Comments on: MySpace and Facebook: How Racist Language Frames Social Media (and Why You Should Care)

By: J

Sun, 06 Nov 2011 01:09:29 +0000

Would someone get this woman some cheese to go with her whine? Truly a sign that our culture has gone to hell when, despite the myriad real problems facing our nation, she devotes an entire research project to how racist kids are for switching to Facebook. And the weirdest part is her refusal to call out things like “bling” and “conspicuous consumption” for the negative things that they are. That type of backwards culture is what’s holding back black people and helping to reinforce racism. She speaks of no interest in shepherding minorities away from the deleterious cultures they’re born into but simply complaining that others deride those cultures.

I would say the vast majority of the discrimination aimed at “race” is actually aimed at behaviors. Note how most of those kids mentioned not the skin color of the Myspace denizens but their unpleasant behavior. Just take a look at Myspace and you’ll see it is not just some racist assumption. That’s all there is anymore: profile junk.

By: MMRMar

MMRMar — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 03:16:57 +0000

The type of racism that pops up on the net is truly and horrifyingly remarkable. Even worse, almost, is the incredible amount of misperceptions of race that people express. People really don’t know anything about race, and I think it’s because they don’t have much discussion about it growing up/when learning. I don’t know much about race, but I don’t try to argue with so much certainty as the racists I’ve encountered online. When I go on youtube or my favorite art forum and hear things like, “The fact that blacks commit more crimes than whites proves that black criminals calculate ways to be racist and target whites” or see groups on facebook like, “I love watching funny youtube videos of stupid black people” and then see the members try and say that they’re not racist and the group isn’t race-related, they’re just “laughing at their differences, and we all have to celebrate stereotypes because they have an element of truth”… even if the videos we’re supposed to be ‘laughing’ at are like modern day minstrel shows… I just don’t know where to begin. God forbid you start analyzing what peoples’ actions and words are actually symbolizing– then they just get defensive and try and pass off race as so unimportant and meaningless that even the ugliest sayings ‘dont mean anything’ so anyone trying to analyze them is truly the racist one…

I don’t really know how you begin to discuss race and class with the net. So much is revealed by comments, it may just be a good idea to analyze what the most common types of remarks and opinions there are and try and think of how they have come to be, possibly. What types of videos do people respond to most, and what are the people truly laughing at, or getting riled up about? What is the ‘punchline?’ What is the specific language they’re using, and where can it be traced to?

By: Erica

Erica — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 13:15:23 +0000

Slate just did an article (panned by Ad Age for “awkwardness”) called “How Black People Use Twitter” http://www.slate.com/id/2263462

By: Wan

Wan — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 02:57:49 +0000

Interesting article, but we have seen how facebook was banned in Pakistan ordered to be removed by the court due to the sensitive page called “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!”. it posted an articles/images that were offensive and disgraced against the islamic religion. Facebook has two options: 1. To be banned 2: or obey the court rule enforced by the Government of Pakistan.

By: doug

doug — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 02:02:35 +0000

Love your writing about this. I hope soon to have a ‘bloggingheads’ discussion about race and technology in education reform. Perhaps you can join me if you like what you see at our site.

And I could not resist saying to the person who believes racism is innate, it is not. Racism is a learned behavior and protection strategy as cultural and economic systems moved towards adjustments to scarcity or surplus. Racism is about thought control, resources control and privilege. It is certainly not innate.

By: daedalus2u

daedalus2u — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 03:30:09 +0000

I have blogged about how I understand the physiology behind racism and bigotry.

http://daedalus2u.blogspot.com/2010/03/physiology-behind-xenophobia.html

For two people to communicate, they must exchange mental concepts. To do this, the first person must translate their mental concept into the data-stream of language. The neuroanatomy that is used to do this is what I call a “theory of mind”. The data-stream of language; gestures, facial expressions, body language, tone of voice, eye movement, etc. is transmitted, received by the second person and then up-converted back into mental concepts by the second person’s “theory of mind”. Fundamentally the only things that can be communicated are mental concepts, and it requires consilience in the two theories of mind for that communication to be possible.

