A group of clergy members wanted to change the conversation when they heard that a Florida police department was using mug shots of young black men as targets for shooting practice.
“#UseMeInstead,” the religious leaders said, tweeting photos of themselves in hopes that their solidarity would cause cops to “think twice” before pulling the trigger.
But the well-intentioned hashtag is provoking mixed responses.
It wasn’t long before Broderick Greer, a 24-year-old student at Virginia Theological Seminary, noticed something about the pictures showing up under #UseMeInstead.
Most of the participants were white.
“I’m conflicted. I have so many wonderful white clergy friends involved in that hashtag,” Greer told HuffPost. “But it’s fallen into a ‘white savior’ narrative, that these white clergy have come to the aid of these helpless black people. And I don’t think that’s what we’re trying to promote.
“We don’t want white people to be used instead of black people as a target, we don’t want anyone to be used as target practice,” Greer continued. “We want everyone to live in a society where they’re not targeted for anything.”
The idea for #UseMeInstead emerged from a discussion on a private Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Facebook group, according to the Rev. Angela Shannon, pastor of Dallas’ King Of Glory Lutheran Church. A black clergy member alerted the group that bullet-ridden mugshots of young black men had been found at a shooting range used for police training in Florida. The North Miami Beach City Council has since permanently banned the practice.
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