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Performative activism is a critical label that is applied to instances of shallow or self-serving support for social justice causes. The accusation rests on a distinction between what is said by supposed supporters and what they actually do. One of the challenges of understanding the rhetoricity of the phrase “performative activism” is that its definition seems to place it at odds with the most common scholarly definitions of “performative,” in which there is little or no difference between saying and doing. Nonetheless, making a distinction between what is said and done is rhetorically effective in itself. By understanding the accusation of performative activism as a type of critique, we can begin to see how such critical gestures are better understood as demands rather than condemnations.

In June 2020, millions of Instagram users shared black squares along with hashtags including #BlackOutTuesday and #BlackLivesMatter before pausing their social media content for the day. At first in solidarity with the music industry, the black squares were co-opted by uninformed users hoping to show their support of Black Lives Matter in the wake of the murder of George Floyd while in police custody. Through 20 interviews with social media influencers about the #BlackLivesMatter discourse occurring on Instagram in the summer of 2020, I argue that for many influencers, the posting of black squares was performative allyship utilized strategically to build and maintain credibility with followers. Influencers were unable to genuinely merge their existing brand image with the Black Lives Matter movement long-term, resulting in the memeification of social justice activism and no substantial progress toward diversity, equity, and inclusion within the wellness creator industry on Instagram.

This article critically examines how diversity initiatives in higher education can paradoxically reinforce exclusionary practices, particularly within academic systems that frame inclusion as both an ethical commitment and institutional achievement. Through an autoethnographic approach grounded in everyday academic encounters, I analyze how power is reinforced through routine interactions and how individual actors actively sustain racialized hierarchies under the banner of inclusion. Scholars of color are frequently perceived through reductive racialized or migrant identities, regardless of credentials or scholarly contributions, revealing how institutional whiteness is reproduced not only structurally but through interpersonal practices. Rather than presenting these dynamics as abstract or unintentional, the article interrogates how specific actions—such as symbolic inclusion, exceptionalization, and performative allyship— uphold the “neutral” norms of white, middle‐class academic culture. Drawing on García Peña’s (2022) critique of “The One,” I argue that diversity discourse often masks deeper power asymmetries by isolating and instrumentalizing minoritized scholars, positioning them as representatives rather than colleagues. By shifting attention from representational inclusion to the micro‐politics of complicity, this article calls for greater accountability in how inclusion is practiced and performed within academic communities. By naming these practices, it aims to open space for more critical institutional analysis and the possibility of transformative change.

The rise of racial hate speech on social media has raised critical questions for scholars to explore. It is necessary to understand how outside observers passively evaluate (a) online racial hate speech posts on social media and (b) whether those evaluations are related to observers’ subsequent behavior. This study explored how observers evaluate acts of majority-on-minority and minority-on-minority anti-Asian hate tweets on Twitter. In an experiment (n = 196) informed by expectancy violations theory, we tested how White observers evaluated anti-Asian tweets ostensibly posted by either a White or Black source. Analysis revealed a moderated-mediation pathway in which observers’ political partisanship (Democrat/Republican) affected how they judged the ethnic prototypicality of White and Black sources of racial hate speech; these source prototypicality judgments were in turn associated with observers’ judgments of tweet offensiveness and self-reported intentions to engage in online activism (i.e., signing an online petition). These results contribute to our understanding of outside observers’ differential expectancies regarding online hate speech, and how those expectancies can affect perceptions of and reactions to acts of racism.

Research argues the importance of including young people, especially youth of color, to participate in educational leadership. However, adults who enact performative allyship towards these youth leaders often obstruct young people’s ability to authentically participate in educational decision making and achieve justice-driven outcomes in K-12 school policy and practice. We examine this phenomenon by exploring how teachers and administrators perform allyship towards youth voice initiatives and/or school recommendations, if at all. Interviews with educational leaders about youth voice initiatives indicated a spectrum of adult responses, including direct opposition, performative youth allyship, and passive forms of allyship which reinforce adultism and deter overall goals for youth voice and shared leadership. However, we also found that adults who enlist the role of coconspirator, who amplify youth voice initiatives on both the front and backstage and increase opportunity for educational reform.