Racist Abuse Of Rashford

Kostov

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It also goes to their narcissistic personality disorder that they feel abuse on social media empowers them.
That too, one of the worst sides of social media is that many hateful and sick people have a platform do shit like this. Social media companies must find a way to identify and get them off the grid and authorities to punish them.
 

harms

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Genuine question, is it something that doesn’t happen regularly?

Considering the usual quality of FB/twitter/YouTube comments I’d expect this to happen every day. That doesn’t make it okay, obviously, but I’m just interested wherever there have been more abuse lately or did they finally decided that it’s time to confront the problem and try to fix it?
 

Posh Red

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Can anyone give a single reason why we are better off with Social Media than we were before it?

We could still communicate with friends and family all over the world (MSN/AOL and the others). We can still watch stupid videos (YouTube, Vimeo etc).

All that we lose is abuse and dodgy memes, which we can at least move meme production to Reddit.

Time to talk old social media out back.
It makes certain people a lot of money, and whilst that’s the case it will be here to stay.
 

knot_buzz

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Genuine question, is it something that doesn’t happen regularly?

Considering the usual quality of FB/twitter/YouTube comments I’d expect this to happen every day. That doesn’t make it okay, obviously, but I’m just interested wherever there have been more abuse lately or did they finally decided that it’s time to confront the problem and try to fix it?
It is nothing new well at least IMO you see it all the time. It just always screamed to me of kids and idiot's looking for attention
 

soralapio

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Can anyone give a single reason why we are better off with Social Media than we were before it?
If I'm allowed to put on my academic hat for a moment, social media really is something of a problem, and one we don't fully even understand the limits of. In a nutshell, because people tend to post good things on social media ("Yay I'm on holiday!", "Yay I'm at the club with my peeps!", "Yay I bought a new TV!") it creates the impression that other people's lives are good things / highlights all the time, and because nobody's life is really just highlights, it's super easy to fall in a trap where you compare your own life (which contains some highlights, some low points, and mostly just everyday normal stuff) to this unrealistic image, and feel inadequate or get the vague impression that your life should be better than it is. This is a problem and issue that's currently being written a lot about in psychology/sociology circles, and it's one of those issues you have to be constantly cognizant of lest you fall victim to it.

Social media also gives a platform for people, and while some people use it for good, a lot more use it to spread negativity. When you put your life on display, you also open yourself up to largely anonymous criticism which can get extremely hateful and hurtful. It's easy to pretend the Tyler the Creator "just turn away" advice is good, but of course it doesn't work. If someone calls you a useless fat sack of crap, it will stay in your mind and if it keeps happening enough, it's easy to internalize it and start to believe you really are a useless sack of crap.

Finally, social media also makes it easy to be distracted constantly. It's a never-ending supply of new things, and it's extremely easy to get addicted to the point where you're unconsciously refreshing various social media platforms all the time, and when you're not you feel like you should be. It also creates a situation where you might feel like you have to compete for attention and to keep posting constantly and put yourself out there, to create some kind of personal brand for yourself (even if, again, subconsciously).

Compared to all of this "it's nice to talk with friends" kind of does seem insignificant, doesn't it?
 

BluesJr

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How is someone who calls Rashford the n word for missing a penalty not an actual racist?
Of course the word is racist but for these people it’s just a throwaway word that they are using to troll. I highly doubt they are actually racist in real life and probably have several personal relationships with people of different colours to themselves.
 

fps

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Yeah! And I think you should be given the job of selecting which people should be allowed a public voice.
I wouldn't do that, they are allowed their say. But they do so anonymously, don't they.

I'd make sure every tweet could then be traced back to the person who tweeted it, and those records sent to their employers.
 
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SteveJ

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Welcome to the world of hate.

