The hotly debated video from the Lincoln Memorial may be the beginning of a counterrevolution against disturbing racial imagery in social media, says John Blake.
A gruesome photo of Zwerg’s bloodied face made the front page of newspapers across America. And when a news crew videotaped an interview with him from his hospital bed after the attack, he grew even more famous because the resolve he displayed.
“We will continue our journey, one way or another,” he said. “We are prepared to die.”
Those images of Zwerg marked a turning point in the civil rights movement. But I wonder if such an image could still inspire so many people today after what’s happened this week to another young white man whose face has gone viral.
Nick Sandmann is now known as the smiling — or smirking — teen in the red Make America Great Again hat. Most commentators have cited Sandman’s standoff with a Native American veteran at the Lincoln Memorial as a parable about rushed judgment. They say that people were quick to heap scorn on the Kentucky teenager without knowing all the facts. One commentator complained that social media can reduce ” a complex human life into one viral moment.”
I see it as the destruction of something else: The great hope that cell phone video footage of hateful acts would lead to a racial awakening in America.
Seeing is no longer believing
Not long ago, plenty of people predicted that cell phone videos would usher in a new era of racial tolerance. Pundits thought citizen journalists recording acts of blatant racism would nudge white Americans into developing more empathy for people of color. No longer would a racial minority have to prove that pervasive racism existed. They could prove it through the power of a recorded image.
That was the hope many felt when a video of Eric Garner gasping “I can’t breathe” on a New York City sidewalk went viral in 2014. That was the same hope others felt when repeated videos surfaced last year showing police being called on African Americans for “living while black” — going about their daily business in public.
Some declared that live-streaming video could “change the face of justice,” while another commentator said social media would “spawn a new civil rights movement.”
“The revolution will not only be televised but apparently it will also be uploaded, downloaded, streamed, posted and tweeted as well,” David Love declared in a 2015 article in TheGrio, an online magazine.
But last week’s standoff at the Lincoln Memorial signals that we’re at the cusp of counterrevolution against all of these disturbing racial images. People can now credibly say that seeing is no longer believing.
Cell phone videos may actually widen racial divisions instead of bridging them.
Consider what would happen if Zwerg’s video was released today.
