I do not like being spoon fed messages that are obvious in their nature. If I were to start a social campaign against child sacrifices, I don’t think I would get many dislikes on Facebook. How about I start a movement in favor of oxygen? That’s brave, right?
In comes the Un-Fair Campaign and it’s overdue battle against racism.
Their mission is as follows:
To raise awareness about white privilege in our community, provide resources for understanding and action, and facilitate dialogue and partnership that result in fundamental, systemic change towards racial justice.
Vision:
An evolved community free of individual, systemic and institutionalized racism.
And they have these splendid pictures to enhance the experience:
I came across this movement a while ago and did not imbue it with much importance. To me, it appeared to be another group of privileged white kids taking a brave stand against racism a safe distance from the 60’s and 70’s when battling racism was actually brave. The movement was discussed on the Opie & Anthony Show and, to my amazement, Anthony Cumia was not happy about this movement. Jim Norton, one of the show’s hosts, had a brilliant observation on these pictures which led me to re-edit these pictures to portray the underpinning emotions that I think fuel this movement.
Thomas Sowell makes a keen observation on the history of slavery in the United States and how images of slaves in the South always seem to come to mind when the subject of free labor is ever brought up. Since this campaign is geared towards the noble goal “To raise awareness about white privilege…” I think the following quote fits quite nicely:
“Why this provincial view of a worldwide evil? Often it is those who are most critical of a “Eurocentric” view of the world who are most Eurocentric when it comes to the evils and failings of the human race. Why would anyone wish to arbitrarily understate an evil that plagued mankind for thousands of years, unless it was not this evil itself that was the real concern, but rather the present-day uses of that historic evil? Clearly, the ability to score ideological points against American society or Western civilization, or to induce guilt and thereby extract benefits from the white population today, are greatly enhanced by making enslavement appear to be a peculiarly American, or a peculiarly white, crime. (Sowell 111).
In order to address the problem of skin pigmented preferential treatment, we much first prejudge the situation on skin pigmented preferential treatment. Maybe this is the paradox that we cannot avoid in order to address the real issue of racism, but I am skeptical of this campaign’s approach.
If Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s quote, I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character, still rings true today, then this campaign has postponed his dream to a much later date.
I much prefer the response video to this campaign… done by actual people of color.