On a global level, race based hate has been going on for centuries. What is staggering that with all the education that we seem to have progressed so little
Even that education is problematical. For example, one of my favourite books - a 'classic' taught to schoolchildren for decades - is replete with the kind of appalling sentiment that leads to people labelling Pogba as 'proud', Rashford as 'arrogant', and Desailly as 'thick':
In Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness, narrator Marlow describes the black fireman aboard the steamship:

'He was there below me, and, upon my word, to look at him was as edifying as seeing a dog in a parody of breeches and a feather hat, walking on his hind-legs. A few months of training had done for that really fine chap. He squinted at the steam-gauge and at the water-gauge with an evident effort of intrepidity—and he had filed teeth too, the poor devil, and the wool of his pate shaved into queer patterns, and three ornamental scars on each of his cheeks. He ought to have been clapping his hands and stamping his feet on the bank, instead of which he was hard at work, a thrall to strange witchcraft, full of improving knowledge. He was useful because he had been instructed; and what he knew was this—that should the water in that transparent thing disappear, the evil spirit inside the boiler would get angry through the greatness of his thirst, and take a terrible vengeance'.
 

fps

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Even that education is problematical. For example, one of my favourite books - a 'classic' taught to schoolchildren for decades - is replete with the kind of appalling sentiment that leads to people labelling Pogba as 'proud', Rashford as 'arrogant', and Desailly as 'thick':
The passage from Heart Of Darkness. It is problematic, but with proper education we'd look at the problems within the narrator, this exoticism, we can analyse the racism within the narrative voice and its effects. Now that may not have been the original intention of the author. But we are nonetheless losing this nuance from our analysis. I wish more people read more, but then I'm an English teacher.
 

SteveJ

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The passage from Heart Of Darkness. It is problematic, but with proper education we'd look at the problems within the narrator, this exoticism, we can analyse the racism within the narrative voice and its effects. Now that may not have been the original intention of the author. But we are nonetheless losing this nuance from our analysis. I wish more people read more, but then I'm an English teacher.
Absolutely. I'm afraid, though, that some might take the passage at face value.
 

Inigo Montoya

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Even that education is problematical. For example, one of my favourite books - a 'classic' taught to schoolchildren for decades - is replete with the kind of appalling sentiment that leads to people labelling Pogba as 'proud', Rashford as 'arrogant', and Desailly as 'thick':
19th C novels can be viewed within context and scholars have debated the issue for a while now. Achebe felt Conrad was but Caryll Philips otherwise;that he was a product of his times and he just reflected what was the dominant notion of the time.

Somehow I doubt that the morons who post such crap are literate beyond Biff and Chip
 

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Are these real accounts, real people abusing Rashford or are some bots?
 

SteveJ

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19th C novels can be viewed within context and scholars have debated the issue for a while now. Achebe felt Conrad was but Caryll Philips otherwise;that he was a product of his times and he just reflected what was the dominant notion of the time.
Personally, as much as I admire the book, I find it very hard to dispute the force and validity of many of Achebe's points...and feel like I'm 'watering down' racism when I defend Conrad (for all his brilliance).
 

Inigo Montoya

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Personally, as much as I admire the book, I find it very hard to dispute the force and validity of many of Achebe's points...and feel like I'm 'watering down' racism when I defend Conrad (for all his brilliance).
I can't dispute any of that.

It's not a novel that sit comfortably with me. I can see why Phillips has time for him though. One can only think that with the advent of time, Conrad would have changed his perspective on colonial rule.
 

DOTA

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The Prime Minister of the UK went to Eton and Oxford and he's racist as feck.

Being versed in the classics ain't gonna cure racism.
 

Devil may care

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I think the Moise Kean and Ashley Young racism last year was 100% genuine, with the Pogba racism and now Rashford I think trolls are latching on a well as causing trouble is their sole purpose for being online.

Bottom line is twitter and the other social media platforms need to do more to track these people down and there needs to be laws put in place to remove their access to the internet.
 

fps

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Personally, as much as I admire the book, I find it very hard to dispute the force and validity of many of Achebe's points...and feel like I'm 'watering down' racism when I defend Conrad (for all his brilliance).
I think the Moise Kean and Ashley Young racism last year was 100% genuine, with the Pogba racism and now Rashford I think trolls are latching on a well as causing trouble is their sole purpose for being online.

