People keep sharing the video of George Floyd. Some activists and mental health professionals are calling it 'pain porn' and begging them to stop.

• A video depicting a white Minneapolis police officer kneeling on George Floyd's neck before Floyd died in police custody went viral on social media.
• While many believe they're helping spread awareness of police brutality and racism in the US by sharing the video, some activists and mental health professionals say the clip is traumatic for the black community.
• "Seeing these images over and over can result in things like anxiety, fear, anger, worthlessness, humiliation, interpersonal sensitivity, traumatization, feeling triggered — all of these things that we would typically really associate with something like a traumatic disorder," said psychiatrist Danielle Hairston, the president of the American Psychiatric Association's Black Caucus.

The video of George Floyd's death spread like wildfire. It was shocking, horrifying, and violent in its depiction of Floyd, a black man, pinned down to the ground by the knee of Derek Chauvin, a white police officer (who has since been removed from his post). Chauvin dug his knee into Floyd's neck for close to ten minutes as Floyd pleaded, saying "I can't breathe," before he stopped moving. Floyd later died in police custody in Minneapolis.

The footage, taken by a bystander and shared on social media, appears to incriminate Chauvin, who was charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter on Friday. It's also become a touchpoint for many people online who believe sharing this kind of content can lead to action like the arrest of Chauvin.

But activists, members of the black community, and psychiatrists beg to differ, and are instead asking their followers to stop spreading the video.

"Stop sharing the videos of George Floyd's murder," Queen-Cheyenne Wade, an organizer and educator based in the Boston area, said in a tweet on May 26.

There are countless tweets and Instagram posts that argue the video of Floyd — like footage of Ahmaud Arbery and Eric Garner's killings — depicts a "modern-day lynching."

Mikki Kendall, an activist and the author of "Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot," called the deaths of black Americans "pain porn," and said she would never post "images of people being killed."

A 2018 study by researchers from the University of Connecticut found that nonwhite Americans experience PTSD at a higher rate than white people, a phenomenon largely considered to occur due to racism.

The sharing of this type of content further contributes to this issue, according to psychiatrist Danielle Hairston, the president of the American Psychiatric Association's Black Caucus.

"There's a correlation between racism and psychological distress amongst black Americans," Hairston told Insider. "Seeing these images over and over can result in things like anxiety, fear, anger, worthlessness, humiliation, interpersonal sensitivity, traumatization, feeling triggered — all of these things that we would typically really associate with something like a traumatic disorder."

Activists say that spreading the footage on social media won't help change the minds of white supremacists.

The rationale behind the sharing of the video is often the same — that people hope this kind of raw footage can help change the minds of white supremacists. One white person who posted the video on his Instagram story, and wished to remain anonymous for the article, said he feels that the footage is "something so horrible that needs to be seen firsthand to understand the intensity of police brutality, especially in hopes it reaches people on the far right." Along with the video, he also shared resources encouraging his followers to call the local authorities in Minneapolis to fight for the arrest of Chauvin.

But some activists disagree with that point of view, especially within the echo chamber of one's social media feed, where it's unlikely for your posts to reach and change the minds of people with opposing views.

"The reality is, you can find that video on the internet. All you have to do is Google it. But perpetuating trauma porn doesn't actually make people want to take action more," Thanu Yakupitiyage, a Brooklyn-based activist and cultural organizer, told Insider.

Wade, who is also the cofounder of the Greater Boston Marxist Association, told Insider that while she understands "the good intention of trying to spread awareness for a racist system," that is actually "a misguided notion."

"By sharing these videos, you're desensitizing white folks who already are taught to trivialize black lives from a white supremacist system, and now kind of continue that repetitive trauma for black folks by sharing these videos," Wade said.

Especially during a time like the coronavirus pandemic, when people feel helpless and are stuck at home, Wade said the reaction to Floyd's story by sharing the video is unsurprising. "With the pandemic, there's this extra anxiety about how to spread awareness during a time when we can't really congregate in a physical sense," she said. "The intentions that come behind sharing these videos can usually be from good intentions."

It's important to note that it's not just white people sharing the footage, according to Hairston, as some black Americans and nonblack people of color also believe in the importance of viewing these kinds of events.

Footage depicting violence against black people has been prominent for decades, even before the advent of social media.

Hairston said that though social media is a relatively recent addition to our culture, the American obsession with images of black deaths has been around for nearly a century. "This is not new," Hairston said.

When 14-year-old Emmett Till was murdered in Mississippi in 1955, his mother wanted to show the world the brutality of his lynching by having an open-casket funeral. As "Freedom on My Mind: A History of African Americans, with Documents," by Deborah Gray White, Mia Bay, and Waldo E. Martin Jr. stated, "The open-coffin funeral held by Mamie Till Bradley exposed the world to more than her son Emmett Till's bloated, mutilated body. Her decision focused attention not only on U.S. racism and the barbarism of lynching but also on the limitations and vulnerabilities of American democracy."

In Till's case, this was a deliberate effort to demonstrate the atrocities of racism. But activists argue that this is not usually the case when the media depicts footage like that of Floyd, Arbery, Garner, and countless others.

Alternatives to sharing the George Floyd video include donating to memorial funds or other actions that can make a difference.

Activists and Hairston agreed that people who feel outraged and impassioned by issues of racial violence and the deaths of Arbery, Floyd, and others, should continue to share with their social media followers, while bearing in mind that sharing the video won't help anyone.

"You can acknowledge outrage, you can acknowledge anger, you can acknowledge 'I'm wanting to be an ally.' You can acknowledge wanting to bring attention to this. You can do all of that without reposting a video like this, a constant reel," Hairston said.

Wade recommends that people channel their anger and energy towards raising money for organizations and funds that support black Americans and work to end this violence agaist black people.

Wade said she encourages "uplifting, and donating, and volunteering for the work of organizations and activists and organizers that are doing this work on the ground for these communities."

"The George Floyd Memorial Fund or the Minnesota Freedom Fund are two really great ways that you can show solidarity and uplift," Wade added.

White people who want to engage with white supremacists on issues of racial violence should consider sending videos directly to those relatives or colleagues, Yakupitiyage said.

"It's a savior syndrome, this idea that you post a video of violence and then somehow that's going to change people's minds," said Yakupitiyage, who identifies as a nonblack person of color. "What actually changes people's minds is having deep conversations with them about white supremacy, and about the systemic structures that over and over again lead to the kind of violence that happened to George Floyd."

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