SXSW Panel Summary
by Latoya Peterson
Joined by Phil Yu (Angry Asian Man), Jay Smooth (Ill Doctrine), and Kety Esquivel (NCLR and Cross Left), I moderated a panel at SXSW called “Can Social Media End Racism.”
We organized the panel over email (and one lively dinner discussion) and came up with the main outline for the session.
We began by playing part of the trailer of abUSed: The Postville Raid while people were walking in, to the pull them into the moment and get people thinking about how videos and documentaries help to spread the word about current issues in social justice.
Then we introduced the ourselves.
The panel opened with me explaining what the panel was not. The panel was marked intermediate, which means we were not going to spend time on racism 101. (Jay added that racism 101 has a role and a purpose – just not a role in this session.) We wanted to outline some common experiences with racism online, tackle the question “Can Social Media End Racism,” and ways in which to take action.
The questions posed to the panel were:
- 1. What are your experiences with racism online? (And why did you get started using social media)? 2. Can Social Media End Racism?
We then entered into a discussion about using social media to fight racism.
There are three ways to leverage social media in combating racism in your communities:
1. Spread Knowledge
We talked about podcasting (like we do with Addicted to Race), using a blog as an information resource (Angry Asian Man), and using short videos to explain a point (Ill Doctrine).
We also featured this favorite from Jay Smooth on How to Tell People They Sound Racist:
2. Creating a Refuge
We talked about the need for creating a refuge as sometimes, anti-racists need a place to regroup, or a place to have a conversation without being dragged back into the same five fights about race and racism. I spoke a little bit about Racialicious and our moderation policy here. Kety talked about creating the Sanctuary with other bloggers and protecting that space from assault.
3. Mobilizing the Base
At this point we started running out of time, so we had to condense this section. I briefly covered how social media helped to push issues like Jena 6 and the ICE Raids into public discussion, and how the current controversy around Avatar, the Last Airbender is following those same principles to build a stronger voice to let Hollywood know whitewashing is not acceptable.
Jay and Phil also talked about the ability for cross-regional and interracial organizing that was spurred on by Hot 97′s Tsunami Song.
When then opened the floor to questions and got some amazing ones that will actually become other posts. Some to look out for:
ericajoy: Dear folks at #racesxsw: How do you approach those who swear that racism doesn’t exist anymore and use the “only a few crazy people” argument ?
DocDre: can you defeat racism from a defensive posture? #racesxsw
swirlspice: RT @HopeChat: but don’t we have 2 face the reverse is true. social media can B used as a tool of racism as well. #racesxsw
BlackWeb20: Great question from Dana Boyd about racism across countries and how to combat it/how to deal with the broad geographic context of race conversations? there aren’t agreed about norms, what’s race? what’s racism? #racesxsw
Also, there was an intriguing question which was essentially “how do we deal with real racism, i.e. economic racism?” I’ll tackle both the question and the way it was phrased in another post.
Quotables (as determined by the Twitter Feed)
@jsmooth995: “Each racist moment online is like a snowflake, unique and beautiful, and every YouTube comment is like a blizzard.”
@racialicious “A comment said, ‘You’re so angry because you have a BIG VAGINA.’ @newdemographic replied ‘That’s why I keep my LAPTOP IN IT’”"That’s why I carry my laptop in it.”#racesxsw (This is the big vagina story).
8asians: Angry Asian Man: “I say fuck comments; I don’t have the time to deal with it. anonymous [comments] emboldens people.” #racesxsw
allaboutgeorge: #racesxsw Peterson: “There’s no ‘end racism’ app or we would’ve pushed that button a long time ago.”
racialicious: @jsmooth995 – “Fighting racism is like brushing your teeth. You can never do enough teeth brushing in your lifetime.” #sxsw #racesxsw
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