I am a white, heterosexual male living in the year 2017. As with the rest of American history, my race, orientation, and sex means that I face less daily adversity than any black, gay, or female person — or any combination of the three, really.
But I know that the movie Crash (2004) didn’t fix racism, as some people erroneously claim. Neither did the historic election of Barack Obama, or the award-winning first season of Atlanta. A black president doesn’t solve the issue, and neither does diversity in television and film.
Racism and hate still corrupt this country, more than 150 years after the Civil War and almost 50 years since Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. On his birthday, yes, we should celebrate him for what he was — a man who changed history for the better and fought the good fight for civil rights in a time when just using the “wrong” bathroom or water fountain could mean a death sentence. Without MLK, we might not have seen Barack Obama sworn in, plain and simple.
To me, and I think to a majority of people, it’s obvious that racism is alive and well. We see it online, in the continuing existence of the KKK, and how the phrases “alt-right” and “white genocide” have become commonplace.
This isn’t going to be a long article of me explaining racism and how we still need to fight to make this country a better place for all Americans. I’m not going to go a long tirade about how we still have work to do.
Instead, I present to you vile, unfiltered racism that can be found with just a simple Twitter search. Look at these tweets, typed by real human beings, and try to remember that we are currently living in the year 2017.
This is just a small sample size of the filth I waded through to write this article. Some of these accounts have hundreds of followers — followers that like, retweet, and reply with filth of their own.
If anybody tries to tell you that racism doesn’t exist, or that the media and liberals overreact to it, I implore you to show them any one of these tweets, and any of the other countless racist remarks you’ll see on TV or social media. Sometimes it’s wildly apparent, sometimes it’s subtle. But it’s there, and it’s not going away unless we continue to fight the good fight that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. preached more than half a century ago.
Mainly, what I’m trying to say is:
We still have work to do.
