Some kid with no experience with the world and having never interacted with people of another race thinks it’s okay to say the most horrible and offensive things because “It’s just words.” And *that’s* the angle journalists choose to focus on?
Me: The journalists are racist.
For reals: Everyone says stupid stuff. It happens. We are all humans, and whatever background we come from, there is some sense that deep down everyone else is just like us, which makes entering new situations really hard for some people.
Like any noob entering a new forum, a small town kid attending college for the first time or trying to find a place in a new community should observe the way the community works before throwing themselves into the midst of active conversations. Especially if joining uninvited.
It is not the kid’s fault they were soft-abused by their parents and have reached adulthood with severe lacks in the interpersonal-portion of their educations.
Some parents want to keep their kids ignorant for religious purposes. Others simply for the control it gives them.
The result is largely the same.
A kid whose parents have told them their whole lives that the problems of other people don’t really exist. That those other people are just lazy and stupid and greedy and all kinds of other things that amount to “Things don’t need to change.”
“The world is fine as it is.” The kid has been kept in a bubble–one that is being thickened by a lack of CRT in schools (on TOP of the gutting of history education)–and at 18-years old they’re being allowed to fly free for the first time.
And they meet their first obstacles.
How they deal with obstacles shows the kind of person they are.
Some kids meet other ways of life for the first time, and after that initial scared pause, they grow to accept everyone around them. They become a welcoming source of light in the world.
Others feel attacked.
They spout the “not racisms” they were taught by their family, friends, and homogenized community, and are shocked by the backlash. While some backpedal and change, others react aggressively bc they “know they’re right.”
“When *I* say horrible things, *I’m* not being racist.”
“*I* wouldn’t be offended if someone said that to me.”
“*I* wouldn’t be so angry if someone touched my hair or commented on my clothes. I’d know that they’re just curious.”
“I’m only trying to be helpful and that means a lot. People need to relax and not be so angry.”
And these kids from Bumfukk Nowhere, with their provincial views and homegrown -isms go to a place of learning attended by thousands of other kids all out to open their minds and make their mark on the world.
And that kid is the noob, but doesn’t know it or the rules.
The kid says stupid stuff in class. They have terrible interpersonal relationships with the people around them. They feel targeted and lonely and as though everyone is out to get them because nobody is on their side.
They face a small hardship for the first time, and crack.
And that’s where some journalists are being predatory racists out to press their own opinions on the world via a surrogate rube.
They write their articles with the kid as the basis, painting the kid as someone making a no-big deal error and receiving unjust blowback.
They list the whining complaints of the kid. They paint the kid as a traumatized victim deserving the sympathy of the masses. They give the impression that the majority is oppressing the minority with the kid as the minority being persecuted.
They make the kid a spectacle.
It’s predatory journalism.
Because that kid should have never been given a platform in the first place.
It minimizes the racism/homophobia/transphobia/anti-ness the kid has expressed, with the kid painted as having made a “no big deal” mistake.
And the kid either becomes a worse human or a clown.
Because they are such a small town rube that they don’t realize the Internet is forever. That they’ve allowed their name to be tied to a burning trash fire that leads back to the place where they live.
When they apply for jobs, that “news” story will pop up when their name is searched. Or they’ll be so terrible that people will remember them forever and remind other people of that “news” story.
So yeah. 9 times out of 10, the journalist is a schemy manipulator. It’s gross.
