https://youtu.be/xl7Q36V9pg4
Anyone who doesn't understand this has a long way to go in understanding race relations.
I've watched this video and I'm a bit afraid to look at the comments. I don't think there is a problem with the underlying message of the video but there is a whole lot of nuance (focusing on the Ferguson situation) that I understand due to experience/reading that isn't touched upon in the video and thus will be lost on the less informed.
"Black kid is killed by a White cop, facts don't matter its Racism" is a naive understanding of the situation that a classmate and her teacher have that she's right to call out. The facts always matter and I kind of winced when I heard that quote from her classmate.
However, due to time constraints, she doesn't touch upon how the manner in which Black people, especially Black men, are stereotyped may have played a role in this encounter ever happening or escalating the way it did. She doesn't touch upon the relatively adversarial relationship that Black people and the police (regardless of the race of the officers) have and the statistics that consistently back this up (especially in Ferguson). She never touches upon the consistent demonization of Black victims that occurred here and in pretty much all these sorts of incidents. It's absolutely not, "herp derp Black kid got shot ergo Racism" but rather a complex shadow of racial politics and tensions that loom over the event in a way it doesn't loom over incidents where innocent/unarmed White victims are in play. All that context is so important to understand in any of these sorts of events in addition to the actual facts of the case, which again always do matter, but the video glosses over all of them.
On her second major point talking about the riots and looting that broke out in Ferguson. I think (hope) we can all agree that nobody wants to see riots and looting is never justified. Those whose thought process is "them Blacks gonna riot & loot, that's just the way they are" can get bent. The issue is the way she frames this discussion. "Is rioting and looting the only way to solve issues in a free, democratic society?". Hell no it isn't! However, rioting is never Plan A but rather usually Plan W or X. Throughout human history, particular events have been the catalyst for major riots but its never been a case of "things were going absolutely, swimmingly well but then this one bad thing happened so lets riot" but rather the event in question, though usually particularly egregious, is event # 3513532512353 in a line of fucked up shit and the "guilty party" has done a swell job of not listening in the years/decades this shit has been going on. She also fails to mention how the police worked to escalate the situation in Ferguson due to their incompetence nor does she really offer alternate paths to take. Do the locals try to take over all the public offices? How easy is that? How long would it take? How many months would they have to wait to hear about what happened to Micheal Brown in the meantime?
Her general point, we are also fucking human beings so treat us as such for better or worse, is spot on, She is absolutely right in that people who would go one spouting stuff like "I see no color" (she doesn't say that but the people she describes would say those sorts of things) are often more dangerous than skinheads because those sorts of "well-meaning" people have more power and likely to pedal racist thought processes without even realizing it (though some do of course).
The way her video is structured, without all that important subtext, however is problematic not because she' saying lies but rather you KNOW someone is going to watch this and post it on Facebook or forums when the subject of Affirmative Action comes up or when in threads like we had last week that were many people were way more interested in "message being lost amongst the riots" than what actually happened to Freddie Gray.
Will reading the comments to that video make me hate myself?
