Author: Alyssa Ramirez

Seeing this blowing up on Twitter, I was appalled. This picture demonstrates a high school boy standing outside with a what is called a “promposal sign.”Many times, individuals will come up with creative ways to ask their date to prom, but this boy took it way too far. Slavery was no joking matter as it effected the lives of many individuals, so to think this boy humorously passed it off as one is terrible. He most likely did this to obtain attention on social media. It is like he did not know what has occurred in the past, and as if he does not know that racism still goes on today. Him contributing to racism makes me feel like the school should not let him go to prom as he clearly is not educated and probably thought this was a funny poster. Things like this need to stop because even retweeting a picture of this sort contributes to the racist ways are society still continues to be.

With 67% of African Americans being Facebook users, its hard to believe how many times Facebook has messed up for the Black community. It seems that Facebook has turned a blind eye to many things that occur on this means of media.  To start, they have a laissez-faire attitude towards their privacy protection as they have a lack of vigilance to protect one of their most vulnerable user demographics. An example of how this is true is when Facebook let Russian sponsored ads that portrayed African Americans badly. These ads displayed Black Lives Matter activists as murders, attempting to be a political motive, swaying voters toward one candidate, who was then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. In addition to these ads, Cambridge Analytica worked with the presidential campaign and found that pictures, profiles, and even direct messages were misused, leading to voter manipulation. Not only has this occurred, but recently, news just came out that the largest Black Lives Matter group on Facebook was a fraudulent page as it was created by a white male in Australia and his goal was to discredit the youth-based civil rights group. This is enough to seriously question the integrity of Facebook as they lack transparency, reliability, and accountability. Facebook has made strides in the correct direction with attempting to remove hate speech, but devoting more resources to this effort would help remove more of this problem. In addition, the company is almost all white. This was an issue that was brought to CEO Zuckerberg on his 2nd day of his hearing as his Rep mentioned that the company’s Black representation has only risen from 2 percent to 3 percent. Clearly, Facebook has a lot of things that it needs to tweak in order to fix its problems with failing the Black community.

Kayne West had an interview with TMZ on Tuesday morning in which he made some very bold commentary. He explained that if slavery occurred for 400 years, it had to be a choice for African Americans. This is a crazy comment that he stated as we all know that slavery was a forced action and no individual would willingly go through the process. Slaves were beaten, worked endlessly, raped, etc. and yet, Kayne still made a claim that these actions were prime choice for blacks, as if they really wanted to go through all these hardships. Van Lathan from the TMZ newsroom was quick to counter Kayne’s statements. He said “I think that what you’re doing right now is the absence of thought,” which is completely true. To think that Kayne stated this knowingly, and to think that people look up to him as an artist and a role model is appalling with the words he said. He knows that his voice is big and many individuals look to him, so it was nice to see an average man stand up to him saying “I’m disappointed, I’m appalled, and brother—I am unbelievably hurt by the fact that you have morphed into something to me that isn’t real;” I was pleased to see this occur. Kayne then tried to explain himself on Twitter, only giving in to making the claims relate back to him. He tried to make society feel bad for him for having new ideas on slavery. Clearly, he was just being egotistic and was completely wrong in his claims about slavery.

This was a very interesting article as it explored concepts that I have never thought about. It discussed the belief that Trump was solely elected based on the fact that White dominancy needed to be restored. It began to mention an interview of a young Trump in which he explained he would rather be a well-educated African American rather than a well-educated White individual. This was not taken literally as Trump did not actually wish to be black, but instead, he was expressing a white resentment of anyone encroaching on white privileges. Trump has always been one to support white supremacy and patriarchy, and so individuals  who also believed in these things thought Trump was their last hope to go back to the ways when Whites dominated over African Americans. Especially with the fact that the white population decreasing, whilst ethnic groups are on the rise, individuals that believe that whites should have power over blacks knew someone needed to be in charge that had the same views. Trump had the ability to embody and project the worries that white Americans should face, making many individuals also believe that this was a major problem that needed to be fixed. Individuals who believe in white vulnerability and racial resentment knew that Trump was their only hope in to getting what their real wishes were. Individuals who think that Trump was elected solely based on economic anxiety is a false thought.There was even an analysis that proved that racial resentment is the driving force of economic anxiety. So, all in all, Trump was not elected for economic reasons, instead, he was elected to please white supremacists.

As we approach the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., I thought it would be interesting to do some research about how many individuals reacted to his work. For instance, he is one of the most famous and well known  civil rights activists in our nation’s history, but he was not always perceived as this. Actually, at the time of his death, King was a hated man and was a man on exile; only post death was King celebrated as a hero.

In 1966, when asked on their opinion of King, 63% of Americans had an unfavorable opinion on him. In that same year, 54% of whites said that they would not protest or march if “they were in the same position as Negros.” Two months after that poll, another poll was conducted in which 85% of whites said that civil rights demonstrations hurt Negros more than it helped. This could be due to the fact that King displayed what he thought openly, stating “History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.” As many whites continued in their silence, King continued with his strides forward.

Nowadays, King is seen as a hero for all he has accomplished and all his hard work.  White America has transformed what we see him as. When discussing about events that have happened in recent years such as the Black Lives Movement, many individuals, including Whites, state “Is that what MLK would have wanted?”Martin Luther King is a very influential leader, activist, and martyr, but it took him a great deal of time to be seen as that by all of America. So, as we come up to this anniversary, please keep in mind how hard this man worked with the hatred of the country on his back, only to die an unfavored man. He will never know the recognition he received after he was shot and murdered.