Thursday 5 January 2012

Freedom of Speech Applies to Your Wall, Not Mine!

Today, I finally got a chance to check out the activity on my Youtube channel. Imagine my excitement when I discovered that somebody had posted a comment on one of my videos! Yay!

Then I read it.

Bubble burst, cheeks inflamed, I hastened to take down the comment section on the video.

If you'll remember from an earlier posting, I had produced a 30-second "call to action" spot on the Attawapiskat housing crisis. As it turns out, it seems that all you have to do to find a bigot in Canada is mention the word "Indian". Somebody from Alberta, who referred to me as "kiddo" took some time out of his very busy life to tell me that I should concentrate my efforts on worthwhile causes rather than Canadian natives "who do nothing but drink millions of government dollars away every year instead of feeding and sheltering their kids." He also, apparently, didn't appreciate being bombarded with my version of "white man's guilt".

Just prior to posting my video on Facebook, I had found and shared a petition to call on the government to step up for Attawapiskat. I ended up having to monitor/mediate that posting for almost two full days. Although none of my friends or family said anything that I thought was truly racist, some of them were definitely treading on thin ice, even for me.

I am not a political person. What I know about the Indian Act and the current status of our natives is appallingly little. I don't live near a reservation (although there are a couple of them in this province), I don't have any native friends, I don't even know anybody who deals with natives on a regular basis. The people who commented on my Facebook wall don't either, for all their posturing and ranting. I hold my actual opinions on this matter as I know I am not nearly informed enough to take a side in the debate.

Those of you who have met me in real life also know that I am in no way politically correct, but online it's different. Online, I'm professional. Online, I'm courteous. Online, I'm quiet.

In real life, my mouth doesn't have a backspace key or ctrl-z (undo), and sometimes that can cause a problem (as pretty much anybody who has a mouth of their own can agree). But people have bad memories generally -- if you give it long enough, people will eventually forget what you said, so very rarely, will my past spoken words affect my future relationships.

When you put something down on the internet, however, it's there forever. Etched into the stone of pixels and bytes is your flower of truth or your shit-bag of idiocy for all to see until the lights go off on humanity. I am particularly aware of this feature of the internet and thank the stars every day for the delete key.

What is not different about me in real life and online is I have always used my real name. If it's important enough for me to say, it's important enough for me to stand by. If I don't feel comfortable using my real name on a posting, it's probably not right to post it. I'm also not into anonymous fight-picking with strangers.

So to douchebag012 from Alberta, good luck in your job search and beer drinking... and I'm sure that rash will clear up down there once you get that cream on it.

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