Race in a an Online Space

In his essay The Wire:  Deconstructing Race on the Internet, Brock analyzed the posts and comments published on a blog and separated the comments that were not specifically about the show such as impact of race of the show, the characters, the creators, race, law, and crime (p. 347).  He therefore evaluated comments that were left that were not necessarily a response to the show that the blog was discussing but instead focused on issues such as race. Examples of these online spaces where people discuss issues like these are evident everywhere in the internet.  

Incidentally I recently came across an online space, where users where discussing the issue of race.  (Spoiler alert:  if you watch the show Person of Interest but are not caught up, do not keep reading!)

Scrolling online, I happened to bump into an article headline which revealed that Detective Carter (Taraji P. Henson) from Person of Interest was killed off. Coincidentally this show happens to be  one of the shows that I recently coded, and I therefore had to click on it because I found it ironic.    

I couldn't help but notice that as I stated in a previous blog post, there was only one primary or supporting African-American character compared to several white ones.  Captain Carter happened to be that one character--hence the irony.  It appeared to be that I was not the only that noticed this detail.  

One user was unhappy about this decision,  'Esimon' stated "sorry but I didn't like the fact that you killed the alonely [sic] women of color I wiill [sic] not be watch and most of the people that I work with said the same."

Another user,  'Kitty,' responded "Sorry, but that’s a racist comment. Sorry you feel that you can’t watch a show just because they killed the only black character off. Racist comment. If you chose the life of a police officer, chances are, you could possibly die. That’s the way it is. Black, white, Mexican, Asian, whatever your race is, if you are a police officer, it is highly probable that you will die."

Kitty's reply to Esimon is an example of an attempt to claim reverse racism.But to claim that feeling upset because the only black character in a show dies is  ‘reverse racism’ diminishes the real experiences that many minority groups really do encounter racism. There is no system of oppression in America that actively works to subjugate and oppress white people. Minority groups do not have the institutionalized power to actively oppress whites in every facet of their life, nor would their racism be upheld and supported by government, media, education, housing practices in contrary to other groups.  

To read the article and the rest of the comments (which also discuss race), click here. 

I want to know--do you believe that reverse racism exists?