Today a friend of mine inadvertently offended some white people. Well, white person anyway. In a very small, limited way I can understand where they were coming from. (This with a guess that they’ve never seen “Stuff white people like” either). She posted the below picture on Facebook and someone took offense. To me the picture seems as any other ha-ha internet picture does. Good for a chuckle…..then it’s time to move on.
Despite the fact that I think only a small percentage of anything you find on the internet should be taken seriously, I forget sometimes how sensitive people are to the dumbest stuff. A good example would be this really cool patch that I got for one of my jackets:
What’s not to love, right? As someone who loves religion as pop-art and lowbrow culture (neither of which I take too seriously), I was quickly reminded that I live in the South. The South where some people are fanatically religious and could cause me verifiable harm. Some people take that religion stuff really REALLY seriously.
I’ve had way less issues with people than I used to. I used to wear my priest collar out in public just for the hell of it, and I think people were generally too shocked to beat the crap out of me.
I think sometimes shock value is good. Sometimes it initiates change. Obviously my friend won’t be posting any Nutella pics referencing white people, but that change has debatable value. Although, since I’m white could I have posted the picture without recrimination? What’s the impact there? Can I go hang out at IKEA and lure white people into a van with Nutella? (Did I just define IKEA as whitebread? Of course not, everyone shops there.)
One of man’s most admirable traits is the ability to laugh at one’s self.
Too bad people forget to do that often.
