Racism can be found almost anywhere these days, whether it is in the streets, on the court, on the T.V or on the Internet. Recently, in Michigan there was a division one regional high school basketball game played between Howell High School and Grand Blanc high school.
I was truly disturbed after reading the tweets that the students from Howell posted on Twitter. The fact that these kids would put these racist remarks on the Internet where anyone can see them is just mind-boggling.
Howell is a town whose population is made up of mostly Caucasian individuals, and Grand Blanc is comprised of primarily African American people. Howell defeated Grand Blanc in the game 54-49. After the game several students of Howell High School took to twitter where they made several racist tweets that talked about the Ku Klux Klan and Adolf Hitler. The Internet is a beautiful tool but it can be easily misused. These students have misused this resource of Twitter in a terrible, and extremely racist way.
This article about these racist remarks relates directly to the topic of race, which we have recently learned about in class. Race is an idea that was generated by humans themselves a long, long time ago. Race can be defined as how people assign meaning to others physical characteristics. Sadly racism has been alive in the United States of America for a long time.
The idea of racism dates back to when race based slavery first started in the U.S. Race based slavery is when people are enslaved primarily because they are different from the bulk of the population. In the U.S it was the white people who were enslaving Africans. At one point in the 1600s there were as many as 187,600 slaves in Virginia. These slaves were treated horribly just because of how they looked. Today racism has changed. There are no longer slave owners that own hundreds of slaves. However racism is still relevant today. Racist remarks are made frequently and are often extremely harsh. These remarks can lead to suicide and many other acts of violence.
It really is crazy to think that this racist world we live in today could have been prevented if people judged people not by the color of their skin, but by their core values. Maybe if there were more Samuel Sewalls back in the 1600s then maybe there wouldn’t be racism today. He believed that everyone deserves liberty and equal rights.
source :http://abcnews.go.com/Sports/wireStory/students-reprimanded-racist-twitter-posts-22956048
Pictography : Sam Sewall. Painting. John Smibet.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Sewall
Interhall Basketball. Photo.https://hallsf.imperial.ac.uk/wilson/interhall-basketball/
Liam, I really enjoyed reading your blog and would not have thought to connect racist Twitter posts to the 1600s. In the future I would include more about how the basketball game and Twitter posts relate to racism and slavery in the past instead of talking mostly about the current event. Overall I think you did a nice job!
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your blog post. I also agree with Haley saying that you should include more about the basketball game and how the tweets relate to racism. I also think that Twitter is a great tool but it has it problems with certain topics. But overall good post.
ReplyDeleteLiam, This was a great post. Recently I have also been looking into the topic of racism. People don't realize how much of a problem it still is in the U.S. today. This will be very informative to the people about this troubling issue.
ReplyDeleteHey Liam, I really enjoyed reading your post. I thought it was very deep and informative. I like how you described all the tweets that were sent out in a racist way. This connects to me because I remember a few years ago when the Bruins lost in overtime and it was a black man that scored the winning goal. A bunch of racist tweets were directed at that player after the game. Racism is a huge problem and it needs to stop. Great job Liam!
ReplyDelete(Charlie Decker on his mother's account) You are right, racism is declining publicly but is increasing privately. People say things and don't realize that it is racist a lot of the time. Race is an idea created to desperate people in this case based on skin color or nationality. Good work overall.
ReplyDeleteLiam, I really liked this blog post. I wrote a similar one a short time ago so I can relate. I'm not much of a basketball fan but this is beyond the sport. What these people did is terrible and this should not be tolerated.
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