The guy who took them to the card shop and then ended up taxing them around for the weekend has a heart of gold, what a nice guy.
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Black guy "proves" racism isn't that bad in infamous white American town
- Thread starter Deleted member 5865
- Start date
The guy who took them to the card shop and then ended up taxing them around for the weekend has a heart of gold, what a nice guy.
Racism isn't usually straightforward. I think that's why people are saying he has naivety. We all see racism constantly exposed in very bold ways, murders, videos of people/politicians saying and doing horrible things when it's online because it's collected and curated to be such. But the reality is, if you're an average person just walking around that reality of just obvious racism isn't typically apparent unless prompted in some way. That view, that racism is on display for everyone to see and easy to spot is equally naive. So it's not that what he's doing is wrong, it's just kind of misleading and feeds that "well see, the left is lying about racism, clearly all the complains aren't warranted" attitude.
Well, that's the age old question, isn't it?
Why would Black people, with the lived experience of anti-Blackness, go on to parrot or amplify attitudes antithetical to what they know is true?
It's a multifaceted conversation, that has its very roots in the Black identity.
But, quick, let's find out what Hasan thinks.
I'm reminded of what F.D. Signifier said in his video on the Will Smith slap: "if I had to choose between talking to Candace Owens or a white leftist about Blackness, I'd chose Candace Owens."
I had to look up what a modern "anarchist" is tbh. Looks like it's a spin on Libertarian, but the Left side of it vs. the modern Right leaning Libertarian. I'm so confused right now.
But that's not a criticism to be applied here, because he is clearly aware of the hidden sort of racism. He even goes on a rant about white liberal racism and how layered and hidden it is. He said he wasn't looking to bait N words, he doesn't care to expose that sort of racism because it's not useful or productive. I think, and maybe this is the real naievity on his part, is that he was really trying to see if that specific town was deserving to be called the most racist town in America, and not really caring about the broader conversation about white rural America.
For real.
"Check out this White-passing man's bleeding edge commentary on the nuanced experience/exploitation of Black America."
No thanks, fam. We're good.
F.D.'s video on Will Smith was exactly what I was waiting on before even trying to form an opinion on "the slap". Maybe we'll get lucky and he will do a video on this.
But because he doesn't get the easy gotcha racism in his video coverage, he goes on like "where's the racism, why do I have to look for it?"… because that's the point. People yelling at a guy with a BLM sign is shallow surface level crap that's not that meaningful in his view. So why is he using that as his barometer?
I mean, people use Hasan's videos because he's a leftist that's prominent and is one of the only few that young people can identify with (in contrast with the thousand of alt-right agitprop "intellectuals" that plague the internet and mostly all platforms). And dismissing his opinion only because he's white is not very good in the end. Jidion uploaded a childish video that gives fuel to the worst part of the internet, and is made even worse specially considering what happened on Buffalo recently. He should've known better. If he wants to appeal to that audience or then become a new Candace Owens then it's shameful af.
The video is meant to be entertainment first and foremost. I can't speak to his true intentions, but he probably is playing up everything for the camera. The video isn't meant to be a deep, nuanced take on racism. I understand that my perspective is after watching his stream about his thought versus just the video itself, which is why I feel some of the criticisms here are unfair.
Am I dismissive of Hasan here because he's not Black?
Yes. Yes I am.
But my post makes it clear that there's layers to that. And your counter here seems to be... Hasan is popular.
This feel like an unfair criticism, considering the video came out a week before the shooting happened. Hasan's criticism's are terrible, and not terribly insightful either.
I mean, just watching Jidion's video it's very clear that there's a good deal of naivety involved with his reactions.
Jidion's main reactions in a majority of the video is "huh, this is supposed to be the most racist town in America and I haven't been lynched yet. Weird!" Which in context of the fact that there was an article just last December over the fact that the town was attempting to turn around its image, it's weird that he'd think he'd even experience the amount of vitriol that others had received in 2020 at the height of the George Floyd protests.
The issue is he's conflating the idea with racism as something solely associated with violence, or someone just throwing out the hard R at him randomly as he walks down the street or while in a Target. And with speaking with the Klan member at the end he further shows his ignorance by just kind of letting it slide that the dude was trying to massage how to perceive his racism, which is very much how 21st Century racists are generally acting when they're not running around shooting up shopping centers.
The "polite racism" to Hasan's point is just as violent as openly attempting to form a mob and hang someone. David Duke was the perfect example of someone who was trying to be the polite racist. I wouldn't be surprised if Jidion's reaction to a recorded conversation between the two of them would be "well, for someone who's such a racist he seemed like a nice guy!"
