Every January, Americans remember one of our nation’s paramount civil rights activists, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Typically, this holiday is a day of reverence for King’s birthday. However, this year, Arizona State University’s Tau Kappa Epsilon Fraternity decided to celebrate a different way; the brothers hosted a gregarious “MLK Black Party.” Afterwards, a whirlwind of photos posted on Instagram caused a great deal of controversy nation-wide.
CBS 5 Arizona posted a news story with a video, photos, and an article about the event in Tempe. CBS, along with many other online platforms, displayed the offensive and outlandish photos from the event. The Instagram photos that the party-goers posted speak for themselves:
In 2011, Junior Alexandra Wallace, a student at UCLA and frequent “vlogger” (a person who creates videos of themselves discussing random topics) posted a vlog titled “Asians in the Library”. The video was 2:52 minutes long and was posted on a Friday afternoon, the same Friday there was a tsunami happening in Asia. To sum up the video, Alexandra rants about the Asians on UCLA’s campus not using “American manners” in the libraries during finals week and being disrespectful talking on cell phones while others are studying.
Race and social media are increasingly intertwined. Social media is used both as an outlet of racist actions and a place to fight racism, and this site is a place to explore both of those spectrums and everything in between.
Led by instructor Kristi McDuffie, this site is specifically an exploration of a multitude of race- and social media-related topics by a general education course at Illinois State University. We encourage visitors to the site to engage in our explorations with us and participate in critical, respectful dialogue. Questions, comments, links, and so forth are also welcome.
An exploration of how race and the Internet collide
Race and Social Media 