Is the American media so starved for another story about racism to jump start waning interest in the Trayvon Martin case that they’ve resorted to writing about racist tweets? On Wednesday Joel Ward, one of the few black Hockey players in the NHL, scored a game winning goal in game 7 to lift his Washington Capitals into the 2nd round of the playoffs. Now I’m pretty far from considering myself an avid hockey fan but I know an impressive feat when I see one. He was the man of the night and he made an outstanding play but is that what people are focusing on? No, because journalists are too caught up in people using the “N” word on twitter. Are you serious? The best moment in Ward’s career is being marred by the rants of random people on social media, how absurd is that? It’s equally absurd that the creator and star of Awkward Black Girl Issa Rae felt compelled to speak out against the racist backlash on twitter in response to her wining The Shorty Award for best web series. Why can’t both of these modern day pioneers just enjoy their respective moments? I mean do we really need to see offensive tweets smeared all over national media?
People are racist. People will always be racist. So why does a drunken college student with a twitter account and a smart phone get a chance to completely sabotage another person’s success. The same thing with people taking to twitter to hate on the fact that the film version of “The Hunger Games” apparently had too many black people—so what! Can national columnist, and syndicated news sites think of something else to write about besides the racist tweets of random people? Are they really trying to inform the people or are they trying to piss us off? Well if it’s the latter then mission accomplished. I’m hella ready to move on.
-YB 