Every time I read a news article, a blog post, or anything else on the internet related to the issue of race, I try to avoid reading the user comments. The reason is that I know, with all certainty, that there will be a small but vocal group of anonymous posters who thrive on using their anonymity to incite racial hatred. I wish I could say that this was limited to an uneducated group of Mississippi rednecks, but even comments on race-related posts on Above the Law can rise to this level of small-minded discourse.

In fact, with the increasing popularity of twitter, many people don’t even try to hide behind a shroud of anonymity anymore. Most recently, with the release of the Hunger Games movie, there was a widely reported instance of apparent dissatisfaction and disapproval with the fact that many of the “good” characters in the movie were black. Of course, as soon as these users became aware that their tweets were being reported on major news sources like the Huffington Post, without their usernames redacted, they either deleted their tweets and made their accounts private or shut down their accounts altogether.

As stated in another recent article about this issue, “Users hide comfortably behind their computer screens and type the most obnoxiously offensive things they can think of and thirstily WAIT for an angry response; a validation of their modest efforts.”

Shifting to the point Eben made in class today, is this just proof of racism in our society, or is this more indicative of the institution of white supremacy that has existed for hundreds of years and is just as strong as it was back then? Yes, admittedly, racial attitudes have changed, in the sense that many of the comments that would have been commonplace 50 years ago would be considered abhorrent today, but has anything really changed?

The structure of our society is still the same, if not worse. The intro of a recent Fareed Zakaria report sums it up:

In the past two decades, the money that states spend on prisons has risen at six times the rate of spending on higher education. In 2011, California spent $9.6 billion on prisons, versus $5.7 billion on higher education. Since 1980, California has built one college campus; it's built 21 prisons. The state spends $8,667 per student per year. It spends about $50,000 per inmate per year.

I could write a never-ending story about the prison industrial complex and about how it is in many ways the most potent evidence of white supremacy in society, but I will leave that for another day.

If you watch TV or read the news, you would believe that Blacks and Latinos are entirely to blame for the drug problem in the United States. But if you look at the statistics from the most recent report by the National Institute of Drug Abuse, the drug use rate for Blacks was about 9.6%, for Latinos was about 7.9%, and for Whites was about 8.8%. So if the percentage of drug use is roughly the same, the population of the US is over 70% white, and studies show that most drug purchases are intra-racial, then WHY are 3 out of every 4 persons in prison for drug offenses either Black or Latino?

I’m sure many of the people reading this post are aware of these statistics, but for some it may come as a surprise. The question is, does knowledge of statistics like this really affect someone’s perception of race in this country? Reading many of the anonymous comments about articles relating to the Trayvon Martin story, and other similar stories, it seems that some people in this country are of the opinion that George Zimmerman was justified in what he did. It may be that they have been in similar situations themselves, or it may just be that the way our society is set up causes them to form an “us” versus “them” mentality. Television and the news media, and even police reports, may lead them to believe that one or more minority groups is to blame for the ills that the majority faces in society.

I don’t know if there will ever be anything that can be done about this problem. Even if we found a way to put an end to all the racist posts on the internet (and by the way, I’m in no way advocating government censorship) I don’t know if we would be able to dismantle a white supremacy system that has been established over hundreds of years. And even if we did find a way, it would take equally as long to destroy, if not much longer. But one thing's for sure, as long as this institution exists, racism isn’t going anywhere, no matter how much we try to sweep it under the rug.

-- JasonPyke - 10 Apr 2012

“Users hide comfortably behind their computer screens and type the most obnoxiously offensive things they can think of and thirstily WAIT for an angry response; a validation of their modest efforts.”

If this were true, it would seem to me that it would indicate that racism is less of a problem nowadays (I have no clue what it says for entrenched institutionalized white supremacy; it might just not indicate much of anything on the basis that the internet allows the periphery of society to voice its views). If people are merely trying to be ostentatiously offensive, they don't necessarily believe in what they say; rather, they say it because they know that most people will disagree and find it offensive. Thus, the only thing that racist internet posts would indicate is that people find racism offensive. And that, in turn, would seem to indicate that racism is no longer as popular as it used to be.

