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This article is trash, and a lie that white parents in the suburbs tell themselves. Trump didn't make Hudson Valley kids racist/sexist. Your kids were already that way, but you don't listen to Black kids, so you don't know that.
NY State is Blacker than the US overall, but Hudson Valley is much whiter than the US overall. Ask a Black New Yorker why that is.
And stop pretending that manly men are conservative. Again: Black men are more masculine + more progressive.
1/N
@mekkaokereke Abandoning kids to the algorithms pushing extremism and to shtbags like Andrew Tate & his ilk have done enormous damage.
Black kids are online *a lot* more than white kids.
And yet, most Black boys think Tate is a loser, and that his fans are even bigger losers. Before the news became common knowledge, I explained what most Black men think of Tate. (CW: Discussion of Tate. It's bad. You really don't have to read this.
https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/109621372212531350 )
The NY Times' trash crime coverage, and copaganda shows like "Law and Order" have done much more to encourage racism in these kids than social media has.
@mekkaokereke @wendinoakland The algorithm shows different kids different stuff.
IMO, the tell in the original story is the dieting. That's always been a really niche idea, but selling diet pills to healthy people is literally the business of right-wing radio.
You don't think Black kids and girls of all races get shown Tate videos too? They do. The difference is who responds to it, likes it, searches for more, favorites, shares, comments positively on, Tate videos. I'll tell you who: losers that hate women and girls.
Recommendation systems don't magically know what you like before you've interacted.
The whole fitness industry sells stuff! But again, not everyone sporty goes fash. It's not fitness, or sports, or masculinity.
@mekkaokereke @wendinoakland I think you're being too reductive. These kids don't start out fascist.
I'm not trying to give them excuses. They are making conscious choices based on the media that's presented to them.
If we get out of this, we're going to have to seriously grapple with the challenge to society of giving anyone with an internet connection unfettered access to our brains.
@tob @mekkaokereke @wendinoakland They may not "start out fascist" but they definitely grew up in an environment that didn't push back against it hard enough, so that field was fertile for evil plants to grow. All it takes is one pro-racism friend to turn a whole group of racism-curious white teen boys into a pack of cruel peer-pressure followers.
Ask me how I know.
@tob@hachyderm.io@louis @mekkaokereke @wendinoakland the "pro-racism friend" is YouTube and Twitter.
@tob @mekkaokereke @wendinoakland It can be. But the point is, there must already be fertile ground for that seed to grow. Without it, the person rejects such evil ideas outright.
@louis @mekkaokereke @wendinoakland It's pretty damn obvious that the US has lots of fertile ground.
At the risk of belaboring the metaphor, I'm not saying don't address the fertile ground problem. I'm saying maybe we need to reconsider the giant seed planting device.
@tob @mekkaokereke @wendinoakland Then you also kill the seeds of love, acceptance, diversity, and resistance.
Speech is subjective. Try to eliminate the parts you don't like and you hand the fascists the tool they need to eliminate the parts you do like.
Instead, we just need to educate our children to make them not be fertile to fascist and racist rhetoric. We need to teach them to see it for what it is.
No it's not.
That's an excuse that white people make that don't want to accept that their kids were racist little twerps before social media even existed.
And don't want to accept that white people are *less* racist since the introduction of YouTube and Twitter.
And don't want to accept that Black kids use YouTube and Twitter *much more* than white kids, but don't accept fashy nonsense.
And don't want to accept that newspapers and TV news push much more racism.
@mekkaokereke @tob @louis That racism was baked into my white, liberal Manhattan, NYC upbringing makes no sense whatsoever, yet the amount of work I’ve had to do dismantling it suggests a structure much stronger than something I had much power to avoid. Back then it wasn’t youtube, it was everything — it was attitude, all around, a subtle legacy of othering, maintaining a system of unfairness, never recognizing we were racists. The lessons are deep and early and tragic.
@mekkaokereke @louis @wendinoakland I know you have this sore-spot/blindspot and I'm not going to push.
I seems your suggesting that America's progress on racial animus from the 1960s to the 2020s is thanks to social media.
I disagree.
@tob @mekkaokereke @louis Since “social media” has only been pervasive since the late 1990s, I’m going to push back.
@mekkaokereke @tob @louis @wendinoakland It's so tiring to continually hear white folks born and raised in the US proclaim they didn't realize or don't believe they are racist. Their entire existence is based on their privilege and indoctrinated superiority derived from being a white person. It starts with some perceived inherent human difference besides cultural. As Toni Morrison said, once that is taken away, what have you got?
@venitamathias @mekkaokereke @tob @louis Once that’s taken away, you have so much more! We can only do the work - reading, listening, watching - and learn. It’s hard, but it’s worth it! And it’s ongoing - a constant reappraisal of the self and the world.
I don’t mean to refute you at all — I’m horrified. I hope we’ll change, as much as possible.
@wendinoakland @mekkaokereke @tob @louis
Good luck on your journey. I don't need white folks to listen to me. This is ya'lls shit. Always has been.
@venitamathias @mekkaokereke @tob @louis Understood - we have work to do. I’m so sorry. Thanks for taking time.
@wendinoakland @mekkaokereke @tob @louis Take care and enjoy the day.
@venitamathias @mekkaokereke @tob @wendinoakland "Indoctrinated" is exactly right. Most of us grow up in an environment so pervasively steeped in racism that it takes a shock to our system from an external source to even question it, much less do the hard work to reverse the basis of our worldview.