21 votes

Montgomery dock brawl memes were part an internal conversation on race

Posted by godzilla_lives
Tags: racism, usa.al.montgomery, memes, race, african americans, author.eric deggans, source.npr
https://www.npr.org/2023/08/10/1193091939/montgomery-brawl-memes

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Title
I've spent my career explaining race, but hit a wall with Montgomery brawl memes
Authors
Eric Deggans
Published
Aug 10 2023
Word count
921 words

3 comments

  1. godzilla_lives
    Link
    Very interesting piece, I encourage all to give it a read. I admit that I had allowed myself to get caught up in the humor of the situation and subsequent social media coverage. And yeah, the...

    ...it's sometimes tiring to always be asked to explain your cultural nuances to the world. But that's the gig I signed up for, many years ago, when I decided to write about race and media regularly. And yes, all the social media joking was hiding a fear that today's political climate has left racists emboldened to attack a Black man in broad daylight for doing his job. So explaining the memes only resurfaced those darker feelings in ways I wasn't quite ready to process right away.

    Very interesting piece, I encourage all to give it a read. I admit that I had allowed myself to get caught up in the humor of the situation and subsequent social media coverage. And yeah, the memes are funny, but they're also a way to cope with and make light of the fact that this group of racists felt emboldened enough to literally attack a man for simply doing his job.

    18 votes
  2. Sodliddesu
    Link
    I enjoyed the author's part about the dinner party - when I encounter a meme or statement that I don't know or understand I either look for context on know your meme or other sites or just move...

    I enjoyed the author's part about the dinner party - when I encounter a meme or statement that I don't know or understand I either look for context on know your meme or other sites or just move on, understanding that I won't understand every in joke or meme I see.

    Yet, although I'm only marginally familiar with this phenomenon, people on the Internet will ask directly "What does this mean" or "I don't get it" as if the explanation should be fed to them directly when they probably couldn't be assed to read it anyway.

    I find that behavior much like a child who immediately asks "What's going on?" or "Why did he say that?" during a movie - unable to research or look at the context of the conversation. Which is funny because the people following this author are likely not antagonistic towards black people in America but simply overwhelmed by the amount of things and events to interact with. I completely missed the event or the memes surrounding it after all but I can't exactly say I blame the author for feeling exhausted by needing to explain every meme they post, even if it is to well meaning folk.

    That said, we're deriding the racists who attacked the captain but I wonder how much was racially motivated and not simply an example of how excessively antagonistic Americans have... Well, maybe not 'become' but presented themselves lately.

    But, with other articles (that I've just looked up) claiming they responded to his attempts at contact with "gestures, curse words, and taunting" I can't imagine that they didn't use racially motivated language.

    8 votes
  3. kendev
    Link
    I think it's a little wild and self-important in the first place to have expectations like "I want everyone on the internet to do X". But also let's talk about how it's literally impossible to...

    I wanted the image to speak for itself. And I wanted people who had questions about what it meant to jump into social media and find out for themselves.

    I think it's a little wild and self-important in the first place to have expectations like "I want everyone on the internet to do X".

    But also let's talk about how it's literally impossible to know the author's intent of posting the image with certainty, even after scouring every social media post ever created. I can't be convinced that it's possible to read someone's mind by browsing a third party's social media feed.

    The "dinner party" seems like a nicer way of saying "echo chamber". Trying to "other" people because they asked an honest question is not good, even if you dress it up in some strange context like you are having a private conversation that just happens to be on a public forum.