(If you’re wondering why I’m using WWE gifs, it’s to keep from completely destroying my computer screen as I type this; this is something I’ll discuss, in a sense, later on)
It seems that, in our post-Trayvon Martin society (where Trayvon Martin exists as both a human being and an image of a larger problem), those who once hid their horrid opinions are making it painstakingly obvious. Now, I’m not the type that blindly says “oh, hey, racism is over. Us blackies done got us a high-yeller president” and continues to shuck, jive, jiggaboo, or what-in-the-fuck-ever. But, in the past year, racist behavior has gone from appearing like this:
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| (in other words, fucktarded, but still slightly laughable and out of the ordinary) |
to this…
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| (Just high risk, high impact, sheer fucktastically awful) |
or even this:
These days, not only do we get random celebrities appearing in black/bronze/this-would-be-acceptable-in-the-age-of-Sambo-face, we get cops asking people to rap for them (or else they’ll go to jail), the increase of people using “ghetto” to describe anything halfway out-of-the-ordinary for their middle class tastes (that’s been a problem for years, but it’s even worse now. At least in the early 2000s, these types would try to stop themselves around black people), and people rocking Trayvon Martin costumes–complete with bullet wounds.
You’re probably thinking “holy shit, this is terrible! What will our youth think of this?”
I’ve seen young black social media users Photoshop the Martin crime scene photo (the one with Martin’s lifeless body sprawled out on the grass) into screencaps of, for instance, The New Boys’ “You’re a Jerk” video. The result was disheartening and disturbing to say the least. Or, recently, another Martin–Luther King–was Photoshopped onto the box art for the TV series Martin, with Coretta Scott as Gina. Now, we can make an argument that these poor, misguided fucks are just trying to troll because they don’t receive attention from their parents and are just trying to go about dealing with their sadness in a way akin to Odd Future. That’s to say that they don’t exactly understand the rage they feel and feel the need to uncomfortably laugh about it–or get others to laugh about it uncomfortably to hammer a point home. But, eventually, the laughs have to stop–or even just act as something other than trying to elicit a response from people.
And, this is how we’ve gotten to the (Potential) Dawn of the Post-Racists. They’re springing up faster than any zombie movie–and are probably far more threatening.
Blacks can seem too afraid to take that next step with something controversial and just post the image (or sarcastic webpage) and leave it at face value. Whites (and others) can see this as an invite to go along with these behaviors because it comes off as “hey, the blacks don’t give a shit anymore about how they portray themselves. Why in the fuck should we? They’re out here encouraging killing themselves–in one way or another–and their communities, so why should anyone else care what happens to them?”
I try not to lecture on SpeedontheBeat.com because, well, I’m not perfect, either. I try to educate. But, for fuck’s sake, people. Enough is enough! Get it together.
speedonthebeat.com 