February 20, 2026

One day last week, I woke up, checked my phone, and found a series of very spirited TikTok videos made about a Super Bowl ad on my #fyp.  I had to stop scrolling and watch for myself.  The ad, which is part of an ongoing campaign against antisemitism, features a young Black man placing a blue sticky note to cover a slur written on a sticky note that had been placed on a young Jewish man’s backpack. On the surface, it’s a gesture of solidarity — a tiny, televised act meant to signal moral alignment. But the timing, the optics, the symbolism… it all set off a tangle of questions in my head.

For context:  The Blue Square Alliance Against Hate (BSA) was founded by Robert Kraft in 2019 to stand up to Jewish hate and all hate by inspiring Americans to become active allies in this fight. BSA empowers people of all backgrounds to #StandUpToJewishHate whenever and wherever they see it.  Introduced in 2023, the Blue Square, or #🟦, is the universal symbol for unity in the fight against antisemitism. The #🟦 represents the small % of the U.S. population that Jewish people make up—and highlights that Jews are disproportionately the victims of 68% of all religious hate crimes.

***

It’s Black History Month, but not just another February.  It's 100 years of Black History Month.  This month represents a century where history and the lived experiences of Black people are supposed to be centered and amplified, yet here comes an ad asking Black Americans to engage in a performative act of “support” for a distant political issue. People online are calling it tone-deaf, others are calling it performative, and some are even framing it as the Jewish community playing the victim. All of it made me stop and ask: why now, and why this way?

For me—and others may disagree—the ad is a mirror reflecting ongoing power asymmetries, influence and the attention economy.  More than a commercial, it is a symbolic gesture. And for someone who has spent years documenting and analyzing the intersections of race, power, and public perceptions fueled in part by the media, it opens a door I can’t walk past. This goes well beyond the power of sticky notes (ironically, I used sticky notes as part of the community engagement strategy for Racism Is A Sickness in 2015). It’s about how moral urgency is deployed, who gets to wield it, and whose voices and struggles get left behind.

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Looking back, 2015 was a turning point for me. My Racism Is A Sickness installation was about naming what most people tiptoe around — exposing systemic racial injustice and holding a mirror to institutions that thrive on inequity. Symbols mattered then, just as they matter now, because visuals have a way of drilling truth into our collective consciousness.

Since then, some gains were made. DEI programs were implemented. Black students and activists fought to carve out space for voices that had long been ignored. Policies shifted, at least on paper, to acknowledge structural inequities. And yet, ten years later, the landscape feels eerily familiar.

The Blue Square ad is not an isolated misstep, not even close.  Think of it as a continuation of a pattern where moral urgency is amplified selectively. A pattern where symbolic gestures are asked of Black Americans — yet structural and symbolic reciprocity is nowhere to be seen. The asymmetry that this ad reflects didn’t start today. It’s been building, decade after decade, quietly eroding gains that were hard-won, reminding us that visibility alone is not protection, and performative solidarity without reciprocal action is empty.

***

What’s happening isn’t abstract. American state power is being marshaled — in real time, in concrete ways — to protect pro-Israel political interests. Federal funding has been leveraged, universities have been pressured, dissent continues to be policed, and DEI programs have been rolled back. The narrative is clear: antisemitism is an emergency that demands structural intervention. But the consequences fall unevenly. Black students are forced to relinquish hard-won gains. Activists are silenced. Institutions bend under political weight.

For me, this isn’t a dry policy debate. It’s about my alma mater, Northwestern University, and other elite universities being coerced into settlements that reshape campus life and restrict protest. It’s the rollback of decades of labor, struggle, and sacrifice, justified under the banner of moral responsibility. The administration isn’t protecting a people — it’s deploying power strategically, aligning with political pressure and coalition interests, and eroding Black progress, silencing Black voices and in the case of my alma mater, reversing the impact of hard-won victories reaching back to 1968.  

The Blue Square ad lands in this landscape. It asks Black Americans to signal solidarity, but the structures behind the ad are not neutral. They exist in a system where moral urgency is selective, where the machinery of the state moves mountains for one community, while the same energy is rarely, if ever, applied to protecting Black students, confronting anti-Black racism, or supporting Black-led initiatives. The asymmetry isn’t symbolic. It is institutional, structural, and very real.

