Comments on: More Facebook Racism

By: racismreview.com » Blog Archive » Facebook Racism Reaches New Low with Assassination Poll

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 19:38:10 +0000

[...] written here before about the various permutations of Facebook racism. Over the weekend, it appears that Facebook racism reached a new low with a poll [...]

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By: Puneet

Puneet — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 15:44:03 +0000

Well, at least there are no examples of this found on Google! This is why Microsoft have and always lag behind Google. They may have the money, but they don’t have the intelligence. Maybe their merger with Yahoo! will help. Only time will tell

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By: Bob Calder

Bob Calder — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 01:37:35 +0000

Regarding Landon/Landor, the thing that stands out when I read what she posted is that it matches the verbiage of a cross section of conservative media pundits. The choice of words, the pacing of the prose.

Scary, because it doesn’t always contain overt racism. Scary because the goal of such speech is persuasion.

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By: Rebecca York

Rebecca York — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 16:41:26 +0000

I know why it’s so prevalant here: racists are cowards and phonies. This way they don’t have to face someone and can be the true haters they are.

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By: mh

mh — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:51:34 +0000

“Who really is defending “Ni**er Jokes” as speech that’s making a meaningful contribution to the public sphere”

That is not the standard for free speech, it must be noted. Once has the right to say all kinds of things that are not meaningful contributions to the public sphere.

I agree with you that bing and facebook have good reasons to prevent this site from being served up to their customers. And preventing it from appearing thusly is well within their rights. Those who run the joke site have a right to free speech (meaningful or otherwise)–but the services have a right to refuse the ads.

The right to free speech is one of our most important ones–please be respectful and accurate when discussing it.

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By: Virtue

Virtue — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 05:16:22 +0000

i keep talking about this and no one seems to be bothered… similar stories here: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dmal.9780262550673.129

the web has the potential to be something great and work against hegemonic realities… instead, i am afraid, it will be nothing more than drawing the same old lines in the sand… what a wasted opportunity that would/will be.

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By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 04:39:02 +0000

I work on Bing and ran across this blog post. I’ll be contacting the appropriate people responsible for ads to see that this ad is removed (if it hasn’t been already) and that appropriate blocks are added going forward. Be assured that this is not the kind of ad that we want to profit from. The ad marketplace is huge and it is not possible to manually approve every ad that is posted, but there are systems in place to block ads with restricted content and the block list is constantly being updated.

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By: Jessie

Jessie — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 12:09:58 +0000

Thanks @jwbe – I talk about the work of INACH in Cyber Racism (chapter 9) and attended their conference when it was here in NYC. I haven’t seen them being very active recently (not sure why, lack of funding is my guess) and hope they become revitalized soon.
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Dave Paul, yes agree mostly with your comment. I do think that placing peoples’ lived experience at the center of analysis (rather than abstract principles) is key to an ethical epistemology (as PHCollins points out). I also think that we all have a lot of ‘unlearning’ to do of the white racial frame, it is deeply ingrained (as JFeagin points out). The cyberlibertarian defense of free speech is in desperate need of a thorough-going critique and my take on it in Cyber Racism is just a beginning. Someone really should do a whole book on the racial implications of libertarianism. Maybe you will?
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Crusader, Erika, glad the post was useful and thanks for dropping by!
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Vonda, yes I do agree that there has been much progress since the days of separate water fountains and that having a black president is progress for the U.S. and I don’t want to diminish the significance of that progress. However, I think that it’s important to keep in mind that all those gains happened because people struggled to win them – by forcing (white) people to acknowledge racism & segregation and forcing them to change. I actually don’t think it’s goes far enough to teach our children good morals. That’s what I might call a ‘necessary but not sufficient’ requirement for change. What we need to do is get engaged politically, whether that is in the streets, online, or running for political office to change systems of inequality – whether that’s lobbying Fb to working to end racial disparities in health.

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By: Vonda Shrader

Vonda Shrader — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 22:09:39 +0000

I think it is sad that so many people are still ignorant enough to be be raciest in this day & age.
I feel the fact that we have a black president is a good sign. It proves that the majority of Americans are not prejudice or raciest. We have come a long way considering 50 years ago blacks were not even allowed to drink from the same fountains, use the same toilets or wash they’re clothes in the same washing machines. Now we have a black man running our country! I think that says a lot about what we can expect in the future generations. I doubt we will ever see a world free of racism, but if we teach our children good morals, we can at least make a difference in the world around us. Vonda Shrader

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By: Erika

Erika — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 21:39:16 +0000

Thank you for this. I had read Danah Boyd’s talk and this piece is a great follow up. Out of curiosity and outrage, I visited the site that bing was operating. I am appalled by the images as well as by my lack of surprise.
@ Jessie- your responses to others’ questions have been incredibly useful, thank you.

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