Breaking: Lazy Journalism Rewarded by a Race-Obsessed Culture!!!

When does a quick Twitter search and a couple screen shots count as investigative journalism?  When the story is about racism, of course!  Minority-hating is so prevalent that a reporter needn’t work terribly hard collecting a black list of offenders (no pun intended) before presenting the nasty, intolerant folks for public shame.

For example, this article recently chastised roughly 15 Tweeters, whose posts about the black actors in the movie The Hunger Games were considered racially-inappropriate. The scandal was uncovered by the reputable journalists at Jezebel.com. (Motto: "Celebrity, Sex, Fashion for women.")

Okay, seriously, Jezebel is an online tabloid. If you need more proof, one of its columns is called "the dirt bag.” Like most gossip gazettes, it has turned defamation into an art form—though celebrities provide bigger targets than private citizens. So I’m a little surprised they dared post the full names and faces of unsuspecting Tweeters, under a headline calling them "Racists.” 

The tweets were used—poor spelling and all—to make sweeping character judgments. But the reporter didn’t bother contacting the Tweeters personally so they could explain themselves in more than 140 characters. Jezebel settled for lazy research leading to libelous accusations, which is why “entertainment news” receives zero credit from sane people.

But race-obsessed America isn’t sane.

Thus, a whole gaggle of second-and-third-hand outlets picked up Jezebel’s story, taking it seriously as if it hadn’t appeared next to a piece about “the appropriate times to stare at a woman’s butt." Copy-cat “reports” ran in Forbes, HuffingtonPost, E!, Us Magazine, WashingtonPost (blog), and countless other virtual information hubs. And—what’s worse—not one of these newspapers gave the Tweeters a chance to defend themselves. No one gave them the benefit of the doubt.

Does it frighten anyone else that a regular Joe’s tweets, statuses, and blog quotes can be ripped from context and used to castigate him as a person?  Is it possible there are explanations for those quotes, besides utter, intolerable racism? 

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"After watching the hunger games preview 6 times in a row, i realized Rue is black. whaaaat?! #shocked."

"cinna and rue weren't suppose to be black...why did the producer make all the good characters black smh"

"I was pumped about the movie, until I learned a black girl was playing Rue."

Honestly, I have no idea whether these Tweeters think black people are worth less than white people. Or if, possibly, they’re just upset the movie didn’t match the picture in their head. Personally, while reading the Hunger Games, I had a difficult time keeping track of the skin tones of 50+ characters at once. So I, too, am surprised Rue is black. I see now the book’s author calls her “dark-skinned,” but I missed that line the first time around. And I can tell you what I would have said to my husband in the theater, when I saw African-American Rue instead of the red-head I expected:

“So, they’re keeping it PC, huh?…” 

Luke would understand what I meant; when the book’s author doesn’t specify a race for a character, the part often goes to a minority actor, to “balance out” the cast. We wouldn’t want a movie to become too white, or the producers might get caught in the pages of Jezebel, wearing the racist label.

Thus, if someone pictured Rue incorrectly, his “disappointment” belongs in the same category as those who complained about Dear John, Twilight, and any other best-seller-turned-movie failing to reach the high expectations of its fans. Viewers especially hate when a beloved novels get edited for political reasons. 

In this case, it seems many fans were guilty of misreading. (What?! With elogquent, well-punctuated Twitter posts like theirs?! Poor reading comprehension?...  #shocked)  But that’s far less damning than being “racists.” 

A couple of those tweeters I’m nearly sure were just making jokes. Like this guy, who is pictured as a young, black man, (and who tags a dark-skinned girl in his tweet): "EWW...rue is black?? I'm not watching." It sounds like irony to me. Another person wrote, "Since when is Rue a nigger?" He could be an insensitive racist. Or he could watch a lot of “shock” comics—like Chris Rock—and genuinely believe blatant profanity is funny. 

Again, I can’t say what happens in the heads of these Tweeters—much less their hearts—but I wish at least one reporter had bothered to ask them before (almost all of) the offenders closed their Twitter accounts. This last bit of the story interests me most... I believe the reaction of the “guilty tweeters” reveals more about the issue of racism than anything they wrote before realizing a sleazy magazine would turn it into news.  

The internet community blasted the Twitter-users, with a unity that doesn’t often follow controversial stories.  Even when a tiny human died in utero, trolls emerged to say unspeakably ugly things to the parents. Yet, in the case of the Racist Tweeters, literally thousands of responses delivered the same message: “Shame on those tweeters!”  “Skin color doesn’t matter!” “Racist behavior sickens me!” “I thought Rue looked like an angel!” And on, and on, and on. In my searching, I couldn't find one--NOT ONE--person suggesting the tweeters were misunderstood. Let alone someone suggesting that racism itself is okay.

So, where are all the racists?

The readers/commenters believe “skin color doesn’t matter.” Their implication is, “I’m not a racist!” And many people shared the story on Facebook—to clarify they disapprove of racism as well. This generation went to school in integrated classrooms, played on black, brown, and yellow sports teams, and usually had a least one close friend they could use as a reference about life-in-a-different color.  (At 7-years-old, I asked Jasmine how she “got her hair with all the beads in it.” She responded very informatively with: “I don’t know. My mom does it.”) 

Besides hearing that “skin color doesn’t matter” (repeatedly), most young people have experienced it. Thus, being “racist” is so serious an offense that even people condemned supposedly by their own words took to hiding rather than face the wrath of the righteously-angry Online Community. (Motto: we’re not racist.)

So, where are those who believe skin color does matter? And why are we so determined to find them, give them a platform, and then criticize their intolerance?