Suey Park is a Tumblr Social Justice Warrior come to life, okay that is actually a pretty literal description, and I think her interactions with the media do show how yelling angrily into a bottomless echo chamber of anonymity like the internet does not create a real discussion or dialogue. She's 23, around my age, and I know people my age and even younger who are using social media as a platform where every little nugget, particularly stuff from the mouths of famous people, must be critique far and beyond the words that come out of the mouths of actual people in power. It seems easier because celebrities are tied to the capitalist market place and such strides toward uniting against such a conglomerate feels more impacting than say, the 2014 mid-term elections. But I'd rather the latter be the central focus of social media undertaking by a group of young people.
The original discussion was on the Washington Redskins name being offensive. The joke was offensive but contextually it was to point out just how offensive the name Redskins sounds like to a lot of people. It is just so tone-deaf. She called it race-baiting. How? It was a comparison to underscore that slurs are slurs.
So, of course, the fact there were people who jumped first to defend it as satire, and it was a tweet sans context of how it was originally used in the show, also got lobbed with the most 'let's end this dialogue from moving an inch further' move, by being taken to task for their white (male) privilege. I wish there were a different word or a word that immediately isn't a conversation ender like that one. There are times when I think the people who use that word know the point is not for a dialogue but to yell at more of their own construct of a privileged person who they know will and could never talk back to them in a satisfactory manner.
I do think it is important to listen to minority groups that get assaulted and used as target practice on a daily basis by even liberal voices- such as when Colbert seems to aim at the trans community with no satire but gender panic- but this was not one of those cases of white liberals hiding behind 'satire' to actually show their true racist colors. That happens, surely, but not in this case.
Updated On: 4/3/14 at 04:33 PM
