WASHINGTON, D.C.–After a long summer reckoning with racism and the most recent realization that Asian Americans are also people of color, white activists are once again calling themselves to action (because no one really asked them in the first place) to fight against systems they perpetuate daily.
Instagram Progressives and TikTok Leftists are reigniting their passion for cutesy graphics and “ironic, but unironic anti-racist meme trends” to protest hate crimes and discrimination even though it’s been going on for the last year and didn’t seem to bother them then.
While Zoomers are taking to the virtual streets to really try their best to stop racism (while unfortunately making little effort to have any friends of color), Facebook Liberals have been left in the dust with the most recent social justice trend. White activists are tired and are struggling to find a way to be on “the right side of history” with the least effort possible.
This is how the Facebook group “Hamil-2: Electric Boogaloo” came to be. Started by Len-Michael Veranda–a Theatre and Performance Studies Fellow at Georgetown University–the group has over 10,000 members, only 100 of whom are active, as you would expect. Len-Michael said he “wanted to explore the intersection of his interests in social activism with his prepubescent love for musical theatre.”
“I wanted to make a place by all, for all, of all–or however that phrase is supposed to go. I saw a world in pain that needed healing and what better salve than that form ‘which holds a mirror up to society?’ Theatre is my passion and my love and if some young, scrappy and hungry immigrant from Barbados can pull it off, why can’t I?” Mr. Veranda was unclear on whether he knew that Alexander Hamilton did not write the musical.
Though the group has been gaining in followers and popularity, as with all white liberal projects, it seems its progress has been stumped indefinitely. Mr. Veranda claims he is still working on his “screenplay” and that “conceptually” he has “everything figured out.”
When asked what his initial ideas were, Len-Michael said, “it’s a lot like Hamilton but instead of rap it’s gospel music and everyone has to play a character that’s their race because we don’t want to appropriate anybody, including cis, white, hetero Enlightenment-era Europeans.”
