Charlton McIlwain explains why: “not only is racism a pervasive social construction, race is also a powerful way of organizing community, both as a technique of oppression and as a strategy of resistance and community among people of color.”

This video is a compilation of, admittedly very funny, racial stereotypes portrayed in short 6 second videos via Vine. While our readings “Race and Social Media” didn’t cover the app Vine specifically, I feel that it is a good conversations to have. Senft & Noble do a good job of covering the topic of humor and it’s relationship to racial stereotypes online.

I remember a while ago Oprah interviewed Jay-Z and she was curious why he uses the N word in his lyrics so often. While Oprah stands on the side of abolishing that word all together, JayZ feels that by using it and owning it, it diffuses the meaning. I’m not sure where I stand personally. But when you look at it historically, it has devalued human beings. However, we live in a time now where the word’s value is being diminished. Artists like Jay-Z, comedians and so on use the word with the intent of desensitizing.

Similarly actors on Vine also think it is important to have these stereotypes played before us. Many of the clips on the video are too taboo to speak about for most people. Yet by showing how completely silly they are, it then becomes a device to disprove stereotypes; thus a “strategy of resistance”.

Over the summer at camp, (detached from online world) the counselors did a program with our teens called “gender-bender night” Boys dress as girls, and girls as boys. Most of the kids got really into it and made silly/inappropriate jokes as they were getting dressed. T

he boy in my cabin who chooses to dress as a girl and is in the process of changing gender, instead of resenting the mocking stereotypes of his cabin-mates, he was glad we did the program. The night would conclude with a serious program/discussion about gender roles and stereotypes, and they took it seriously because they saw how much they subconsciously stereotyped.

Given this, I think I stand with this idea.

In order to break down stereotypes, we must bring them up.