A review by jentidders
Outraged: Why Everyone is Shouting and No One is Talking, by Ashley 'Dotty' Charles
4.0
When I first saw the title for this book I thought it might be some right-wing pundit complaining about the 'snowflake' generation, but thankfully it's a really powerful call to action for us to focus on what is an important issue and effective activism, rather than getting caught up in clicktivism and dragging/cancelling culture.
Ashley "Dotty" Charles is a BBC Radio 1Xtra presenter (also known as Amplify Dot) who ticks a few intersectional boxes as a Black gay woman. She became interested in mob outrage after the public shaming of Rachel Dolezal (the white American woman who claims that she is 'transracial).
In her fascinating, well researched and powerful book (which brings to mind Jon Ronson's 'So You've Been Publicly Shamed'), Charles actually manages to interview Dolezal, as well as right-wing troll Katie Hopkins, sociologists, and Richard Wilson from the Stop Funding Hate campaign, in order to consider why it is we're sucked into mass movements on social media and whether this actually does anything to foster long term change (spoiler, the answer is 'not often').
Charles cautions that if we don't change the way we get involved in social justice issues then we are likely to get outrage fatigue and become apathetic. Instead, she encourages us to make sure we pick our battles as well as returning to old school protest and direct action.
I absolutely loved reading this book, which I think is essential in the current climate of Black Lives Matter and the erosion of trans rights. Rather than vilifying one woman in a park or one children's book author on Twitter, we should be writing to our politicians, targeting business and advertisers, staging demonstrations, and setting up picket lines, to work towards dismantling deep-rooted systemic prejudice.
Buy this now and feel incentivised to make some real change.
Ashley "Dotty" Charles is a BBC Radio 1Xtra presenter (also known as Amplify Dot) who ticks a few intersectional boxes as a Black gay woman. She became interested in mob outrage after the public shaming of Rachel Dolezal (the white American woman who claims that she is 'transracial).
In her fascinating, well researched and powerful book (which brings to mind Jon Ronson's 'So You've Been Publicly Shamed'), Charles actually manages to interview Dolezal, as well as right-wing troll Katie Hopkins, sociologists, and Richard Wilson from the Stop Funding Hate campaign, in order to consider why it is we're sucked into mass movements on social media and whether this actually does anything to foster long term change (spoiler, the answer is 'not often').
Charles cautions that if we don't change the way we get involved in social justice issues then we are likely to get outrage fatigue and become apathetic. Instead, she encourages us to make sure we pick our battles as well as returning to old school protest and direct action.
I absolutely loved reading this book, which I think is essential in the current climate of Black Lives Matter and the erosion of trans rights. Rather than vilifying one woman in a park or one children's book author on Twitter, we should be writing to our politicians, targeting business and advertisers, staging demonstrations, and setting up picket lines, to work towards dismantling deep-rooted systemic prejudice.
Buy this now and feel incentivised to make some real change.