Post by Harkovast on Dec 14, 2015 18:14:38 GMT
Let me tell you an embarassing story.
When I was at college, they had an event called silly day where everyone dressed as fancy dress for charity.
One year I dressed as a black dutch football player called Ruud Gullit.
And yes, they involved me being browned up up cocoa powder.
Yeah, so probably not my finest hour.
In my defence-
1- This was twenty years ago. At least in Britain people weren't generally as aware of this kinda thing. No one else I knew saw anything wrong either, including the kids from minorities and teachers. Or if they did, no one felt it bad enough to say anything about it at the tme or afterwards. I was only years later that I reflected on it as a bad idea.
2- I honestly didn't do it with any malice. I was trying to impersonate Ruud Gullit, not mock black people in general. If anyone had suggested that to me at the time I probably would have been baffled.
3- I was only about 15! 15 year olds don't know shit!
Obviously I wouldn't do that now, its got loads of bad implications and if someone some how found a picture of it I would be very embarassed at my younger self (though its hardly the only or most stupid thing that idiot did back then! What a fucking tool that guy was!)
Anyway, the reason I'm telling you this (though I am sure laughing at my stupidity is its own reward for everyone), is that it occured to me that if this had happened today things would have been very different.
Now we are all more racially sensitive these days, especially young people, so a young person would be more inclined to know what not to do (and that's a good thing!)
But what worries me is what would happen these days if someone did do something stupid, even something that was done out of ignorance rather than any malicious intent.
These days with all our smart phones and instant social media, anyone doing something stupid can be spread all around the world in a matter of moments.
Some kid seen doing that would be labled a racist permanently and would have that picture come up when their employer or when they moved onto higher education.
It seems like society has some how become really harsh, like a modern version of shaming people in the stocks.
When I was young you did something stupid, and either got humiliated at the time, or looked back on it with embarassment, but that was that. You learned your lesson and moved on.
These days you can lose your job because your dumb joke gets repeated out of context or you said something in a moment of anger.
Its not just racism or political correctness where this happens.
Christian Bale's crazy rant about "trashing my scene!" on the set of Terminator Salvation was funny for everyone, but maybe we are a bit too quick to assume this speaks for his whole character.
The shrieking Yale girl I had a go at under the feminism section appeared horrible...but maybe she's nice the rest of the time? Apparantly she does work with homeless people, which is more than I do! And she is young, and as I have already explained young people are fucking morons that you cant really hold accountable.
Or Jaden Smith. When I was young and spouted pretencious, stupid, ill considered opinions it was just me being an idiot. But when he does it on twitter, it gets sent all around the world, causing everyone to mock him and lable him an pampered baffoon.
I'm starting to think maybe Jesus was right.
Not about the whole being the son of God/ God incarnate thing. I'm not really down with that (or even that he actually existed in real life.)
But one thing he might have been on the money about was being more forgiving.
All of us fuck up sometimes, and maybe society needs to be more willing to forgive mistakes or failures.
Yeah racism and ignorance shouldn't be accepted, but we need to be careful that we don't all become the angry mob, dolling out make shift punishment for our own amusment rather than any real sense of justice.
Imagine if I had taken a recording of you doing the worst thing you've ever done. I'm sure you can all think of something.
(In case you wondered, wearing black face because I didn't know better is FAR from the worst thing I've ever done in my life! I really WISH the worst thing I'd ever done was me doing harm inadvertantly. It's not even the most racist I've ever been, as I've been racist deliberately when I was kid.)
Now imagine I put that recording online and the whole world judged you based on it and took that to be representative of your whole character.
You'd be up shit creek without a paddle, wouldn't you?
Even if we just reduce it to "worst thing you ever said", you'd would be utterly boned.
We all would be.
I'm starting to worry that this is the kind of society we are building at the minute.
There needs to be a place for forgiveness in there somewhere.
It feels good to hate bad people and feel self rightious in going after them, but I think that's a very dangerous impulse.
I've done that just like everyone else, I'm sure I'm guilty of jumping on too many angry band wagons, but maybe we need to be a little slower to pass judgement on each other.
