How White Continues to Stand Out in The Red, White, and Blue

In the colorblind millennial world, being called a “racist” is nearly the worst insult there is. Although rifts are resurfacing due to the BLM movement and subsequent backlash, the average person often sees the civil rights era has the last needed victory for racial equality. However, Ehrenfreund reminds us that racial hostility still exists among Americans, especially among southern individuals who largely identify with the Republican party.

On a small liberal arts campus in North Carolina, with students originating from across the world, we often don’t encounter this kind of aggression explicitly. In fact, it’s hard to encounter it explicitly at all–with the exception of the anonymous wild west of the Internet. Saturday Night Live cast member Leslie Jones recently exposed many of the racist, misogynistic sentiments she received on Twitter after the release of Ghostbusters. Some of the offensive tweets as well as her responses can be found here.

Some outspoken online Ghostbusters fans found the new film adaptation to be sexist towards men, but that hardly justifies audaciously racist tweets. Ehrenfreund quotes economic historian Roger Ransom, “There are still a lot of people who think blacks are simply inferior to whites.” The attacks on Leslie Jones exemplified this thinking. From Colin Kaepernick to the Khan family, racial tensions continue to divide this year’s electorate. Racist twitter trolls are just one explicit example of America’s deeply held biases.