Have been checking out the efforts of the JIDF to squash the “Kill A Jew” day events that have been popping up on Facebook.
There was one a few days ago that the organization was successful in getting taken down. Another one popped up two days later to take its place. It looks like it’s the same people trying to get a rise but the general bottom line is the same. In addition to all the great content and information on Facebook, there is a lot of antisemitism and hate speech against ethnic, religious and gender orientation minorities. Facebook does what it can to keep it in check when made aware of the problem within the inherent flaws of user-based self-reporting systems. There however, is simply so much more of the hatred than there are employees at Facebook to monitor it.
I try to take most of this crap in stride as there are idiots everywhere. The most troubling aspect of “the day” is not that some anti-Semitic idiot would put it up but that so many are willing to play along and incite the hatred in the page commentary. Strong evidence that it is much more than a silly page put up by a moron. It is a stark reminder that Facebook is not just a place for friends to connect and share information. It is a venue for those of like mind in hatred of not only Jews but any minority group to take that message, find those who agree and take hatred viral.
I wonder if they will talk about that in the new Facebook movie, The Social Network. I doubt it. People are more interested In Mark Zuckerberg’s quirks and dalliances than they are about real issues affecting all of us in that network. That’s to be expected. People want to be entertained. I hope it’s more entertaining than Kill A Jew Day.
A 2004 study by the Entertainment Software Association found a an increase in online gaming, with 43% of gamers playing online an hour or more each week. In an era of the Sony PlayStation and X-Box 360 the popularity of video games and digital online games remains strong. Our children go online with our approval and play such games as World of Warcraft, Quake and Second Life Virtual Reality. These games/environments are also conduits for the exchange of hate speech.
There has been a proliferation of gamers in addition to exchanging gunshots and laser ray gun blasts, trading racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic rhetoric. The problem like the Internet in general is the anonymity covering the gamers making it easy to engage in hate speech with anonymity and impunity. The problem with policing an X-Boy type community of 23 million members and 1-2 million users online at any one time are obvious. Like the social networking sites Facebook, YouTube and MySpace, the community for the most part is forced to police itself with regards to hate speech and other offensive content. The moderators who take down offensive content are for the most part unaware of that content unless a user flags it. This is the standard in the social networking community. It addition to being the most practical way to monitor hate speech from a business model standpoint it also protects the immunity given Social Networking Sites and gaming sites under Section 230 of The Communications Decency Act. One might ask whether a gaming population that young be relied on to police itself? The average user is older than you think. A survey compiled by the Entertainment Software Association and released at E3, the video game industry’s major trade show in Los Angeles, found that a slight majority of video game players are now over 18 years of age. The average age of game players was 29 and the average age of buyers was 36, with men making up 59% of the playing audience. At this age, it takes the parents out of the equation although as with any type of hate speech it starts at home. This is also true with standard online digital computer games. What if they were playing games such as Border Patrol where the goal is to kill Hispanics Adults and children crossing the border,
According to the Anti-Defamation League, Hate groups are increasingly using racist and anti-Semitic computer games to recruit young people These games cover a wide variety of racism, anti-Semitism and bigotry targeting Hispanics, Jews, Gays and Blacks to name a few. Here is one called Ethnic Cleansing where the user is defending “The White Race”.
While gaming networks are taking steps to combat online hate speech, the battle still begins at home. Ask your children what games they are playing. Take a look. If they are standard games you would normally see on an X-Box ask your children if offensive language is being used. If they are the ones using it the answer is going to be no but you still have to ask. How can you tell if it is your child practicing intolerance online? How can you tell if your child is racist or trending towards that mode of thinking? It’s not a comfortable topic. Most parents want their children to grow up color-blind or blind religious and ethnic stereotypes, unfortunately many conclude that they easiest way to do this is to not broach the subject with them. Unfortunately the structured environments of the living room and kitchen a not the world our children live in. They are constantly exposed to racial stereotypes and trickle down media exposure from other children as well as teachers. That is the world they live in.
A 2006 Study by Birgitte Vittrup of the Children’s Research Lab at the University of Texas highlighted these issues. Vittrup’s study wanted to learn if typical children’s videos with multicultural storylines have any beneficial effect on children’s racial attitudes. A disturbing effect of the study was that some parents simply dropped out because they did not want to discuss race with their children.
“We might imagine we’re creating color-blind environments for children, but differences in skin color or hair or weight are like differences in gender—they’re plainly visible. Even if no teacher or parent mentions race, kids will use skin color on their own, the same way they use T-shirt colors. Bigler contends that children extend their shared appearances much further—believing that those who look similar to them enjoy the same things they do. Anything a child doesn’t like thus belongs to those who look the least similar to him.”[1]
You are not going to be able to monitor what your child does or says 24 hours a day nor should you but digital gaming going on under your roof is fair game to inquire what your child is exposed to in the gaming community and what his/her reaction is to it. Start tonight.
