Social Media - Damaging Race Relations


This is a post that came up on my personal twitter feed. I am obviously looking at this by my own personal experiences in my own interpretations of events that have happened in my own life, however looking at the word choice of this tweet, this is very racially charged as well as clumping an entire "race" by one person's actions out of billions that this woman personally experienced. Stereotypes are an unfortunate aspect of human nature, due to the desire to always categories or explain individuals as well as groups of people. I have seen similar tweets that start off with Dear "Black people", and the response to this tweet is severely different. I understand of the systemic oppression that African Americans have faced in the history of this country, however, I don't agree with any type of racially charged conversation regardless of the race it is targeting. With the rise in social media, I have witnessed ill be it in my short life, a rise in negative relations between races, especially between whites and African-Americans. This is a very disheartening trend that I have seen. When I was younger all of my friends were African-American and never once did I think anything out of the ordinary with who my friends were I never viewed there to be any difference between us. Only recently have the extreme issues with race relations made me aware of the "difference" between me and my friends. The rise of social media has lead to a worse overall relationship between races in this country, it has allowed people to hide behind screens and not have to face any sort of consequence or repercussions for the words they say. With the advancement of our society, I would think that there would be a progression between race relations. Unfortunately, I have witnessed a regression throughout ill admit my short life. Overall there are many issues with our society the extreme lack of peoples willingness and the ability for effective communication has not made race relations better, especially in this technological rise of social media.

Rothenberg, P. S. (1998). Race, class, and gender in the United States: An integrated study. New 
York: St. Martin's Press. Part 1, Ch 1, 2, 5, 6. Part 2, Ch 2, 4. Part 4, Ch 2.







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