Jamie Foxx's Michael Jackson tribute -- "Beat It" on BET Awards(video at bottom of post)
One of the things I love about Twitter is following other people's live tweets during programs I am watching on TV. It's one big conversation happening out there and good entertainment for comments on all kinds of things going on. Twitter has also become the best source for news, especially if you are following media folks and regular folk all commenting on the same stuff.
So on Sunday night, I tuned into Twitter as I tuned into the BET Awards, which promised to be a tribute to Michael Jackson. It was fun to watch and tweet. I weighed in on the good, the bad, and the ugly of the evening -- along with others I follow. I used #BET Awards (hastags allow you to follow others tweeting on a topic) to check in on what folks all across Twitterville had to say. I was pretty excited to see SO many African American folks tweeting and weighing in, and that the performers and the show itself were all trending for the night.
But the next morning, as I reviewed my BET tweets, I had a bad feeling in my stomach. While I hadn't said anything super negative about the show or performances, I had taken a few shots. Once again, as a white person who lives in a brown family, I found myself on that nebulous bridge between black and white. Taken out of the context of my life, my tweets as a whitegirl seemed out of school and borderline offensive. Examples: "My daughter and I are texting each other about the BET Awards. Jamie Foxx is acting stupid drunk." Or, "Keith Sweat is definitely not old school and he's not that good, either."
So I took them all down.
It reminded me of how different it feels to watch a Tyler Perry movie, for example, in a theater full of white people vs a theater full of black folks. The jokes FEEL different. Watching with a white audience feels like white people laughing at black people, stereotypes reinforcing their (our) misguided reality, etc. When it's black folks, it feels like people having a good time laughing together, getting the jokes on a whole different level, good fun.
And there's this: The morning after the awards, @humanitycritic, who I follow on Twitter and is funny as hell with a razor sharp mind, posted this: "I'm now convinced that this Boondocks portrayal of BET is close to reality - http://tinyurl.com/9adckx"
The clip is hilarious and captures the ongoing debate among some black folks about whether BET sucks or not. I love love the Boondocks, and I agree with the complaints about BET, but I didn't pass the clip along. Why? Watch it. First through the lens of a black person, then through the lens of a white person. My point exactly. Not my place to make the joke.
Back to Twitter and the BET Awards. After I had taken my tweets down, I learned that the BET trending topics on Twitter had spawned some very ugly, racist tweets by white folks offended that black folks were "invading" Twitter and worse.
To get a really good sense of what happened, read these two great posts:
The first, posted by Renee on Womanist Musings: OOPS The Blacks Are Chattering On Twitter
The second, posted by Carmen Dixon on Black Voices: Twitter, BET Awards and Racism
Needless to say, while my tweets were not racist, I am so glad I listened to my gut and deleted them. My opinions were valid, and mine, but on a public feed on Twitter, they were part of an ugly, slippery slope. And the last thing I ever want to do is fuel that fire.
Michael Jackson tribute performance -- BET Awards
As bad as the racist tweets were they pale in comparison to the comment section of youtube. The internet allows anonymity and therefore people feel free to let out their inner idiot.
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