To all unfamiliar with Twitter.com. Trending Topics are popular topics that majority of people on the site are discussing for a particular time. They are indicated on the bottom of the homepage or right of your personal profile and have a # sign in front so that they'll pop up in the search bar. The topics change, hourly, daily, weekly, etc. depending on how long people decide to pay it attention. As you may imagine, Tiger Woods has been a hot topic for a while. However, this past friday one particular topic struck a unique interest in me, mainly due to the responses and who they were generated from. The topic was if santa was black. Now first let me say that statistics show that over 75% of users on twitter identify as African-American, which I suspect is the reason the topic made it to the trending list. Nonetheless, all users are not black...obviously. Like most trending topics, they generate from a small group and those interested will catch on and keep passing it on until it reaches the masses and makes the list. So someone probably thought it'd be funny to make jokes about if santa was black. And i'll admit it was and I even posted my own view. Until about two seconds later i realized this wasn't just an inside joke but many non-blacks had begun posting their thoughts;and as you can imagine they were not pleasant.
I was ready to go off on each and every person who posted a stereotypical view and racist epithet. And moments later, that's what I found myself doing. I initially started targeting white people and then other non-blacks posting racist things until I moved my way onto the blacks themselves who were clearly unaware or perhaps unmoved by the stereotypes they themselves were perpetuating and others were mocking. I spent a good hour replying individually to the racist remarks with condemning commentary. One gentleman and i use that term loosely by the name of @NothingBett3R retweeted, "#ifsantawasblack he would have over a million kids," to which i replied, "it seems u have "nothingbett3r" 2 do than stereotype. that's sad." He responded by calling me a "dumb hoe" (laughs at the fact he thinks that hurt me.) Anyway, another white person said, "What's funnier about the TT #ifsantaWASblack is all of the "niggas" answering with stereotypes about their own "culture." and then added "I need a black friend to post my answers for #ifsantaWASblack so they will be funny and not racist."
This put things in perspective for me because he was right. The black people trending racist things weren't looked at as racist because they were black. But the non-blacks were certainly not getting away with it, especially as long as i had something to do with it. But i ask myself, did i over react in turning my head away from the blacks repeating the trends and targeting non-blacks. My logic was that blacks as well as every group has "inside jokes" within their dynamic that only they are privy too. Similar to how you can talk about your mama or your sister but let someone outside of your family do it and all hell will break loose. However, the difference between that and this is the platform on which it was taking place. The internet is hardly the place to shout your racial inside jokes back and forth, even if majority of users are black. The "outsiders" and I use that term in a non-literal sense, still see it and some actually believe it. It's not for me to tell blacks to set an example on twitter, but I would like them to be aware that we have a major audience that often looks to us as the authors of cool so if we perpetuate negative stereotypes about ourselves then we give license for others, looking to us for permission, to do the same.
YOUR THOUGHTS???!!!!