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The deployment of the Blue Square ad is being read by Black Americans as a call to perform solidarity and allyship.  The intentions behind it have not been clearer. But symbolism without reciprocity is empty. It’s easy to ask a community historically tasked with proving its loyalty or morality to participate in a gesture — yet much harder to ensure that the gesture is mirrored, that the moral weight is shared.

If institutions like the Blue Square Alliance Against Hate call upon Black students to engage in the Blue Square, shouldn’t this organization behind the ad (and others) demonstrate equal courage in the opposite direction? Shouldn’t they call upon Israeli institutions and the government to confront anti-Black racism with visible, symbolic, and structural force? Imagine a campaign in Israel where Jewish citizens cover anti-Black slurs with Pan-African symbols, or public service campaigns addressing Ethiopian-Israeli inequities with the same clarity and theatricality used to combat antisemitism abroad.

Symbolic gestures are not trivial. They signal values, intentions, and moral seriousness. They shape culture as much as policy. And yet, when symbolism moves in one direction only, it reinforces the asymmetry that has persisted for decades. Solidarity isn’t one-way. Friendship isn’t one-way. If the message to Black Americans is “engage the Blue Square,” the test of consistency is simple: mirror the action where anti-Black harm exists. Make it visible.  Make it undeniable.

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The relationship between American Black and American Jewish communities has always been complicated — there have been moments of deep solidarity alongside periods of tension. Jewish allies were present during the civil rights movement, standing with Black Americans when courage meant risking life and livelihood. Those histories matter, and they inform my perspective. I am not denying friendship or shared struggle.

But this essay is not about nostalgia or grievance. It’s about structural alignment and moral consistency. The critique isn’t aimed at Jewish people as a whole; it’s aimed at the systems and organizations that leverage selective moral urgency. Asking Black Americans to participate in symbolic solidarity while systemic anti-Black harm persists alongside punitive measures to rollback gains made in part because of Jewish and Black alliances— without reciprocal action — exposes an asymmetry that has been reinforced over decades.

We can honor the history of solidarity while still demanding clarity and reciprocity today. Acknowledging past alliance does not absolve present-day structures from scrutiny. Friendship and shared values must be more than rhetoric; they must be visible and consistent in action. Without that, symbolic gestures like those inherent in the Blue Square ad risk becoming hollow, transactional performances rather than meaningful affirmations of principle.

***

If antisemitism justifies the full force of US governmental attention, intervention, and public outrage, then anti-Black racism should demand the same of the Israeli government. If solidarity is asked of Black Americans in moments of Jewish vulnerability, then solidarity must be returned in moments of Black vulnerability — visibly, structurally, and symbolically.

The problem is not that Jewish people are being protected. The problem is that American state power is deployed selectively, creating a hierarchy of moral urgency where Black lives and Black voices are too often left to struggle without comparable attention or resources. Shared values are invoked to justify political alignment, but the application of those values is inconsistent. That inconsistency is what this essay names, what this ad illuminates, and what has persisted for years.

Friendship, solidarity, and moral principle are not abstract ideals. They are visible, measurable in action. If the organizations behind the Blue Square expect Black Americans to participate, they must also insist that strategic deployment of these values operate universally. Symbolic gestures, campaigns, and public acknowledgment matter just as much as policy. Without symmetry, the rhetoric of shared values becomes empty — a marketing tool rather than a commitment to justice.

This is the asymmetry I am calling out: a system where selective moral urgency is weaponized, while universal principle remains optional. And until that gap is addressed, gestures like the Blue Square will feel incomplete, performative, and hollow — because they ask engagement from those whose struggles have long been sidelined.

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I’m not here to tiptoe around the wound. I’m here to name it. Ten years after Racism Is A Sickness, the asymmetry I documented then is still with us. The Blue Square ad didn’t create it — it just made it visible again.

Solidarity, friendship, shared values — these are words that mean something only when they are mirrored in action. If American state power can be mobilized to protect one community, then it must insist that Israeli state power should also be mobilized to confront anti-Black harm. If symbolic gestures are demanded of Black Americans, they should also be offered in return, across borders and systems, where injustice persists.

This essay is a call to attention: to policymakers, to organizations, to communities. Engage in gestures that are consistent. Apply principle universally. Reflect on the asymmetry and confront it. Healing, accountability, and moral clarity do not come from performance alone — they come from visible, deliberate, and reciprocal action.

If you want us in the Blue Square, be in the Pan-African square too. Anything less is not solidarity, but theater. 

You can keep that.