After looking and playing with Race- The Power of an Illusion, I find it funny how everything seems to be directed to a white male. Maybe I am getting this because I only see the world from that point of view being as I am a white male, but to me it seems is completely predicated on the racial aspects they are trying to get away from. For example how they make pick from people’s faces and put them in the correct ethnic category. When you are finished they basically call you racist. The thing I find funny about it is that each of the pictures seems portay races in a way that supposedly PBS wants to break down. They ask you to sort these people then say basically SHAME ONE YOU! for looking at people that way. It is so double-sided.
I definitely would have to agree with Nakamura when she says that race is not completely absent from the web. Many people may not see it that way, but it all depends on the user again and always will. There are ways project themselves and culture on the web and affects how we view them. For example, On facebook I have a friend, who is black, that I played basketball with at CBC. He is by far no gangster by any means but he sure likes to act like it on facebook. He talks in heavy heavy ebonics, and he is only from Pasco. I’m sorry I just don’t see those kinds of people coming out of Pasco. Yes, we all know Pasco is a highly populated with minorities, but from what I have seen and many of the people I have chatted with and even my friend, it is not like that at all. They pick a role and go with it. It just goes to show you that no matter who are there are always racial stereotypes that people show on the internet.
Now all of this is because we as people in a society have decided that we want to class people into sub-groups, such as African- Americans, Mexican- Americans, Native Americans. Why does anyone do this. It only perpetuates the problems. The funny thing is these groups started calling themselves that. Many blacks use the “N” word so freely now. Yet a white person says it and bam... racist. It so double sided. No I am not condoning using the “N” word at all, it was created to degrade someone and I think that is very wrong. I would say that until we break the barriers of these sub-classes we will always have some sort of racism, and it is going to have to start with these groups in the forefront. They should just be calling themselves AMERICANS. We are all Americans why would you make portray yourself as something less than that. America is the greatest nation in the world in my opinion and it drives me nuts that we still have all of these issues and people constantly bring them back up so as to we can never ever move on.
Works Cited
Nakamura, L. (2002). Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet. New York: Routledge.
“RACE – The Power of an Illusion | PBS.” PBS: Public Broadcasting Service. Web. 28 Oct. 2010.
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