The Case of the Racist Tweeters.
Comments: 3 - Date: April 12th, 2012 - Categories: Uncategorized
By: Donovan Taylor Hall
Thanks to Twitter, America has a new outlet to showcase it’s blatant ignorance.
“Hunger Games” hit the theaters on March 23, and broke box office records by bringing in a ridiculous $155 million. However, there were some people that found a major flaw in the production.
Obviously, it was that three of the main characters were played by African Americans. How dare they accurately adapt a book?!
Oh, wait! It’s 2012! There shouldn’t be this kind of racism. Sadly, Twitter showed a very different story.
After the opening weekend, Twitter was flooded with tweets similar to those above.
From statements claiming the movie was ruined, to just flat out calling the actors niggers, Twitter reeked of racism. The funny thing is, some of these people thought they could protect themselves by starting the sentence off with “I’m not racist, but….”
If you have to start a sentence with that, it’s probably time for you to go home and take a hard look at yourself. While you’re at it, why don’t you do us all a giant favor and punch yourself in the mouth.
Within hours of the tweets being posted on the web, the users, whose names appear above their tweets, were bombarded with hate messages. It was so bad that most of these users closed their accounts that same day.
The outrage also spread to our good old Patriots. Anna Koch, 21, is a marketing major from Virginia Beach. Koch is giant fan of the books, so when she saw the tweets she couldn’t believe her eyes.
“The first thing I thought were these people are F****** retarded…..I guess I should say the politically correct term, mentally challenged…they are idiots,” Koch said.
The comments directed at one of the youngest cast members, Amandla Stenberg, who played Rue, were some of the harshest.
How could you hate on that face?
“One guy even said that Rue’s death wasn’t as sad because she was black? Is that a joke? Who are you? Hitler??” Koch said.
Not everyone agrees with bringing attention to these tweets. But with such major offenses made, it’s difficult to ignore it.
Senior Dane Stewart, 22, decided to ignore the racist tweets.
“I don’t see the point in talking about it. They are idiots, and we are only giving them more attention,” said the neuroscience major.
Regardless of how people reacted, one thing is clear. People need to start thinking before they post tweets for everyone to see. Especially if the tweets are incredibly racist.
It’s a shame their accounts got closed down. I would have loved to pitch my idea for a new “Hunger Games:” Put them in an arena with me and let me show them what a real black person can do.
3 Responses
roffenkr - April 12, 2012 @ 7:25 pm
I loved your closing line. Genius. However, I feel like you negated your whole point (calling other people racists) when using words like ‘ni**er’ and ‘Hitler’ and ‘retarted.’ I think you could have made your point without bringing these other negative words in.
thardma2 - April 19, 2012 @ 6:28 am
I agree with above, your closing line was excellent! I saw this film a couple weekends ago and didn’t understand why people were so focused on the race of the child rather than the fact the child was brutally killed off! I was in tears for ten minutes after that scene! I like how you screen-shotted the tweets in the article and showed a picture of Rue. You really backed yourself up and made for a really powerful statement! This was an absolute joy to read! I just hope people realize that it’s sad we still consider race an issue nowadays. It’s really sad.
smason7 - April 19, 2012 @ 4:51 pm
For someone who hasn’t seen the movie, read the books or on Twitter, you did a great job explaining the films controversy. Good idea putting screen shots of examples as well. Really gave a good visual on exactly what was being said. Like the other comments, it’s sad to think that there are still individuals in our society that think this way.
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