A cute, innocent commercial is making headlines for all of the wrong reasons. A white woman in a kitchen is asked by her biracial daughter if Cheerios are good for your heart. She tells her daughter that they are, and the next shot shows the father, a black man, sleeping on the couch with a bunch of Cheerios poured out on his chest.
It’s cute, simple, and not even about race. It’s about selling cereal to people:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYofm5d5Xdw
Yet, it’s managed to piss off a bunch of angry white trolls. It seems that a vocal group of Americans are still horrified by the idea of interracial relationships and mixed race children. It’s still 2013, but the even stranger thing is the fact that this fear surprises people. Cheerios disabled comments on the YouTube video, because of the intensity of the racist comments, but news websites and bloggers seem to be surprised that this kind of vitriol is being barfed up around the ‘net.
The reactions toward these trolls are possibly even more offensive than the garbage they throw up online.
The Internet is a place where the freedom to be a gigantic fool is allowed. There are no tangible repercussions for a lot of these people. People hide behind usernames and email addresses and can say whatever they desire without being identified. Users don’t have to worry about somebody calling them out on their disgusting opinions. They can air their views and dirty laundry in the breeze, without having the responses that kind of rhetoric brings. There is no need, or point, in sugar-coating your views on the Internet when nobody can really harm you. These people aren’t going to suffer the social consequences of using racial slurs or other charming words from behind a keyboard. Nothing can happen to these people, so of course these people are going to be as venomous as they want to be!
The Internet is, sadly, a bastion for this kind of behavior. It’s part of the double-edged sword that complete anonymity allows. You’ll get these kinds of people who want to spew their verbal diarrhea around the rest of the community and try to offend as many other people as they can. They’re part of their own little social groups on the ‘net, where they can then encourage each other about their views. It’s been around for a while. This is not something new. Hate groups on the Internet have been running on full steam since at least the 1990s.
Why are people so surprised that this happened, though? Why is there such a sense of shock and bewilderment over the fact that a bunch of intolerant Internet trolls forced Cheerios to close the comments on an adorable commercial? Did people not know about places like Stormfront, Reddit’s gross sides, or even the fact that the KKK has a web presence?
It sounds like a lot of people are realizing that, guess what, we really aren’t in a post-racial America!
This weird, bizarre fantasy that many people of color generally don’t buy into seems to have been popped for many white people who are suddenly bewildered by why others would troll a YouTube video. Remember back in 2008 when the election was called for Obama, and so many people were estatic? Our first black president! It seemed as though America had come to finally put aside racial differences and hold some big old kumbaya.
That never happened. And now, suddenly, horrified bloggers and journalists are in a tizzy over trolls on a YouTube video. Why? Are you surprised that this country still has deep racial issues that it doesn’t deal with? Did all of America think Obama’s election and re-election somehow fixed racism or something? Or is a huge portion of our country just so out of tune with race that it took this to get some eyebrows raised?
Maybe. Regardless of whatever got people abuzz about this video, the question that needs to be asked is whether or not anything will actually be done by people to try to understand and analyze the issues of race within our society. Probably not. Over the weekend, a lot of people will forget the commercial, Cheerios won’t comment on it, and the bigots will mark this down as a victory.
Racism on the Internet is pretty well established. If it bothers you that much, then do something about it in your community. Stop acting bewildered when it shows it’s ugly head, and stop giving these trolls the attention they crave.
Elaine Rita Mendus is a undergraduate student working on graduating college (someday soon). Her career interests include geopolitics, the Hispanic community, and urban planning. She really wouldn't mind ending up a scriptwriter though...
