I was browsing through my facebook feed yesterday when I noticed a link to a video. The title of the video was Lil Girl Gets Mobbed on by a Dude In a New York Train. The clip shows a group of black teenagers on a subway train yelling at a girl, who screams and curses at them in return. Everybody is posturing and at one point one of the boys rushes at her and it appears to be hitting her, but from the angle of the camera I couldn’t be certain.
The video is fairly disturbing, but it’s nothing that one does not see from time to time in New York. No one was hurt, and to me it just looked like a group of high school kids blowing off steam. When you think of it, it’s a little more disturbing that someone stood by taping the incident.
What I was more upset about were the comments that ensued from the post. Here is a sampling:
When they kill each other , it’s like a self cleaning oven !!
Thanks for sharing my Link…….[There] a bunch of Animals!
think I was on this train..no wait..they are all the same lol
Please dont insult the animals these sub humans are scum…
There were 24 comments and not one of them took any of the others to task for the racist garbage that was written. In short — 24 racist comments. This is New York City, not Montgomery, Alabama, not Fargo, North Dakota, and not Phoenix, Arizona. New York!
What does this tell you about our society? Are we really living in a post-racial society? Hardly. The vitriol that was hurled at these kids is not far removed from the garbage that I read and hear directed at Barack Obama by political candidates, pundits, and media. It is shameful and it is not subtle.
George W. Bush stripped us of our civil liberties, started illegal wars that benefited big oil, and nearly drove the country into a depression. Yet you would think that Obama is the devil incarnate for trying to bring relief to struggling families, or by reforming health care.
It’s all about race. You have candidates that want to give tax breaks to the top 1 percent, slash funding for health care and education, and to take us back into the stone age by doing away with labor unions. Why would anyone, short of a millionaire support such policies? This agenda, believe it or not, is now considered centrist. The radicals are those that want a national health care, or programs that support education! Obama, for all the talk of his being a socialist, is unable to even approach this agenda. Not even close.
I can understand politicians motives for pursuing these policies. They are trying to get elected, and in turn reap the monetary benefits that come with power. The American people who allow themselves to be swayed by superfluous wedge issues are doing far more damage than the people runnung for office — they vote against their own interests for fear that poor people might have benefits extended, or that gay couples be allowed to marry.
It’s not about black versus white — the real divide is the rich versus everybody else. The genius of the Tea Party, which is all but synonymous with Republican Party, is to convince the masses that they too can attain obscene wealth, as long as unions, affirmative action, or (shockingly!) gays being able to wed, do not stand in their way.
Which brings me back to the facebook post. These people — this online crowd, as it were, — are our neighbors. These are the people that we work with, interact with, and socialize with. These are not the cultured, elite — the wealthy, to-the-manor-born denizens of Beverly Hills or the East Hamptons. They’re not poor, white trash either — just regular, middle class people.
The post was not in a private forum — this facebook user has hundreds of friends. If I, a mere acquaintance, could read it, then it was hardly private. The feeling I got was that among this crowd it was the most natural thing in the world to feel that kind of antipathy towards black people. There was not so much as a notion that this was amoral.
I’m sickened, but what’s more I’m a little frightened. What’s going to happen when the divide grows wider — when pundits such as Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck, thinly veiled racists as it is, become even less subtle in their diatribes? Don’t kid yourselves, we have a long way to go, and things could well turn ugly.
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