I have friends of color. I have a couple black friends with ties to Ferguson. I have white friends. I have friends, who are conservatives and others that are liberals. When I say friends I mean real and/or Facebook. To
all of the above I could substitute the word friend with relatives. I mention this because in my Facebook feeds I get multiple opinions on the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases. What has struck me most strongly is that there seems to be a strong dichotomy that is tending to break down along lines of color and position on the political spectrum. People are not so much discussing the situation as throwing opinion bombs at each other.
There was one posting on the Michael Brown case with a lot of reinforcing comments to the posters opinion of Michael Brown being a criminal. What struck me so vividly was the way the posters and commenters saw blacks. They were definitely “others”. They were a group separate from them, and something to be feared. Last time I looked we were all humans and we all bleed red.
I’m not the first to notice this phenomenon, that we do not discuss issues anymore. Continue reading “Opinion Bombs”