Of course, it might just be that everyone is still racist, but at least we all have the good sense to be ashamed about it. But even then, that would seem to indicate some sort of social force arrayed against racism, leading us to wonder about the presence of institutionalized white supremacy. I'm not sure if we can reconcile the presence of a white supremacy system with a cultural taboo on racism.

Another way to look at this is just to throw out the "obnoxiously offensive" theory and to suggest instead that people say racist things not to provoke a response, but because they actually believe it in their hearts. They'd say it on a white supremacist forum and they'd say it on the general internet; how and whether people respond is irrelevant to them. This argument might have some merit, and it certainly seems to make logical sense that anonymity would encourage people to speak their mind without regard for other people or cultural taboos.

At the end of the day, I think that it's probably a mix. There are some people who say racist things to provoke a response, even though they may not actually believe the racist things they say. And at the same time there are some people who are genuinely racist, and the internet provides them with a soapbox to make their voice heard.

What do you think? Are internet posters generally just trying to be obnoxiously offensive or are they voicing their actual views? Can someone be obnoxiously offensive by saying racist things and yet not be a racist? Is racism what you say or what you think?

-- KensingNg - 11 Apr 2012

Jason, I’m glad you brought up this issue, the poisonous discourse on most comments sections on the internet are discouraging for their display of a really ugly side of our cultural psyche that apparently goes unexposed elsewhere. As the author of the article you linked to said, for all the insults and bigotry she has been exposed to on the internet, she had never experienced such name-calling in person.

I agree with Kensing that the author’s characterization of these people’s motivations does little to credit the broader point she is trying to make. We all like to envision Internet hatemongers, cramped in their dark bedrooms and desperate to make up for some lack of “real life” with a vindictive internet personality. Whether that’s the reality of the situation we can’t know, but even on more reputable sites where names and faces are linked to more substantive profiles than just a news site membership, people are saying really terrible stuff. The notion that their motives are merely antagonistic doesn’t explain why they would spend the time to write such hateful things, and surely the satisfaction they derive from “flaming” such comment boards can’t be enough to sustain that.

Kensing arrives at a conclusion I agree with: either people are provocatively posting, actually believe these things, or some combination of the two. I think the broader point is that the Internet represents a novel forum for people to air these types of beliefs, and find support for them amongst all the people who aren’t immediately repelled. Coupled with that is the troubling trend of young people (read: 50%+ of Hunger Games fans) sharing the slightest details of their lives and beliefs with infinite strangers on the internet. I can’t forgive a 14-year old who says something ignorant and stupid about how Rue being black “kinda ruined the movie,” but I can understand why, given that every other insignificant thought is already posted to her account, she would share that one as well.

The fact is we all make poor decisions all of our lives, hopefully more as teenagers, and the Internet provides a public forum for these mistakes and their resolution. Reading the Hunger Games article reminded me of something that happened in November, where Kansas Gov. Brownback was forced to apologize to a teenager for his staff, after they demanded she apologize for a “disparaging tweet” saying something along the lines of “#heblowsalot.” Regardless of how we feel about the underlying controversy, free speech in schools, arbitrary disciplinary procedures, etc., the prospect of a state governor apologizing to a teenager for her immature and unproductive behavior seems unprecedented.

The Internet is undoubtedly transformative, and in my example above it acts as something of an equalizer which is in most cases valuable. However, what is also does is allow people to air these types of beliefs that have long since become taboo to acknowledge out loud. These bigots find an audience, and among that audience they find some sympathizers. That organizational aspect is one of the most valuable and troubling aspects of the Internet, but the downsides can't so easily be separated from the benefits, as you noted. Ultimately, what happens on the Internet, anonymously or not, is a broader reflection on our entire society.

-- CameronLewis - 11 Apr 2012