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At this very moment in America, Black Americans, and those who support the necessary human rights, dignities, equities, and safeties of Black Americans are actively protesting, among other salient issues, police killings of unarmed Black citizens in cities across the country. These people—regardless of race or racial identity—are applying their values to demonstrable action within the context of and opposition to legal and historical frameworks that have oppressed Black Americans throughout the history of our country. Some of these people are white. But white people, myself included, shouldn’t be seeking commendations for engaging in critical social justice discourse, nor for participating in support of people among us who need the support of all Americans to gain important recognitions and retributions.
But, among many others, there’s a complicating discourse that exists at this moment, too. This discourse purports that the value of brands can be made significant by cheerful support from celebrity icons. It potentially helped to make the shallow wellness models of reality TV product endorsers culturally acceptable. “Good vibes” are prescribed en masse by self-styled cultural celebrities and “influencers." While there is a host of evidence-based material that may endorse the Positive Psychology movement as having pro-wellness value, wellness action, not wellness thinking, will make the changes necessary that current protestors are asking for, in large numbers, and mostly peacefully.
Gym selfies, app-filtered images of exercise, and self-selected photos of a good hair day or nice smile, captioned with “good vibes” or assertions about empathy, are not, by the standard of any psychological model, a substitute for action. “Good vibes” are a thought, a wish, being employed as a hollow tool into the discourse and milieu of action called to by the Black Lives Matter movement. White people, vibing wishfully into the digital air; we have a whitewishing problem.
Whitewishing is magical thinking, and magical thinking can be harmful. Magical thinking allows us to believe that wanting, imagining, and hoping are adequate behaviors through which to expect resulting changes. Assuredly, individuals posting photographs of themselves exercising are able to tell you that exercise, not fantasizing about exercise, results in the bodily changes showcased by photographs. So, why do some of these same people “good vibes” their way through a major social justice crisis? There is a cognitive dissonance present in attaching political well-meaning messages to images like these: Our brains confuse and conflate the two messages, about “beautiful images” and “[morally] good messages”—such is the basic premise of visual advertisements, using models to sell products. But who benefits? The movement to whom the captioned “vibes” are addressed or the person who uploaded the image?
This post is, by no means, a polemic against physical strategies for promoting personal wellness. Rather, it is a post directed at other white people, like me, who should be mindful that the messages which they communicate into the world sometimes reflect deep privileges that they have, e.g., the ability to enjoy a gym right now, or perhaps a choice to engage in exercise while others are engaged in political and social demonstrations which risk harm to their own bodies. White people can support Black people through learning and through action. Good vibes aren’t changing the world for Black Americans, nor is an exercise routine, nor the photos of that routine, whitewish as you may.
Some free educational resources on Whiteness, White Privilege, & Racial Inequality can be found here or here.
