Racebook?

I realized something very interesting recently. The Facebook group "1, 000,000 Strong for Stephen T Colbert" has become a sounding board to contest--or reinforce--racial stereotypes.

To give you just a little bit of information about the group, it does have more than 1 million members. In fact, the group's membership is nearly 1.5 million. You need a Facebook account to visit it, but if you have an account, you can view the group here.

But why, in such a large and unmoderated venue, do members feel comfortable discussing race and racism? I know, I know, Stephen Colbert is all about sarcastic stereotypes. But I belong to a few Facebook groups myself and I've never seen anything like this before. In an age when almost any Internet comment can offend, why in this group are members grappling with such a difficult issue?

There have been several controversial topic names and discussions on the message board for the group, some of which must (or at least, I hope they must) be sarcastic. But sometimes, one sarcastic, inflammatory comment prompts another member to respond with the opposite...and not always sarcastically.

Particularly noteworthy is a post titled "Why are all white people racit?" No, I didn't spell that wrong. The original poster, apparently (I say apparently because it's hard to confirm anyone's actual identity on the Internet) a black man from Detroit named Plaxio Towers, posted the question and created a definition for the word "racit" on www.urbandictionary.com. While some people saw it for what it probably was--a statement meant to be partially sarcastic and partially truthful--others saw it as an unacceptable condemnation of white people.

The controversial post has since been removed, either by Facebook or its original poster. But when it was up, Towers made good on, what I assume, was his goal. Many people who believed he was being serious attacked him by using racial slurs and parroting stupid, baseless stereotypes about black people. Ironically, of course, this proved that they still held on to some ugly stereotypes. I like to think of Towers sitting there at his computer, smiling as he watched his post prove itself.

But what good does it do to discuss racism and stereotypes on the Internet? Well, I'm going to go ahead and say that I don't advocate it. In particular, I think looking at the demise of the Chappelle Show would provide us with a good argument against it.

Dave Chappelle's show was very successful, but it hinged on one principle: contesting stereotypes from within. With this tactic, the Chappelle Show intended to show viewers the absurdity of stereotypes by overexaggerating them. It's a hard tactic to master and unfortunately, Chappelle wound up canceling the show in its third season primarily because he believed people were laughing with the stereotypes and not at them.

So how does this relate to the Internet posts in the group I mentioned above? Well for one, even sarcastic posts can give those who still believe in stereotypes a sense of affirmation. And to those who don't understand Internet sarcasm, the result is usually even worse--they come away believing that others share in their stereotypes.

It may seem rather Spartan of me to think that discussions of race and racial stereotypes should be saved for face-to-face discussions, but I think that in the long run it could save us a lot of misunderstanding and inadvertent reaffirmation of stereotypes.