I first saw these screenshots days ago, on Love Life Of An Asian Guy's page, when he gave me and other black women readers a public service announcement about a man named Matt Walters.
The fact that this man made such threats of murder, kidnapping, and torture due to racism were somewhat shocking. I say somewhat because I am used to the idea that white men will become verbally violent when they are certain nobody will hold them accountable. And it's been apparent to people of color for a long time that white racists have found a safe haven in Facebook.
That's why the story that went along with these threats of kidnapping and murder were not surprising at all.
The black woman that was threatened, Heather, called the Houston Police where the man lived and was unable to get police to take her seriously. Myself, I tried to post something on the Houston Police's facebook page but was unable to. Friends were able to post Matt's threats on twitter-- hence the "going viral."
And when the woman reported the incident to facebook and facebook did absolutely nothing, which is pretty standard based on what friends have told me. But that the level of threat being so high, I was a little surprised there wasn't some pseudo investigation just to cover their backsides. I expected at least that much. But they didn't bother to do anything. When Heather put the screenshots up of what was said to her, that's when facebook becamse worried about community standards. They cut off Heather's account for a few days.
This wasn't the first time I've heard of somebody complaining about racism to facebook and facebook responding by supporting the oppressors right to oppress while actually turning around to harass the victim.
Facebook has been guilty of similarly unsatisfactory responses to racism in other countries as well.
In 2015, Germany and France both too Facebook to task for it's lack of action against racists and racist content. So now I'm wondering when that's going to happen in the U.S
Actually, I'm wondering what we need to do to make it happen. Do we actually need to push our lawmakers to put laws on the books for Facebook to comply to? Is that the answer? Should we look to France and Germany to see exactly what laws and standards they have that we don't?
Read More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sydney-latimer/online-activists-question_b_9372588.html
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