Crying Wolf

This topic maybe somewhat controversial, but I don't believe its out there enough. This topic just fell into my hands perfectly. First off the inspiration of the post is from the news of a PSP (Playstation Portable) advertisement in the Netherlands, in which Sony (the manufacturer of the PSP) launched a new ad campaign for the white PSP that is about to be released. This somewhat stirred a racial discussion in which even the head of the southern California chapter of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), Rick Callendar stated:

"...The minstrel show was an awful chapter in history and this ad smacks of that age and time. It is even further unacceptable that some corporations still think it is okay to use racially charged media images. The latest Sony ad conjures up bad memories of when stereotypical and offensive images of people of color were accepted means of selling a product..."

The particular ad included a contrasting picture of a caucasian women dressed in white, grabbing the face of a black women dressed in black. The ad it self does seem controversial, but Sony stated that they were just trying to make contrasting images, which I believe to be true. This is true because even though everyone jumped the gun and started pointing out this racial ad, there are opposite ads in the same campaign by Sony. One of the ads is of the black women pouncing on the white women, which is even more aggressive, than the so-called racial advertisement.

While debating to write this I was watching a few episodes of the 3rd season of Chappelle's Show, and saw a segment where the audience was asked if the skits were insulting to other races, the majority replied 'No' as their answer. They believed that the show was an easy way to talk about stereotypes and laugh it off.

Surprisingly to myself, after watching the Chappelle Show, my my mind turned to the big screen, and I saw Crash. A great movie in my honest opinion, and worthy of the Oscar it received. The movie dealt with racism, and the interaction between many different people with a variety of ethnic background(Including, caucasians, hispanics, blacks, chinese, and persian, and no that's not the same as arab). The racism and stereotypes may have been to the extreme (such as: the chinese man was smuggling in about a dozen east asian people.), but were convincing. What the movie showed was that there are no stereotypes, and there are both good and bad kind of people from all different backgrounds.

What that day taught me is that even though there are a few stereotypes, the basis of racism is often wrong, and is our short-mindedness of other people (Like I already didn't know that). What I have been trying to say and lead up to though is that stereotypes often cause unnecessary knee-jerk reactions from everyone, such as the NAACP chapter head, who without looking at the rest of the information present, started pointing fingers and crying wolf when there was no problem to begin with. I often believe that people who cry out for racism, when it actually is not present, is more harmful to society than a real racist occurrence. The world needs to calm down and be less protective, or we just might start acting out, and punishing people, before a crime occurs, and that doesn't end well if Minority Report is enough of a precedent.

Just to let it out, I can't believe that I missed a couple days without posting (readers: "Blasphemy!!!") and I'm sorry, but I did start writing this post on 7/14. But just a reminder not to cry wolf, unless it's real, because when it is there will be no one to help... Hopefully we humans can calm down, and end this hysteria.

-Tab