I got a sad video this morning from a friend who thought I might find it interesting. I found it infuriating. The video was a ham-handed edit of a bunch of news clips and pundits emphasizing Barack Obama’s middle name. It was also liberally laced with clips of Reverend Wright making incendiary comments (taken out of context of course).
The video was designed to do exactly what it did. It spread like a virus. It was emailed to me and several other people by someone who thought it was appalling. It was, but the problem with sending it to a whole raft of friends is that they will do the same and somewhere down the line it will land in someone’s mailbox who believes the innuendo and racist crap it was designed to promote. It is those people who will spread it to their friends who are perhaps fighting their own fears and before long it’s a big internet hit!
These viral videos work. I remind you that the clip of Rev. Wright started that way. Unfortunately for Senator Obama, his former reverend saw the publicity as his 15 minutes of fame and ran with it. Now that clip gets hacked even further and only the most fiery words remain. Sprinkle them in a series of cuts of GOP pundits calling Obama “Osama” and a few photos of smiling black faces of people that are purported to be Obama’s family in Kenya and you have a recipe for fear and hate.
The sad truth is that in our country racism is hidden under a very thin veneer of civility. It only takes a tiny scratch to see the ugly fears. I do believe most people sincerely try to avoid racist remarks and beliefs, but I am not a Pollyanna. I grew up hearing people use the “N” word with impunity and watched riots in the streets of LA and Detroit. My family made a conscious effort to raise me with an unbiased view of people no matter what their color, but societal influences still took their toll.
It is almost impossible for a person of the baby boom generation to not have at least a few dark places in their mind where racist fears can still fester. I am not a bigot by any means, but sometime I have to hold back the knee jerk reaction that is ingrained by those societal impressions. It is not fun and I don’t act on them, but I suspect if I was bombarded with enough racist crap I might be influenced. Just a little, and that little is all it takes for these kind of viral campaigns to be effective.
The same tactic has been used against the gay and lesbian community for years as well, and I have watched people say amazingly ignorant things about my lifestyle. I suspect they are really just average folks who have had their fears supercharged by repeated exposure to hate speech. Words are really powerful things. Videos are even more so.
So here is my plan. I will not circulate any video like this that is sent to me and I encourage you to do the same. Don’t forward it, don’t post it on a MySpace page, don’t participate in the hate campaign. We can stop this crap and help change our country.
Now go out and start working to elect Barack Obama as the next president of the United States, I know I will.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment