what is to be done?

[trochee]

Not to get all Leninist with the title above, but I just ran across this horrible Facebook group ("Wondering why people with food stamps drive escalades") via cat_whisperer.

It's bad. it's like claw-your-eyes-out raw racist crap, (very) thinly disguised in a wrapper of outrage at 'welfare recipients'. and its Facebook user icon is a picture of a dollar bill with Obama's face, surrounded by fried chicken and watermelon. And it has 25,000 facebook fans, and growing.

let me rewind that for review: there are 25,000 Facebook users who said they "like" this semiliterate racist bile.

My immediate reaction is to shudder and turn away (and to pity poor cat_whisperer who may have gotten this link from a family member), but when I think about it, it feels like that's an exercise in my own white privilege -- that I can just ignore this, like I can ignore the ambulance headed to the ER: I'm not inside it.

My second reaction is to get righteous, and try to figure out what I can do -- is this a TOS violation? can I get it shut down? but then I realize that this too is an expression of my white privilege -- and might very well make these vicious idiots into Tea-Party martyrs.

What to do?

Comments

[the-macnab.livejournal.com]

Just remember that that's 0.008 percent of the American population. One in every 12,500 people. Not a terrifically encouraging thing, I realize, but when you think of it as roughly 56 people in all of San Francisco, it does lend some mollifying perspective. There are probably also 56 people in San Francisco who think that their dogs talk to them through their dental fillings.

[trochee.livejournal.com]

those people can be helped; there are good psychoactive medications for the fillings thing.

it's true, it's a tiny fraction of the American population. But Facebook is already a fraction -- and a proportionately educated fraction, I think, so this 25,000 is most likely an underrepresented sample.

Then again, this just goes to show that John Gabriel's GIFw theory has an unnecessary term (anonymity).

[the-macnab.livejournal.com]

I ignored the sample-selection bias because I was trying to make you feel better.

In such cases, I think it's rarely cost-effective to consider interventions at the level of the Facebook user. That's equivalent to assuming that most information flows through individual-level network ties, when in fact much opinion-formation information flows through mass media that these people share. That is to say, that they all have similar opinions does not mean that their individual communications are the primary ones that reinforce one another; that could be spurious correlation driven by their common propaganda environment, you dig?

[trochee.livejournal.com]

The FOX external common cause is a good point. it probably corresponds to everybody in that group watching Glenn Beck and listening to Rush Limbaugh. One of those guys just says "escalade" enough times, and mass-media audience will find it on facebook.

...fudging the statistics doesn't make me feel better, but I appreciate the effort!

[eyeteeth.livejournal.com]

What to do is what you're doing -- be disgusted and express your disgust, not in a shrill and hateful way, but as a rational person who cares about others.

[trochee.livejournal.com]

yes. that feels a little helpless, though. I want to make more of a difference, but I see 26,000 people who need some consciousness-raising and I shudder and feel sick to my stomach.

[eyeteeth.livejournal.com]

Sometimes all you have is a teaspoon. Keep bailing anyway.

[evan.livejournal.com]

Shutting down a facebook community doesn't change the minds of anyone involved, though.

http://xkcd.com/154/

A friend of mine (intentionally being vague since it's sort of a touchy subject) does a job that involves people on government support. He is not a horrible person, but after years of food-stamps-and-escalades himself he is also prone to make the sorts of comments I see on that community. :(

[trochee.livejournal.com]

my sympathies to your friend (and for your discomfort in communicating with him).

I feel like there's a certain saliency bias there, though -- the support-recipients customers you remember as a TANF tech support waiter are the ones who drive an Escalade to pick up food stamps leave shitty tips after being fussy about everything and getting A+ service.

and I agree -- shutting down the Facebook group wouldn't solve anything, and would aggravate the sense of persecution that these people (who see themselves as hard-working yet exploited) feel.

I doubt that very many of the people in this group are actually horrible people -- most of them are obviously caring parents or neighbors -- but I despair, because though their ability for (local) compassion extends to rooting for the underdogs with the slightly obsessive coach in their suburban Little League, it won't extend to the (mostly imaginary, in their experience) people making their own lifestyle choices while on TANF.

I guess I'm most frustrated by the sense that receiving food stamps means that *everybody* gets a right to meddle in their personal decisions (and how paternalistically racist that is). I don't get to righteously judge their choice to drive a minivan/Hummer despite subsidizing their roads and traffic signals, do I? (I suppose I could, but that's mean-spirited and petty -- and even if I did, it wouldn't have the extra poison of aligning with institutionalized and personalized racist attitudes.)