My Views, My Thoughts: Naïve or Racist?

Recently on social media there are have been incidents after incidents of celebrities and people in the public eye making racist or at the very least racially insensitive comments. While all of these incidences have resulted in apologies my question is are these people naïve or just racist?

Now, let's take it back a few months to Kendall Jenner's Pepsi advert in which she solved all inequality by giving the police officers a Pepsi. To put it simply this clearly trivialised the efforts of people fighting against injustice worldwide. However, how did it even get released. My understanding of the marketing process is that there are many ideas put forward, one is chosen, the idea is planned out into an advert and then shot into an advert. So, my question is during this process did no one see what was wrong with the advert that the millions of people worldwide saw? If this is the case, then there is a deeper problem as not only did the Pepsi management think this message is ok but so did Kendall Jenner and as an influencer of popular culture she represents what many aspire to be. So, what does that say about modern Western society.

Moving on to something more recent: Munroe Bergdorf. Bergdorf was a representative for L’Oréal’s new diversity campaign and she was dropped after a video she posted on Facebook. In the video she explained her views that if as a white person you didn't try to dismantle racism you were complicit as you benefit from it. However, this was all lost by the line "all white people are racist". Despite explaining and elaborating on her points for clarification she has been harassed online, being sent death and rape threats. Now, do I agree that if you don't help solve the problem then you become part of the problem? Yes. But as the saying goes you attract more bees with honey than vinegar. Her points were valid and true but unfortunately they were lost. As when the truth is hard to hear it's easier to get defensive than face it, which is sadly what that one statement allowed people to do. Now, should L’Oréal have dropped her? No, especially as she was part of a diversity campaign and talking about racism.

Racism is one of those topics that's hard to understand when you haven't been affected by it. Now, I'm a young black woman living in the 21st Century and every time I hear racism is over or in the past I can't help but laugh. My theory is that due to British culture being a lot more subdued and subtle compared to Americans so was the racism but that's changing in my generation. Due to social media the ability to express your freedom of speech has been amplified and arguably we have taken a complete U-turn regarding political correctness. I've been called n**** more by people my own age than people of my grandparents' generation so how can racism be dead if it's sitting next to me in lectures?

Yeah it’s not everyday spill my heart on the internet sometimes I can write about the news.

Bye.