I was watching "Mike and Mike in the Morning" as I prepared to begin my day. The subject was about "tweets" and how they were supposedly being abused by "cowards." During the waning seconds of a Laker/Thunder game, Meta World Peace (formerly Ron Artest) was taking the ball out of bounds and passed it to Steve Blake who was wide open. Blake missed the shot and the Lakers lose. Blake received thousands of tweets threatening him and his family, with at least one fan saying that he would kill Blake and his family.
Hockey player Joel Ward - who is black - received a number of racist tweets after one of his games. The point being made on "Mike and Mike" was that tweets were "going too far," with Mike Golic saying that the people sending the tweets were "cowards" and that "They should say what they have to say to their face." I listened and thought about this white man making such statements without providing any context whatsoever.
Let me do it.
For one thing we know for a fact that committing acts under the cloak of darkness or doing so anonymously is a European invention. Even their heroes who supposedly do good wear masks: from Zorro (Spanish) to Batman and a host of others, there is something about wearing a mask that I believe goes to the root of cowardice (unless being worn for cultural holidays), and it should be laid at the door of the ancestors of the people are doing the "tweeting" today.
Secondly, sure they're cowards. But those people sending those tweets are "fans," and do you know what "fan" is short for? Fanatic. These people have no real lives and that applies to the majority of them. Sick Dallas fans donning jerseys and wearing blown up paper faces of Dirk Novitzki, backward hicks from Nebraska wearing the jerseys and numbers of black running backs and receivers althought they want no blacks in their communities; while claiming there is a recession, millions of (white) people nevertheless pack these auditoriums and stadiums to root for athletes they can barely see.
So in other words, they take this crap seriously, which leads me to point number three.
When white folks get serious, they abandon the rules. Black people cannot afford to do that because in this society we're already seen as guilty. But because of "white privilege," these folks can have riots following a basketball game loss, break windows and do whatever they want because it's their system. So we can conclude that, throughout history, these actions of fanaticism are pretty much par for the course.
Now, point four: add the fanaticism to the anonymity and mask wearing and tombstone courage and what do you come up with: the Ku Klux Klan! Is this not the same mentality? Do they not believe that blacks are inferior? Do they not believe that by fighting and getting some semblance of civil rights and freedom that we are the Ron Artest passing the ball to "the wrong person"? Do they not hide behind masks and commit cowardly acts that would do harm and threaten other people?
Fourth, exactly what is a tweet? In my view it's at least two things. It's white privilage raised by social networking to the level of sacred observance. Plain and simple. Don't get it twisted: black folks use it too, black folks are fans as well, and as the black fraternity system proves, black people will imitate or follow white people to the ends of the earth, whether it makes sense or not. But these are acts of "identification with the aggressor" or a sick form of "Stockholm Syndrome" where those abused begin to love their abusers and in the latter case, their kidnappers. And I'll write about that in another column.
In addition, a tweet is also an invasion of privacy, a "social network" that enables anybody to go on the attack against someone while hiding their identity. How much sicker can it get? In the name of technology, the cowardly become emboldened and the sick expand their outreach capacity. It's been a long time comin.'
But for now, let's understand that tweeting and all this other stuff, even in the era of "caller ID," is something that allows the cowardly to do and say what they please. And as a descendant of those who were victims of similar acts of impulsiveness, racist tradition and false bravado, I see the same thing happening throughout history. Steve Blake is white and Joel Ward is black, but both men were victims of people who have no real lives going and live through the myth of sport.
But that mentality and activity stems from yet another myth: the myth of white supremacy.
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