And that's where he's coming off as childish and honestly I think deserves the criticism Hasan levied at him. Jidion complaining that Hasan is more racist than the dude who's literally a Klan member also shows to me how deeply an unserious person he is and how he's more concerned with his brand than actually taking this very real and fair criticism of him with some level of grace.
Dismissing concerns from Black posters as "haterz", as you post non-Black people speaking on Black race relations.
Maybe you're the one in the wrong here?
Honestly I can't tell if he was being truthful with him. I'm guessing his politics are all over the place. But also, this is the same guy that sent a hate mob after Pokimane and acted like he was exposing her cuz she said the N word on stream years ago. I would have some sympathy if he was frustrated at famous white streamers getting away with saying offensive slurs, but he was cool with Ninja who also said the N word and it was clear he held sexist views against female streamers. He's kind of a mess.
If he was trying to do a Channel 5 bit then he failed.
Better to side with the dude that pampers a separatist KKK member for some clicks. There was never racism in america folks, it was an invention from the left. Let's bridge the gap.
Again, he wasn't trying to bait n words or legitimately hoping for a physical confrontation. He knows that racism isn't just hate speech and lynching. He knows people aren't going to be overtly racist on camera. He was trying to get a first hand impression of the entire town, not just to confront its racists elements.
Personally, I'd love to have a different go-to for Leftist reactions than Hasan, but I just haven't found any. All of the POC on my youtube feed are more essay style content. Which I enjoy, but aren't a great source for developing stories. With all of the clip channels, there's a Hasan clip for just about every topical story and stupid Right wing tweet. That really helps me see what the Right is saying and staying ahead of their talking points.
Hasan most recently said that Hitler wasn't bad because he invaded
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Could you link to that? I've seen him say some weird things when he gets sidetracked, but that's a whole new level.
It didn't feel like that I guess. Like someone else said it felt like a poorly mimicked channel 5 news segment. I don't know anything about JiDeon other than this video. So I only have it as a stand-alone piece to look at, and it doesn't reflect that well in the standpoint that he's actually trying to say anything, but it's not particularly funny either. So I guess I'm just not following what his brand of entertainment is. I don't really want to watch his videos that much either though lol because his crew seems kind of Bro'ish which isn't my speed.
This dude fucking sucks.
Yup, same guy.
His response to the reaction was good too.
Yup, same guy.
His response to the reaction was good too.
All fair. I do understand the problem with "reaching out" to irredeemable racists, and that a digestible video for mostly white people can have some problematic takeaways.
No I genuinely have no problem with that. I think most people generally misunderstand Rural Americans and their motivations. Trying to talk to people that don't share your values or opinions to understand them is valiant. I don't really think that's what he was doing though. Because he's not actually evaluating words to actions here at all. He's just taping himself in the town and then putting himself near a KKK member on camera expecting people to act boldly or not to, as shown by the video where it downplays the problematic components by doing so. And the racism and socioeconomic issues on the side of liberals is very much an issue too. Limousine liberalism is a very real issue but that's not the focus here.
He highlights how chill the high schoolers are, and really that was the takeaway from the original video that inspired this, there are still progressive people in white rural America, we can't just abandon them to rot.
That point could have been stronger had he not talked to the KKK guy. Like, what is anyone suppose to get out of that? He never refuted the guy and he tried too hard to find common ground. It's even more of a bad look for him considering a mass shooting just happened by a white supremacist.
This shit has real Boogie2988 centrist energy. Stop having a "civil Convo" with people who want to kill you. Fuckin weird centrists
I mean, the town was labeled as the most racist town in America, that KKK guy was probably one of the main reasons why. The original video was just shots of people yelling profanities about black people and BLM, with a shot of a single kid at the end handing the cameraman a note about how not everyone here is like this. Jidion's video is probably more effective at showing just how insidious a "really" racist person is versus the original, and showing that there is an entire population of people being left behind there.
That is true, and especially the bolded part. I think it's not necessarily that he doesn't have the right to perceive it as he personally wants to!
That perception just doesn't affect the thing in reality, and I think when you're posting something like this, it gives the perception that you're making a statement on reality.
EDIT: I also wanna add that ultimately YouTube videos like this can't actually prove that a place is or is not racist
Yeah no. I didn't get that at all. I wouldn't be surprised if this guy starts showing up in Trump rallies and gets co-opted by conservative movement. He can become a very useful idiot for the people who literally want to eradicate non-whites. This is why stuff like this is dangerous.
