Years back, Spank Rock was a hit for his party rap bangers. Since then, the artist born Naeem Juwan has changed his stage name in order to leave behind his reputation and take on more serious subject matter. Now, Naeem is out with his first album in nine years. “Startisha” features love songs about Naeem’s boyfriend and tracks about dealing with tropes of masculinity that he doesn’t embody as a queer artist. “You and I” is a cover of the 1968 electro song by Silver Apples that laments the loss of small, specific points of connection to whatever is bigger or “more important.” But what if the little things are part of the big things? Listen here.

As if they had learned nothing from the Imagine video— or from anything a single abolitionist is saying right now— dozens of high-profile white faces banded together to produce a showy montage in which they “take responsibility” for their general complicity in the racist status quo, and then claim Black people as their “brothers and sisters.” While it is helpful for celebrities to throw their weight behind justice, an optical apology suggests to the rest of us that vaguely owning up to your faults is an acceptable stand-in for actually doing the work. What would be meaningful, the lawyer and TV host Adrienne Lawrence suggested, is a commitment to eliminating tokenizing roles, or to hiring BIPOC colleagues to make films. Other ideas: Surely there are some super racist people who hold power in Hollywood— why not call them out so people of color don’t have to do it? Are there not artists of color who could benefit from your platform at this moment? Why is your face here instead of theirs? It also seems that movie starts have a great deal of capital. Why not tell us how much of it is going to dismantling the oppressive systems that set the stage for this video? Instead, what we see is a set of seasoned actors peeling their eyes away from the screen to read their lines, which they haven’t even bothered to memorize. Work, indeed.

One celebrity using her platform particularly well is (surprise, surprise) Samin Nosrat. On instagram, she’s been regularly highlighting Black chefs, authors, and historians, many of whom have seen their social followings grow by the thousands overnight. On its face, this is awesome. It is also something to interrogate. Is a new follow a rush to support Black people in food, or a rush to make the follower feel better because they “supported” someone with a click?

Stephen Satterfield, co-founder of Whetstone Media and recipient of a Nosrat follower bump, explained on instagram, “These shows of solidarity(?) can actually be triggering. I’m happy to have “gained” thousands of “followers”, but feel a peculiar sense of encroachment that makes me feel compelled to express weariness rather than delight.” He continued, “Please understand that right now, Black folks are holding critical space for one another. Historically, when we’ve convened to protect our spaces and our spirits, white people have responded with apathy or hostility.” The sudden flood of attention is, in a way, an infiltration of Black space—and, Satterfield warns, “when the white folks show up, we’re in danger of disappearing.” A message to take to heart for anyone diversifying the voices in their orbit. (Please read Satterfield’s full comment, which I’ve excerpted.)

As you may have heard or contributed to, there’s currently a run on anti-racist books. In light of all the listicles about the anti-racist canon, White Fragility, How To Be An Anti-Racist, and many others are sold out on Amazon and Bookshop.org. In general, this is a good thing— learning is helpful. It’s also just a small piece of the ally’s promise to “do better.”

As the writer and professor Lauren Michele Jackson wrote in Vulture, a pile of books with no instruction or context is only so useful. If this is your first experience with books by Black authors, what are you supposed to make of Toni Morrison? Furthermore, she says, ““anti-racist” suggests something of a vanity project, where the goal is no longer to learn more about race, power, and capital, but to spring closer to the enlightened order of the antiracist. And yet, were one to actually read many of these books, one might reach the conclusion that there is no anti-racist stasis within reach of a lifetime.” This is SUCH AN IMPORTANT STATEMENT. The goal isn’t for the reader to absolve themselves from their privilege— that’s impossible. It’s to understand where their existence falls in an unjust landscape, and to do their best to right the course from wherever they sit.

On that note, if you are ordering books right now, remember the role that capitalism plays in oppression and buy in a way that supports Black business owners and not Jeff Bezos.