Bottom line is twitter and the other social media platforms need to do more to track these people down and there needs to be laws put in place to remove their access to the internet.
I'm reading this one https://polonistyka.amu.edu.pl/__da...rica.-Racism-in-Conrads-Heart-of-Darkness.pdf
and some of the most damning criticism is the damning riposte that if Africa is simply the setting for Kurtz' mental breakdown, it has eliminated African experience while also turning the continent into a symbol of reversion and reversal back to some primordial gloop. It would not be the first or last time certain elements have not been at all explored, in order to keep to the authors' intentions in exploring something else, though. The ignorance and othering is all fairly comprehensively if simply identified early on, the idea that there is a white western way of doing things, against which all else is deviation and superstition and something other than what this group themselves do all the time, and further, that the need for routines or superstitions is somehow strange when manifesting in others or in different ways.

I'm going to have a read of this today and see what there is to see - I was thinking about The Island Of Dr Moreau, the idea of Africa as "the cradle of civilisation" with its alarming racist subtext of the world then leaving to somehow "grow up", and the damage of the exoticism on display in both texts. I HAVE NO IDEA IF THIS ARTICLE IS GOOD OR NOT, I was just looking to read something on possible connections between the texts. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/21a6/539d0f19cc02edf3c5318faa95afc18b7175.pdf
Reading something like Guns, Germs and Steel or more recently Prisoners Of Geography obviously dispels a lot of the most damaging myths, but again, who is reading when you can binge watch some rubbish on Netflix?

I'd just like to re-post my suggestion that records of racist comments be sent to the posters' employers. I reckon this would knock it on the head pretty quickly.
 

Sayros

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"It's bad, but things like this will always happen. Best to ignore it and move on." - A white dude.
What is your suggestion to change someone's inner beliefs? Have you ever tried to reason with a religious person? Have you ever managed to successfully force someone to stop an addiction? Racism is in that same boat, you're not going to change it by talking about it. That change has to come from within the person, through many different events leading them to that change in the first place.

The way I see it, at best half of those tweets are from people who mean it, and the other half is from people looking for attention that aren't necessarily racists but rather ignorant from a place of privilege. Instead of talking about it, exposing it, or whatever you want to call it, how about we just don't give it more attention if it's coming from Twitter? It sounds counter-productive, but all the attention that's been put on this is only going to make more people want to do it so they can feel like they're being talked about, even if it's in the negative.

You're not going to change racism, and Twitter is not going to put actual the actual identities of its users out there, so you'll never know who's doing it and all this talking feels completely pointless. For all we know, this is mostly a bunch of edgy teenagers looking for attention.

I think the Moise Kean and Ashley Young racism last year was 100% genuine, with the Pogba racism and now Rashford I think trolls are latching on a well as causing trouble is their sole purpose for being online.

Bottom line is twitter and the other social media platforms need to do more to track these people down and there needs to be laws put in place to remove their access to the internet.
I agree with your first paragraph and completely disagree with the second. To reveal people's identities would be taking away one of the massive advantage of Twitter to punish a tiny minority. The anonymity of Twitter has many journalistic and social advantages for far more people trying to make the world a better place against corporate or governmental entities. You take away that to punish a few racists and edgelord teenagers, it'd be really a waste.
 

#07

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The attention seeking nf's have found a new way to get their five minutes. They got a little limelight off of Pogba and that made them realise that their sad, pathetic existences would get recognition if they did the same to Rashford. Martial will be next. Mark my words. These saddos are getting the kind of attention they never get in real life. Shame.
 

SteveJ

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fps: Thanks for the interesting links, mate.

Sayros:
That change has to come from within the person, through many different events leading them to that change in the first place.
It's a cliché in mainstream movies: racist white guy gets to know black guy & realises that 'Wow, black folks are just struggling along through life like the rest of us! My racist views are wrong...'
I mean, how stupid do you have to be not to realise that very early on in your life, no matter how insular your life-experience has been? Jesus...
 

SteveJ

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A tweet from Paul:


My ancestors and my parents suffered for my generation to be free today, to work, to take the bus, to play football. Racist insults are ignorance and can only make me stronger and motivate me to fight for the next generation.