“Help! Should I dump my boyfriend because he doesn’t support the Black Lives Matter Movement?” - Zara Qureshi

Yes. Yes, you should. If you want your relationship to be based on trending ideologies and you’re interested in partaking in a Diet Coke version of a cult, then, please, by all means, dump him. 

I mean it. Dump him, he’d be better off. 

A few days ago, I was browsing through the news pages and articles on the explore feed of my Snapchat. It was a normal Tuesday evening on this social media giant:

‘Revealing my acne for the first time’, 

‘Is Playboi Carti a deadbeat dad?’, 

‘Why key-workers have been so important this year’, 

‘Reality TV kisses that made us uncomfortable this year’, 

‘How old is the longest living animal?’... 

‘Help! My white partner won’t support BLM. What should I do?’

Curious to see how such a question would be answered, I opened this particular video article uploaded by Pink News. This infographic, adapted to suit the story-style, chockablock, video-esque format of news articles on Snapchat, included highlights from a Zoom conversation that happened on its segment, Ask the Aunties. 

From what I understand, Ask the Aunties is a modern take on the traditional agony aunt column found in newspapers. Ask the Aunties receives questions and social-dilemmas sent in by millennials or, perhaps more accurately, DM’d to the show as a point of reference for which they’ll base the majority of the candid talk on. 

These questions would usually concern the topics of relationships, love, sexuality and friendship, yet, very rarely politics and world affairs. Some of the previous questions they’ve received have been along the lines of:

How to deal with homophobic parents?

Should I get married?

Is your straight boyfriend secretly on Grindr?

Now, I’ll be the first to admit, I love a good chat and a sweet cup of tea to go with it. So, while I was researching Ask the Aunties for the purpose of this article, I found myself laughing while watching their videos, asking myself, 

“Heck, just what would I do if I found my straight boyfriend secretly on Grindr?” 

Apparently, according to one of its hosts, Karnage Kills, this is a pretty common occurrence. Girls, watch out. 

However, going back to the original Black Lives Matter discussion on the show, host Lee Gray introduces the question that he receives on his mobile phone:

“As a person of colour, it is important for me that my [white partner] protests the BLM protests...He has no plans of how he can help right now. What should I do?”

There were a few things that struck me from the conversation and maybe they would make good content for a sequel article. However, the bleakest aspect of the conversation was: are we, young people, really resorting to selecting our friends, partners and social groups based on specific political ideologies? 

I know that, in the eyes of the average person, this has always seemed to be the case since the beginning of time. The average person would argue that this is why you won’t see priests marrying strippers, Amish people getting drunk with a bunch of undergraduates on a night out and ISIS members sitting in the same row as Kim Kardashian and Anna Wintour at Paris Fashion Week. 

I would agree that most of the reason why you don’t see those specific events happening can be reduced to people selecting their social circumstances and affiliates based on political ideology...but that’s exactly what makes this behaviour and, sometimes, these political ideologies divisive. 

When we start choosing individuals (or potentially groups of individuals) with whom we interact, respect and value on a moral level, merely based on a system of (religious) veneration and devotion to a set of ideals, ceremonies, rites, rituals, movements, objects and figures; this is the definition of cult behaviour. 

Can you imagine similar behaviour, such as a Tory cashier not willing to serve a Liberal Democrat customer at the till in Waitrose because of differences in political ideology, being commonplace in the UK?

A better way to look at relationships and social dynamics is through the lens of personal and individual values and morals. These can be tricky to distinguish from dogmas and cults because dogmas and cults will usually stipulate what personal values and morals you need to have, and therefore, it can be tricky to separate the specific morals and values from the overall dogmatic system (i.e. the values and morals seem to be embedded deeply into the practices, ceremonies, beliefs, rituals and movements of the cult that divorcing the two seems impossible). 

I would argue that most adults have their own sets of personal values and morals that they have thought of for themselves. Yes, as mentioned above, these values can come from dogma, like religion, which the person has grown up with, but I would haphazardly guess that most people can state what their own morals are without thinking too much about religion and politics (unless, of course, they’ve sunken so far into dogma or a cult-like mentality). 

