Social Media Doesn't Help Racial Profiling

Social media was created to help people interact with each other. Many of the people who use social media see it as a safe space to voice their opinions. Although that is the main reason for social media, different views on life cause a lot of tension on social media when it comes to sensitive topics like racial profiling. While racial profiling has been a problem for hundreds of years, it has recently become more recognized. Even though it is being talked about more via social media, it still has not helped prevent racial profiling. Social media has not prevented racial profiling because it allows people to continue stereotypes and oppress people of color.

Although Twitter is not the most popular form of social media, a lot of tweets happen to go viral on other social networks. Most of the tweets that go viral are outrageous statements from popular or famous people that have sparked outrage among their fanbase. Twitter allows people to speak their feelings which causes more hurt than help. Recently singer Sabrina Claudio caught some backlash from recent racist tweets. One of her tweets said “I’d rather be a pasty white girl than a sweaty chonga.”. Although she did receive some backlash from her insensitive tweets, she was also given some support. With her fanbase being so big, she was destined to influence some of her fans and supporters into believing a stereotype that she once believed and possibly still believed. Her inconsiderate words may have influenced some of her fans and even random people that saw the tweet to believe a stereotype about people of color. These types of actions lead to the much bigger problems in the world including issues of racial profiling and stereotyping.

The sad thing about social media is that it comes up with its own story to tell the world. Whether the story be told by a news channel or by a random user, they portray the story they want to portray it. This is what happened with Trayvon Martin. After being followed through a development, he was shot and killed by a man. According to Journalism.org, “On blogs, the racial element of the story was the top theme in the conversation, given Martin’s race and questions that have arisen about the racial attitudes of Zimmerman, a Hispanic man.” The ongoing stereotype surrounding people of color moved to the internet after this situation. Despite the fact that an obviously innocent child had been murdered, the internet still decided to make the killer, innocent. The media especially painted the victim in a disturbing and demonized way. This did not help the victim and the media’s influence resulted in the murderer not being convicted of first degree murder.

Social media has not helped racial profiling of anyone. Instead it has caused for people to repeat and make fun of stereotypes on the internet. By doing so, social media has harmed the outcome of racial profiling by not allowing the guilty party to be charged with the crime. Because the guilty party is never charged with the crime, they always get away with it and situations like these continue to happen to people of color. Social media has not prevented racial profiling because it allows people to continue stereotypes and oppress people of color.

Works Cited

Hitlin, Paul. On Social Media A Conversation About Race. Journalism.org. 2012. Web.

Way, Katie. Angry Fans Are Comparing Sabrina Claudio to Camila Cabello, Selena Gomez because of her racist online past. Babe.net. 2018. Web