Let Me Get On The Bandwagon

(Originally Sept 4 2005)



I got an e-mail from a co-worker who used the title, "People still manage to show hate in the face of tragedy." My co-worker is an extremeist and I tend to ignore her e-mails because I find she gloms onto any and every little hiccup in racial relations in the country. So when she sent the links to the original pictures, I only saw each image and didn't bother to read any of the captions.

Now, not too many minutes ago I heard a report on WNYC-FM about the two pictures and the different language used. The two pics were taken by different photogs, and the copy by two different writers.

By doing the subsequent research, I learned APF requested their photo (of the white people) be pulled from the Yahoo News site to prevent further controversy. I also learned that bloggers around the world have already reacted mightily to the controversy, and I'm late to get on this train.

But I'm getting on now.

Okay. So listen up. I suggest the writer who put the caption under the white people and the person who put the caption under the black guy are affected by the racism that this country is infected with, and are utterly cluesless about it. It took an unintentional but glaring example like this to illustrate it. This is what happened;

Writer #1 saw the white people and instantly identified with those people. The writer put themselves in their places and then wrote copy to reflect what they would have done in the situation. And of course, the writer would not have seen themselves as a "looter", but as survivors of a tragedy.

Writer #2 saw the black guy as an outsider. Outsiders are prone to suspicious behavior because one ever knows what is on the mind of an outsider. "Outsider" = "Not Like Us, Does Not Think Like Us" So Writer #2 identified with the store owner instead of the victim, and wrote what they perceived the black guy was doing.

And the thing of it is, Writers #1 & #2 could either be a White or Black individual themselves, and this STILL could have happened. Why? BECAUSE WE ALL HAVE BOUGHT INTO THE RACISM OF THIS COUNTRY.

The media tells us White is;
1) The Majority
2) Normal
3) The Most Beautiful
4) The Most Powerful
5) The President/Best Actor/Best Actress/Richest In The World

And if you think I'm being reactionist or extreme, just try to replace the any of the above categories with a person of ANY other "race" and see if the notion doesn't become an Exception or a piece of fiction for the masses to consume, rather than a legitimate alternative to the status quo.

Stuff like this makes me wanna HOLLER. Get in a rocket ship and just let y'all blow yourselves up.