Posts tagged ‘Facebook Life’
Torture, Facebook Live, and Racism
It is supposed to be a platform to broadcast funny moments with family, respond to questions in real time from people who follow you on social media, and provide updates on your life. Now it has become synonymous with torture.
When four young adults took to Facebook Live on New Year’s weekend, they did so to broadcast their torture of a mentally disabled 18-year-old man from a western suburb of Chicago. According to Fox News, the broadcast:
Showed him cowering in a corner while someone yelled “F— white people!” and “F— Donald Trump!” At one point, the man was held at knifepoint and told to curse the president-elect.
The video also showed the man being kicked and hit repeatedly, while his scalp was cut. The group apparently forced him to drink water from a toilet.
Hate crime charges have now been filed against the four involved in the attack. In this particular instance, the four attackers were black and the victim was white. Reporting for The Washington Post, Mark Berman and Derek Hawkins explain:
When asked whether the hate crime charges stemmed from the 18-year-old’s mental health or his race — both of which are factors listed in the state’s hate crime statute — [Chicago Area North Detectives Commander Kevin] Duffin said: “It’s half a dozen of one, six of the other.”
Even though the Facebook Live video is still available through several outlets, I have not watched it. Just from what I have read about its content, I’m not sure I could stomach it. This is the kind of crime that rends any reasonable heart.
A crime like this brings to the forefront – again – issues of racism and hatred. If the language they used on the video is any indication, these attackers seemed to be animated by a hatred for white people, a political animus for Donald Trump, and a potential disparagement of this young man’s mental capacities.
Ironically, the problem with racism of any sort is that racism always goes deeper than race. Racism betrays a fundamental inability to see a certain group of people as actual people. Racism ties a person’s value and dignity either to the color of their skin or to the origin of their birth rather than to the fact of their humanity. This is why, from a Christian perspective, racism is ultimately a spiritual problem. Scripture reminds us that, simply by virtue of being human, we are imbued with a measure of value and dignity. Thus, when human lives are not treated with appropriate value or dignity, God’s anger is inflamed.
Certainly, there are things on a macro-scale that have been done and can continue to be done to stem the tide of racism-at-large. Political legislation, protest movements, and dedicated activists are all important to confronting racism wherever it rears its ugly head. But we, as individuals, can also confront racism on a micro-scale by how we treat each other. Be honest with yourself: do you treat every person with whom you come into contact as fully human? Or do you see some groups of people – whether those groups be demarcated by race, socioeconomic status, or even simple personality type – as less than human? Treating people as less than human can manifest itself in a myriad of ways. Sometimes, it is a declared disdain for a certain group of people based on a certain feature of that group. More often than not, however, we treat people as less than human when we regard them as annoyances, looking past them instead of loving them. In a micro-way, then, confronting racism can be as simple as an act of kindness that affirms a person’s humanity.
To whom can you be kind today? Even if your kindness never gets broadcast on Facebook Live, it will be much more worthwhile than what has become the platform’s most famous – and infamous – broadcast. And that, at least, is a place to start.
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