I agree with much of what youve said on this issue as a whole but Im not sure about the best response. If peoples honest reaction to such things is to ignore it, I dont necessarily see that as a negative thing. This also means Im curious as to what Bill is suggesting when he keeps refering to peope who are conspicuous by the absense.
OK I know there is a conventional wisdom that horrible widescale abuse of certain groups of humans in the past, has been supported and perpetuated by the silence and compliance of the majority. But I think its taking it too far to therefore assume that with things like this video, that people who stay silent are somehow siding with or helping the racist. Im not too sure about this either way. Cos I thought the traditional media reaction was to be loud about this stuff, everyone come out and condemn the person who just said something unacceptable, and for everyone to start whiping things into a frenzy until the scalp of the offender is claimed. And then theres a round of self-congratulation that a powerful message has been sent, that the person went over the line and lost a lot, and let that be a lesson to everyone else. Does that approach actually help or does it just push the issues out of sight? I dunno, Im not American so my real-life experience of the racial realities of the USA are a tad limited. I thought I saw some ugly truth being exposed when Katrina happened, and even the robotic media were forced to confront uncomfortable stuff for a while, and it seemed like there was a fair amount of shame, fake shock, a bit of denial and then a move to forget about the whole thing as quickly as possible. I suppose I do think that the best that can come out of the video, and what we should do, is have a big conversation about it, where hopefully we all learn something, just like what seems to have already been happening on this list long before I opened my gob on the matter. I just cant bring myself to moan about anyone who wants to stay silent on the issue, dont want some spanish inquisition where everyone has to declare a certain view or face condemnation. For one thing it means you can rarely find anybody who would admit to being racist, when there are loads of em out there. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, "Jeffrey Taylor" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > And while Deirdre says this trolldom that needs ignoring, I also disagree. > If we as a community of user-generated content providers let luminaries like > Feldman get away with things like this, we end up with the same traditional > media bullshit run by the same traditional media douchebags perpetuating the > same untrue and counterproductive nonsense all over again. >