My hypothesis of what causes xenophobia is that when two people try to communicate, if their two “theories of mind” are not sufficiently consilient, then the error rate goes up. I think that when two people meet, they do in effect a Turing Test, to see if the other person is “close enough” to being “like me” to trust, to communicate with, and ultimately to grok. If the error rate is too high, then no, the person cannot be trusted and xenophobia is triggered via the uncanny valley effect.

The initial feeling of xenophobia is a feeling and is morally neutral. If two people with non-matching “theories of mind” attempt to communicate, over time they begin to learn more about the other, and they each modify their “theory of mind” unconsciously so that they begin to understand the other. Eventually the feelings of xenophobia go away because the other can be fully understood.

This is not what bigots and racists do, they avoid the other, and so never learn about the other, never allow their “theory of mind” to recalibrate itself so as to understand the other and so the feelings of xenophobia remain and instead they make up quite nonsensical and false ideas to justify the feelings of antipathy they have for the other. I give a number of examples in my blog.

For racism and xenophobia to go away, would-be bigots need to have enough exposure to the would-be objects of their bigotry so that they can understand them. This happens most easily during childhood and language acquisition.

Bigotry can be learned too and if people want to be bigots there isn’t anything that can be done to stop them from the outside. I think in that case the hatred becomes a conditioned response to something known and not an uncanny valley effect.

By: zephoria

zephoria — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 19:49:15 +0000

My argument is 100% US-centric. Intentionally so because my data is US-centric. Which is why I put “American” in the title. (I battled over whether to put US vs. American given that the latter can be used to point to many different peoples across the Americas but American is the common term that people in the US use to identify themselves, equivalent to Canadian or Mexican or Brazilian so I decided to roll with it since there’s no United States-ian.)

While some of these issues play out elsewhere, they’re configured differently.

By: e. pyatt

e. pyatt — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:41:56 +0000

Your Facebook vs. MySpace discussions have been in the back of my mind for a while. I work in a university where most of us are socially progressive, but I think we make technology assumptions based on our upper middle class Caucasian ideals.

I was discussing mobile technology with a mixed race student group and I noticed that there was an interesting interchange between 2 students of color about whether one would admit he owned an iPhone or not. I don’t know what the truth was, but I did realize that iPhone may not have the “street cred” among that group that it has in our office.

I think you pointed out one implication that we have to be careful about assuming that everyone is on board the same platform. The other implication though is that ed tech specialists may not be exploring every possible technology option. Many rural college towns may think of the “inner city” as being technologically impoverished, but the truth is more that the technology is different, and often different in interesting ways.

A commenter criticized our discussion as being U.S. centric, and I would have to agree with that. Facebook may have a different meaning outside the U.S., and it may be important to know what it is if we want to understand communications on a global level.

By: Spencer Y

Spencer Y — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 05:50:01 +0000

Here is an example of what I was commenting about as far as new’s articles and the comments on the articles are relative to racial and social class discrimination, like I said I am not trying to spam or promote this particular site, this particular article is an excellent example though, read the comments, it is very entertaining. “Birmingham branch of NAACP holds Sweet Tea Rally at Kelly Ingram Park” http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2010/06/birmingham_branch_of_naacp_hol/857/comments-7.html

By: Greg

Greg — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 02:40:36 +0000

In discussing the functional differences between myspace and facebook, there is an important dimension that is not mentioned in your article. Myspace, which admittedly I rarely use anymore, seems to be primarily oriented around a space/visiting metaphor. People’s profiles are like their homes (or in the case of teens, more likely bedrooms) full of different toys, decorations, posters, music collections, etc… People go to other people’s profiles and experience what’s there and leave notes. Facebook, on the other hand, is more like a media-rich telephone network. People stay in their own homes, and receive streams of information from their friends and respond to it as it comes in.

Mysace is more time-free… if you put a video on your page, it stays in a position of prominence until you choose to remove it. Facebook is more chronologically linear… if you post a video it goes on your friends newsfeeds and then disappears as time goes on. I know that myspace also has a newsfeed but I don’t think people orient around it like they do on facebook.

Anyway, I think this difference is at least as important as the BLING aesthetic vs Clean Aesthetic difference that people usually mention.