quo. I have to admit; it is a perspective that I really struggle to understand. Someone recommended that I read the memoir Hillbilly Elegy, which is not something I would normally choose to read. I did and I believe it helped me find some empathy and understanding for a cultural group that is very different from my own.
