This is America

This is America
By Ebony March


Social media can be a good and a bad thing. It can be used in a bad way, such as anonymous online bullying, or in a good way, such as being used to discuss important topics and things going on in the world. There have been many posts that have gone viral on social media and one of the recent posts was the music video and song released by American rapper Childish Gambino. The song he released was called This is America and the video depicts many scenes relating to the racism and gun violence that occurs in America daily, it also got 20 million views in only two days. Many people were split on their thoughts on the video, some praising it and others thinking it’s horrible and evil. Social media definitely helps people voice their opinions on important topics like these.

Image result for jim crow childish gambinoGambino included many references to famous acts of violence and shootings in his video. One of the most popular was the comparison between Gambino and Jim Crow. Jim Crow was created by a white entertainer named Thomas Dartmouth Rice who performed a song and dance that he modeled after a slave. He named this character Jim Crow. He painted his face black and acted idiotic on stage. Therefore, Jim Crow became a popular stage name for white people pretending to be black people on stage. This, as well as pretty much everything in this video, was a very bold move to make.

Another topic that the video incorporates would be the police brutality occurring in the background. Throughout the video policemen are seen carelessly dealing with black people as the violence continues to occur. There have been so many reports of police brutality towards black people in the past few years but it doesn’t necessarily seemed to be talked about all that much, so for someone who has a large platform like Childish Gambino it means a lot to people of colour. Important topics like these shouldn’t be swept under the rug anymore, they need to be spoken about and they need to be used to educate anyone of any race.
Image result for this is america police brutality

 One of the most shocking and spoken about topic to come from this video is about the Charleston shooting that happened in June 2015, where a white person murdered 9 African Americans in a church. A lot of people reacted differently to watching what had happened in the video, but the most popular reaction appeared to be shock. The scene in the video is quite intense and graphic and seems to just suddenly happen. A lot of people of colour said it was like an ‘open wound’ for them, a lot of people also said that they are glad that Gambino took the topic of racism and brutality to ‘another level’. Also, after the gun has been used it is taken care of specially, as if it’s is more important than the lives of the people the gun was used to kill them with.
Image result for this is america shooting


My personal opinion on the video and its link to social media would be that we need to speak more about the problems that are still strongly occurring regarding race. Although we don’t live in America racism is still a huge problem in Australia, and it’s great that we are able to see this video and connect it to our lives here in Australia. If we didn’t have social media to share around this video and videos like this we would probably have even worse problems with racism all around the world, not just America and Australia.

Image result for this is america social media responseUsing this viral video as an example, social media comes in to play a lot with how people react to this kind of topic and this is where the good side of social media comes into play. Topics like racism, brutality and violence desperately need to be spoken about to a wider audience; otherwise we will not see any change. With the help of social media, videos like these can be spread to other countries and to people of all different ages, races etc. It gives people a public platform to state their opinion on the video and for them to send it to their friends and spread the word about it. Considering the video reached 20 million views in 2 days I’d say the reach that social media was able to get was extremely good.

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