Blog post 6
Emma Martin
The article, Defending race privilege on the internet: how whiteness uses innocence discourse online, was very engaging and insightful. Anastasia Kanjere exclaimed how social media platforms give people the opportunity to discuss topics, in anonymous settings. In this case, these anonymous comments include the category of white innocence which displays roles of white power, white privilege, and white oppression. “White Innocence is refined as the end of racism: anything that impinges upon the construction and celebration of this ultimate goal, therefore, is frustrating the process towards racial harmony” (Kanjere, 2167). This means that white innocence is white people trying to justify their lack of knowledge and state that racism isn’t their problem. Two explanations and examples of this white innocence that stood out to me include “Colour-blindness: the kumbaya approach and strategies of appeal to the real world.” Anastasia gives a great example of appeals to reality from one commenter, who argues that the show Game of Thrones is real and truthful with its racism. I laughed reading Anastasia's exclaim, “as the show includes dragons, zombies, and magical bonds of green fire, these commenters' definition of true or actual history would appear to be rather generous”. It’s true, in the end, Game of Thrones is a fantasy, imaginative series, and “ these types of comments reject the accusation of racism by appealing to the real world or status quo, which is viewed as innocent” ( Kanjere, 2163 ). How can something that is morally wrong in the real world, be okay and justified in a fantasy world? The second method of white innocence was very interesting to me because of how Anastasia exclaimed that commenters online “share a basic principle: race is a construct designed to divide humanity, and the most effective means to combat its divisive nature is to deny its existence” ( Kanjere, 2164 ). Race was originally created to justify slavery, so yes it is a construct intended to divide. Although it’s not logical to ignore and deny the issue of racism because it is still a very real thing that is affecting millions. Just because something isn’t affecting an individual personally, doesn’t mean it’s not real or not important.
A recent example of, “strategies of appeal to the real world”, I immediately thought of was the arguments against the upcoming Little Mermaid remake. People had a lot of anonymous confidence online as they shared how they disagreed with the fact that we will have a Black Little Mermaid. The most common argument people used was the fact that the Little Mermaid is originally white and the movie would not accurate. Ariel is a mermaid, a fictional character. Arguing against a fictional character becoming more diverse, is exactly like expressing that those who look like her don’t deserve representation and the movie has less value because of it. I find it very sad how often this occurs in society and how little people think about others.
Kanjere, Anastasia. “Defending Race Privilege on the Internet: How Whiteness Uses Innocence Discourse Online.” Information, Communication & Society, vol. 22, no. 14, 2018, pp. 2156–2170., https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118x.2018.1477972.
I think that your discussion of the "reality" of fiction being used as a tool for the promotion of racist or discriminatory narratives is a highly interesting one. It is important to look at what points the argument is making but not explicitly stating. If a piece of media is "realistic" or not is often used as a shield, such as when a work of fantasy includes an all-white cast because the fictional world is non-diverse. This ignores both the malleability of fiction in adaptation, as well as the fact that all fiction exists within the real world. Just because an element or conceit is unproblematic within it's own narrative, as audiences, we may only view it through our own lens of reality, and thus will inevitably draw conclusions on the work formed from our own assumptions of the real world. This is why it is so important that works of fiction account for the real world context in which they exist, rather than pretending that all actions they take are supposedly in service to internal "realism."
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