With the advent of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, administrators on college campuses across the United States find themselves challenged with the job of trying to prevent a new genre of out-casting and racial bullying.
“This new medium for racist expression is forcing universities to reconsider what it means to provide a safe space on campus for all students,” says author and professor, Dr. Jessie Daniels, at Hunter College in New York City. She is the author of many blogs including Racism Review. Considered an expert in racial studies, Daniels conducted research on how cyber-racism is prominent on college campuses after a situation arose on the University of Minnesota-Duluth campus.
A Facebook conversation between two white students after an African-American student appeared in the same chat room sparked a debate as to whether the students were making racially motivated comments against the other student. Daniels believes the comments reached the line of racial territory and that social media is not absent from being charged for allowing it to happen.
“The framers of the U.S. Constitution didn’t have Facebook in mind when they were drafting the First Amendment to protect free speech,” says Daniels. “No one has a constitutionally protected right to be on Facebook. If you use Facebook, you have to abide by their Terms of Service (TOS) agreement, which prohibits overly racist speech (although it’s sporadically enforced).”
When students are caught on social networks with potential racial implications, Daniels contends that students try to use their First Amendment rights of ‘free speech,” but this type of free speech does not give students the right to be ignorant and mean to other students.. “It seems clear to me that a college campus should be a place where we want to protect all of our students from the intentional implication of emotional distress while at the same time encouraging a lively exchange of ideas,” she writes.
Although Daniels research focused on one particular campus, a study conducted by two other professors highlighted how cyber-racism is a growing epidemic throughout many college campuses. Supported by research funding from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, University of Illinois professor Brendesha Tynes, and UCLA professor Suzanne Markoe, sampled a population of 217 African-American and white college students to “study the risk and protective factors associated with online racial discrimination across racial ethnic groups.”
The results of the study concluded that the African-American students “experienced online victimization and discrimination as simple as a racist image posted on a social networking site such as Facebook or MySpace.”
On the heels of the study done by each of the college professors, cyber-racism heated up in one of the most prominent and respected universities, Harvard. A law student’s comment about fellow students sparked a viral combat zone that left many wondering — is cyber-racism really a problem on college campuses?
Dave Love, writer and lawyer, disliked the posting made by the student, but was not that surprised. “Many institutions of higher learning are filled with students who wear their sense of entitlement on their sleeve.
Sheltered, they travel in circles where they are never forced to confront their prejudices,” writes Love. “And to those who believe racism is over, think again. Hopefully the Tynes and Markoe studies will help us understand how to fight student cyber-racism, and possibly provide solutions to improving race relations at colleges and universities across the country.”
What do you think?
Sources:
http://www.race-talk.org/?p=4106
http://www.thegrio.com/opinion/black-college-students-get-a-lesson-in-cy...
Comments
Difficult Solution
I agree that facebook should not be taken down and it is hard to find a solution to this problem. Could racist posts be deleted? But what would constitute a racist post? Who would decide if the post is racist? This is a damaging problem with no real solution, unfortunately.
Cyber Racism
I think that what we must do is to promote education outside of the networking environment. We have to make individuals become aware that there is another human being on the other side of that computer, cellphone, etc. Attacking someone is so much easier if there are no consequences to the actions and that at any time you can just "sign off" and forget what was said.
Cyber-Racism
Although I have never personally experienced cyber-racism myself, I can only imagine how powerful of a force this can be towards a person. So many things are said so quickly through media sites such as Facebook and Twitter and many people post comments on these sites without fully thinking about the consequences that they may have. People can be very vulnerable, and when at home secluded by yourself, this is one of the worst places a person could be when faced with a racial comment or saying directed towards them via cyber-network. The self-esteem of students and morals could easily be lowered by these cruel and unnecessary words. Not only do cyber-spaces make it easier to disclose rude and racial remarks, but those words can never be undone once posted in the cyber-world. This can come back to haunt the victim or accuser. More time and effort should be focused on promoting a safer cyber-netowrk where students should all feel safe and welcomed and not faced with racial implications. I am an avid Facebook user myself and was unaware that here was even a terms of service agreement that states "overtly racist speech". If people were more informed on these issues and how they have a negative affect on others thank maybe there would be less racial implications towards others.
The reality of the situation
As individuals we must come to the realization that racism is an issue that counties to occur in our nation.Therefore I personally feel we need to deal with all aspect that take in account with racism. For instance racism can be found in various of different social networking websites.These websites should take more of initial to stopping the raising of it by discussing negative effects of racism.
A New Form of Bullying
Cyber-racism is something I had never really heard of before this article. I was aware that a problem of this type could have existed, but I didn't know that it really did, especially considering I've never been a victim of this kind of bullying. I agree with this article that social media is a unique type of bullying that will require a unique solution. In my opinion, it will be increasingly difficult to provide a safe environment over Facebook, Twitter, and the like. There won't be authorities monitoring every user's every move -- that would be impossible. People will just have to hope and cross their fingers that everyone will be respectful, unfortunately, this isn't always the case as we've seen demonstrated. This should be taken as seriously as any other form of racism is and we should start brainstorming solutions to this problem.
Racism is over? Think Again
This article is a reminder that many people do not think about before they speak (in this case, post). It is disheartening to see that discrimination is taking place on these social networking sites as well as many other mediums.
I believe people do not know the gravity of what they are causing. They are not seeing the person on the other side. The point of facebook is to network, but people have turned this into a discriminatory practice. People need to start thinking about what they are really doing to people when they post such derogatory comments.
Words, even typed words, are extremely powerful!
I think that it is much
I think that it is much easier for an individual to express their racists views against a member of another group when physically they do not have to face the consequences of their actions. This can be attributed to the rise in cyber-bullying. The actions of others are hidden through the text on the computer screen. Although it may be just a series of words to the attacker, the victim faces psychological and emotional damage. How can we prevent such things from happening?
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