When I was at college, they had an event called silly day where everyone dressed as fancy dress for charity.
One year I dressed as a black dutch football player called Ruud Gullit.
And yes, they involved me being browned up up cocoa powder.
Yeah, so probably not my finest hour.
In my defence-
1- This was twenty years ago. At least in Britain people weren't generally as aware of this kinda thing. No one else I knew saw anything wrong either, including the kids from minorities and teachers. Or if they did, no one felt it bad enough to say anything about it at the tme or afterwards. I was only years later that I reflected on it as a bad idea.
2- I honestly didn't do it with any malice. I was trying to impersonate Ruud Gullit, not mock black people in general. If anyone had suggested that to me at the time I probably would have been baffled.
3- I was only about 15! 15 year olds don't know shit!
Obviously I wouldn't do that now, its got loads of bad implications and if someone some how found a picture of it I would be very embarassed at my younger self (though its hardly the only or most stupid thing that idiot did back then! What a fucking tool that guy was!)
Anyway, the reason I'm telling you this (though I am sure laughing at my stupidity is its own reward for everyone), is that it occured to me that if this had happened today things would have been very different.
Now we are all more racially sensitive these days, especially young people, so a young person would be more inclined to know what not to do (and that's a good thing!)
But what worries me is what would happen these days if someone did do something stupid, even something that was done out of ignorance rather than any malicious intent.
These days with all our smart phones and instant social media, anyone doing something stupid can be spread all around the world in a matter of moments.
Some kid seen doing that would be labled a racist permanently and would have that picture come up when their employer or when they moved onto higher education.
It seems like society has some how become really harsh, like a modern version of shaming people in the stocks.
When I was young you did something stupid, and either got humiliated at the time, or looked back on it with embarassment, but that was that. You learned your lesson and moved on.
These days you can lose your job because your dumb joke gets repeated out of context or you said something in a moment of anger.
Its not just racism or political correctness where this happens.
Christian Bale's crazy rant about "trashing my scene!" on the set of Terminator Salvation was funny for everyone, but maybe we are a bit too quick to assume this speaks for his whole character.
The shrieking Yale girl I had a go at under the feminism section appeared horrible...but maybe she's nice the rest of the time? Apparantly she does work with homeless people, which is more than I do! And she is young, and as I have already explained young people are fucking morons that you cant really hold accountable.
Or Jaden Smith. When I was young and spouted pretencious, stupid, ill considered opinions it was just me being an idiot. But when he does it on twitter, it gets sent all around the world, causing everyone to mock him and lable him an pampered baffoon.
I'm starting to think maybe Jesus was right.
Not about the whole being the son of God/ God incarnate thing. I'm not really down with that (or even that he actually existed in real life.)
But one thing he might have been on the money about was being more forgiving.
All of us fuck up sometimes, and maybe society needs to be more willing to forgive mistakes or failures.
Yeah racism and ignorance shouldn't be accepted, but we need to be careful that we don't all become the angry mob, dolling out make shift punishment for our own amusment rather than any real sense of justice.
Imagine if I had taken a recording of you doing the worst thing you've ever done. I'm sure you can all think of something.
(In case you wondered, wearing black face because I didn't know better is FAR from the worst thing I've ever done in my life! I really WISH the worst thing I'd ever done was me doing harm inadvertantly. It's not even the most racist I've ever been, as I've been racist deliberately when I was kid.)
Now imagine I put that recording online and the whole world judged you based on it and took that to be representative of your whole character.
You'd be up shit creek without a paddle, wouldn't you?
Even if we just reduce it to "worst thing you ever said", you'd would be utterly boned.
We all would be.
I'm starting to worry that this is the kind of society we are building at the minute.
There needs to be a place for forgiveness in there somewhere.
It feels good to hate bad people and feel self rightious in going after them, but I think that's a very dangerous impulse.
I've done that just like everyone else, I'm sure I'm guilty of jumping on too many angry band wagons, but maybe we need to be a little slower to pass judgement on each other.