Are they? From that video I have no idea. Being cool with a black content creator doesn't make you progressive. Also anyone saying we should abandon rural America should just be written off as a fool. I don't want to make too many judgements about anything around this as I'm severely lacking in info. But it also just feels like that reductionist view is very problematic when it comes to virtually any topic.
That's me naively hoping they are, and hoping they don't get radicalized rightward before they can develop their critical thinking.
There's also a very important part that is missing from the conversation, and that is the bodycam effect - aka knowing what you say will be watched by lot of other people. People normally doing heinous stuff behave better in front of a camera. It's clear this KKK guy was oh so eloquent and civil, but does anyone here doubt he does not throw racial slurs and n-word around when he's with his klan? That he's not dreaming of race wars and at this very moment, not celebrating the Buffao terrorist who shot up 13 black people in a targeted massacre?
Seeing the comments in the video at least there are some explaining how this type of videos are awful with how they portray racist assholes as "civil"
The ones that talk about "uniting" people and not using "labels" are so stupid since there is a high change those aren't even black
The ones that talk about "uniting" people and not using "labels" are so stupid since there is a high change those aren't even black
This entire thing strongly reminds me of the Louis Theroux piece from 2018 where he goes to interview a whole clan full of southern redneck neo-nazis at their ramshackle compound. Literally the entire time he is making a show of chatting "naively" with the father of the clan - who is constantly, non-stop, trying to get Theroux to say he is a Jew - the rest of the clan are quite literally circling around and eyeing the camera man. They were very much debating whether they could murder, or at least, beat Theroux to a pulp and get away with it on camera.
The psychos in that piece were visibly degenerate and extreme examples of violent racists, but I always keep them in mind because the underlying psychology there is universal to all such people.
Jidion is presenting a little bit more nuance, but it doesn't go beyond people telling him the town isn't racist. I think most people understand the racist places still have good people that want to push back against the bad ones. We could use more people fighting to show sympathy for those stuck in shitty towns. This video might have been an attempt but I'm also not really learning anything as to why the town got that reputation.
The original video was probably the reason why that reputation got more widespread. That KKK guy from what I understand used to live in the town with a group of other KKK members, which is probably the source of that reputation, until they got kicked out when the lease on his land expired. Again, I don't think his conclusion was the town isn't racist, its just probably not "the most racist town in America" anymore.
Again, I feel like the KKK guy could have been completely cut and help soften the criticism his vid is getting.
Sure. I think cutting him completely would've removed some necessary context, I think how he handled that specific conversation is fair criticism.
Yeah so…I don't think we should be sharing anything Jidion related here. He is literally permabanned from Twitch for bullying Pokimane and sending a hate raid her way during his first week of streaming on the platform. His audience is vile and he persisted with no remorse.
Edit: as per the video, it does what white racists want, makes them seem civil. Media does that enough already.
Edit: as per the video, it does what white racists want, makes them seem civil. Media does that enough already.
Then what purpose does his video have? Because the way this video comes off he's essentially doing a bit, side-eyeing the camera and shrugging his shoulders at "this place isn't so racist after all!" close to two years removed from the event that helped spur a lot of the reactions people were giving others who went there and held a BLM sign.
Who is this for? Are there people who think that a town being labeled as the "most racist in America" means that Jidion simply existing within its proximity would make him spontaneously combust? Are those same people the kind of people who think Disney World being the Happiest Place on Earth must mean that there's never any sad people there?
Because frankly, from everything we see in Jidion's video it comes off like he's attempting to excuse the town's reputation and then co-signs actual racists as being civil people, while then going out of his way to accuse a dude who criticizes how dumb his video is as the true racist.
Like for real, he's approaching the whole subject with the same gravitas as Steve-O and Chris Pontius approached visiting the Samburu tribe in Kenya and then gets mad that Hasan rightfully calls him out for comparing his video to what the New York Times was doing a few years back when they were humanizing literal Nazis.
Again, what is the point of this video and who is it for? Because it just looks to me at least that it's trying to further the point that accusations of racism are overblown and that even racists are just kind, civil people who we just have a simple disagreement about like what the best ice cream flavor is.
There's nothing wrong with hoping and they will almost certainly have a better outlook than someone with no outwards exposure. Information and exposure does a lot. I just mean, that alone isn't enough to make any inference. I know nothing about those kids other than the town they're from. So I wouldn't and couldn't make a judgement call about them even if I wanted to.