User:Brigitw/sandbox

The term rose in popularity following the Killing of George Floyd, with many high school and college student activists using the term pejoratively. The Los Angeles Times wrote that students have warned against engaging in performative activism online. On May 28, 2020, Rice University student Summar McGee founded Rice For Black Life to help promote fundraising for Texas-based non-profits and to not go through bureaucratic processes of other organizations on-campus. McGee and Kendall Vining, another member of the organization, expressed that this type of "nonhierarchical activism helps avoid performative allyship and activism." Social media has become a tool for genuine discussion. Many people have begun their journey of anti-racism on various social media platforms. On June 1, while expressing support for the Black Lives Matter movement in the wake of the George Floyd protests, singer Lorde stated, "One of the things I find most frustrating about social media is performative activism, predominantly by white celebrities (like me). It's hard to strike a balance between self-serving social media displays and true action."

On June 2, many Instagram users participated in the "Blackout Tuesday" movement, which involved users posting a completely blacked-out square image in order to show support of the George Floyd protests. Celebrities and general users alike received criticism by other social media users for engaging in "performative activism" via these Blackout Tuesday posts. According to Aliyah Symes, A master's candidate of UCLA, "A fundamental part of embracing anti-racism work is leaning into the discomfort of unlearning." Performative allyship is a related term that has appeared in media publications following the George Floyd protests.

An example of a government official being criticized for "performative" activism sprung up later in June, when Washington, D.C. mayor Muriel Bowser had the phrase Black Lives Matter painted on 16th Street in front of the White House. Bowser was criticized for this, as some brought up her presiding over law enforcement practices that have been called harmful to the black community in D.C.