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.

[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.

[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. :(