[1] See Bab’s Discriminate Newsweek Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman | NEWSWEEK
Published Sep 5, 2009 From the magazine issue dated Sep 14, 2009
With more than 30,000 students, Texas State is the 5th largest university in Texas and one of the 55 largest in the United States. Texas State University has more than 1,700 majors enrolled in our undergraduate and graduate programs — which makes the program one of the largest journalism and mass communication programs in the state of Texas – and the nation. Here is what the school has said about the presentation:
“Brian was one of the featured speakers at our annual Mass Communication Week at Texas State University. He was able to engage the audience and get them to think about the issue of hate speech on the Internet. A week later students were still debating the issue on what speech should and should not be protected. For that to happen with students means Brian’s talk really resonated with them. I’m sure he will get your audiences to think about the issue as well.“
On January 19, 2009 University of California-Santa Barbara sociology professor William I. Robinson sent out an email message to his “Sociology of Globalization” students equating Israel with Nazi Germany and Gaza with the Warsaw Ghetto. The email entitled:“Parallel images of Nazis and Israelis,“ read in part as follows:
“I am forwarding some horrific, parallel images of Nazi atrocities against the Jews and Israeli atrocities against the Palestinians. Perhaps the most frightening are not those providing a graphic depiction of the carnage but that which shows Israeli children writing “with love” on a bomb that will tear apart Palestinian children.
Gaza is Israel’s Warsaw – a vast concentration camp that confined and blockaded Palestinians, subjecting them to the slow death of malnutrition, disease and despair, nearly two years before their subjection to the quick death of Israeli bombs. We are witness to a slow-motion process of genocide (Websters: “the systematic killing of, or a program of action intended to destroy, a whole national or ethnic group”), a process whose objective is not so much to physically eliminate each and every Palestinian than to eliminate the Palestinians as a people in any meaningful sense of the notion of people-hood.”
The e-mail also contained more than two dozen photographs of Jewish victims of the Nazis, including those of dead children juxtaposed with similar images from the Gaza Strip.
Two students who received the email dropped the class They reportedly also sought advice from the Simon Wiesenthal Center and were allegedly advised to file formal grievances with the university. They grievances were filed accusing the professor of intimidation and “violating the campus’ faculty code of conduct by disseminating personal, political material unrelated to his course.”
Professor Robinson defended the email stating that it was designed to prompt open discussion and debate about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and that the school was violating his 1st amendment rights and right of Academic Freedom. He also alleged he was being retaliated against for his anti-Israel statements.
An investigation ensued under a firestorm of controversy including the way the inquiry was conducted. Professor Robinson alleged he was denied due process . During the course of the 5 month investigation professor Robinson was called out with harsh criticism by the Anti Defamation League.(ADL)
Professor Robinson, who is Jewish, was cleared of any wrongdoing. He is now demanding an apology from the University. Is he owed one?
There are 1st Amendment/Free Speech and academic freedom considerations here. UC-Santa Barbara is a state school. Professor Robinson does have 1st Amendment protection for certain types of speech. Compare this to a private company such as Facebook where there is no 1st Amendment protection for posted content. An end-users free-speech rights in that realm are controlled entirely by Facebook Terms Of Service.(TOS) Compare also to a private university where there would generally be no 1st amendment protection. A professors speech rights would generally be controlled by whatever rules and regulations regulating speech the university has in place.(California in fact grants greater free speech rights at private universities)
Like Facebook, UC-Santa Barbara has its own version of TOS. It has it’s of Faculty Conduct. That code says that a professor may not use university resources to disseminate personal, political materials unrelated to his course.”
There is no question here that the email and photos sent out by professor Robinson were political. The issue becomes whether it was course related or a personal rant. Whether there is enough relation to what he is teaching to trigger his “right of academic freedom“. This right allows him to teach his course without undue interference from the University.
Was the email germane to the course he was teaching and advancing a legitimate educational objective? I was able to locate a copy of the syllabus for the course Sociology of Globalization(130SG) taught by professor Robinson. I may have missed something but I did not see anything even remotely connected to the content of the email.
Is Professor Robinson Anti-Semitic as some claim? He may or may not be but as long as he does not bring it into the classroom it is irrelevant. Is the email itself Anti-Semitic? It is certainly not Anti-Semitic to simply criticize Israeli policy. As we all know however, semantics and form over substance are often involved in these issues. Holocaust Denial is a perfect example. While the mere fact of “Denying The Holocaust” may not carry words of hate in it, there are those, including myself who feel that Holocaust Denial is nothing more than an Anti-Semitic pretext for bringing those together who hate Jews.
The Robinson analogy does by implication portray Israelis as genocidal mass murderers and in that context could be viewed as Anti-Semitic. I also view the email as historically insensitive as well as bizarre and buffoonish in its analogies. It certainly damages Professor Robinson’s credibility as a scholar. I would not be taking any comparative history course from him. The 1st Amendment and right of academic freedom however allows Professor Robinson to be a buffoon and historical idiot.
What the email did do is procedurally violate university policy. Using university resources, Professor Robinson sent a personal, inflammatory, political email that could have no other intent than to influence his students. His subjective ,after-the-fact statement of intent does not change the real time context of the email when it was it sent.If a professor could always justify a potentially university policy violative exchange of content with a subjective after the fact intent statement, nothing with ever violate a Code Of Conduct. There simply was no context. The course syllabus has no relation whatsoever to the content of the email.
What if he had simply read the contents of the email in class, putting the pictures up on a big screen as he read the email?
While I can not speak to the alleged lack of due process, in my mind the email clearly violated the Faculty Code Of Conduct. Professor Robinson should have been disciplined. An apology is owed but not by the University…
Here is Professor Robinson’s side of the story in a April 29, 2009 interview given to Counterpunch.
Have been checking out the efforts of the JIDF to squash the “Kill A Jew” day events that have been popping up on Facebook.
