My name is Jacqueline - I'm a socially moderate, religiously conservative, and politically liberal girl just loving life right now! I'm a 24 year old Master's of Media Studies student at the University of Texas, but an Oklahoma alumni and die-hard Sooner fan! I'm currently writing my thesis - in a nutshell my research is about girls' online lives, particularly informal learning environments. I'm also an English & Language Arts teacher for a local Home School Co-op. When I'm not researching for my thesis or writing lesson plans - I'm usually watching college football! Oh yea, and I'm training to run a half marathon with Teams in Training this winter, I'm pumped!
"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it." George Bernard Shaw
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Wednesday, September 05, 2007
So there's a short video clip on YouTube about Darfur. Regardless of how you politically align yourself on this issue is a moot point. What absolutely blew me away was the amount of hate-filled, racist, ignorant comments that people left (loosely in regards to the video). Call me completely naive, but the racist and hateful comments I was reading seriously made me feel like I was living in the pre-civil rights era. I know racism exists in this country, but the overt comments of pure hatred towards black people in this country absolutely floored me. As if African-Americans are the same as the people of Darfur, first of all. This video was not about race, and it certainly wasn't about blacks in America - but that's where the conversation went. The comments were bleeding with ignorance and hate that I honestly have not seen displayed in decades - not in this country, not in our media, not in my social circles. They are so awful I don't even want to repost them on here. I've heard some really hateful, ingorant, racist things before - but this exceeded them all. How can someone seriously want all black people to die? That mentality is so beyond my scope of understanding. What also surprised me, although I guess it shouldn't, was how young some of the commenters were. Not that I think racism died out with my generation or anything, but we certainly grew up post-civil rights era.
I gotta say, I do think it is the medium that is facillitating this sort of cowardice response. I don't think most people would say these things to someone in person, or even to a news anchor or to their local newspaper. Of course local media would censor this sort of comment, But still, the conversation became a perpetual cycle of more extreme comments. The more people tried to tell these people off the more fuel they really threw on the fire. I don't know to what extent these racist people really even believed what they were saying, so much as fueling a reaction. Nonetheless, they did not just cross a line, there was no humorous undertone to their remarks - they were hate driven. So sad.
Here's a link to the video and the comments.
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