For example, my personal values and morals are: treating every human being that I meet with a standard of courtesy and respect because I understand that human beings are all of equal moral worth and value; empathising with others’ suffering and the desire to lend a helping hand where I can; trying to be as honest as I can with people even when it may work to my own detriment; and trying to engage with my daily social, professional and personal activities with my sincerest intentions and good will. 

As you can see, personal values and morals can seem arbitrary and loose as they are unlinked to specific dogmatic systems. For instance, I would assume that my aforementioned values are shared by a lot of people and these values and morals aren’t inherent to any one particular religion, political ideology, cult or system of belief. In short and in theory, any individual could have these values and morals, and they could even be coupled or assorted with other mutually exclusive values and morals. 

This is the reason why I can get along with most people that I meet. It’s not that I’m a social butterfly, but I can assume that most people have roughly similar values to me and place a similar amount of importance to certain values. 

Considering more intimate and personal relationships, such as friends and best-friends, it’s safe to say that they also share a similar set of values even though they may belong to different religions, worldviews and political beliefs. For instance, my friends and I all believe in making a positive impact in the world (i.e. our common value), but we think about it in different ways and we also go about it in different ways. 

Unashamedly, I have friends who fervently support feminism, I have others who reject identity politics; I have friends who are atheist, I have others who have recently converted into Islam and Christianity; I have friends who are pro-Israel, I have others who are pro-Palestine; I have friends that vote Labour, and I have others that vote Conservative; I have friends that are for the BLM political movement, and I have others that are critical of this movement, like myself.

The point is we’ve established a relationship based on a common set of values, not ideology or dogma rooted in practices, rituals, rites and the veneration and devotion of specific ideals. 

I would say that if there were a conflict or discrepancy in individual values and morals- for example, if someone did not believe that all human beings are of equal moral worth and that some are inferior to others or that others should not, by default, be met with a standard level of respect- then, I would question how profound or intimate my connection would be with this individual. 

However, luckily for me, the majority of people that I meet are not like this, although, I have had fellow classmates that I knew at university who wanted to ostracise me in horrid ways, merely because I had differing political views from their own. I truly feel for my fellow classmates because I wonder what it must feel like to willingly be a prisoner of your own echo chamber. 

Nevertheless, I am able to connect with people of varying ages, backgrounds, life experiences and beliefs. Perhaps to some this is naive, but I am grateful for the diversity of views that my social circle entails as I’m able to see things differently, scrutinise my own views and learn from others.

Writing this, I am reminded of a personal story: 

When I was at Sixth Form, I started to exercise my own thinking and began exploring my own political views. In doing so, I came across a classmate, Sam, with whom I vehemently disagreed. We would argue about the Iraq War, Colonialism, Sam Harris and Noam Chomsky break-times and lunchtimes- even well after the buzzer had rang and while walking back to our lessons. Our vociferous debates and arguments would attract other students and some teachers, creating a looming crowd eagerly listening in and interjecting. 

However, despite how much we disagreed with each other, we were friends. The minute we’d stop debating, we’d crack a joke about something silly or we’d complain about the stresses of A Levels. Flash forward six years, I’ve realised just how much I have learnt from Sam and the value of talking to people who think differently, as my conversations back then inform some of my beliefs today.

It makes me sad to know that university students and other young people are selecting relationships based on a perfect alignment of political beliefs; they’ll never know how incredible it feels to so passionately disagree with someone, but at the end of the day, be able to break bread with them at the dinner table and still genuinely care about them. 

After all, aren’t relationships about the simpler things in life anyway, like travel, music, food and drink, laughter, being there for one another, fun and love?

I’ll leave my fellow readers with a thought that I think is more important now than ever with how we treat one another:

"Not only can I disagree and still like you, I can dislike you and still love you."

-Ayishat Akanbi

Twitter: @_zaraqureshi