I’m talking about the issue that’s been in the news the past couple days.
In case you don’t know: A bus full of fraternity brothers driving to a formal event, and singing their favorite fraternity song, with disgustingly racist lyrics (“no niggers will ever sit with us”). After a video clip was posted to the internet, the university immediately shut down the fraternity house and expelled the student whose face was identifiable in the video.
Now here’s my question: put yourself in his shoes. What would you do next?
How can you ever redeem yourself?
(Yes, I know he’s deserves his punishment, as do all the others on the bus who have not yet been identified.)
But my question isn’t about justice and morality…it’s about the practicalities of living in the internet age, after you’ve totally ruined your own life.
Let’s suppose you are this kid: a spoiled 19 year old, from a rich family.
But, you, dear reader,-unlike this kid- have a decent moral compass. It took a big shock----being publicly humiliated and expelled from university, but now you realize how stupid you were.You do some honest soul-searching, and resolve to change yourself into a decent human being.
What do you do now?
Anyone who googles your name will find a hundred hits showing your disgusting behavior, and very little else.
How do you get on with life?
(Let’s assume for this thread that that you can’t rely on your privileged family’s connections. You may have a certain cushion of money…but otherwise, you are an average person,and want to live a normal life.
Finish med school or law school just as you’d planned.
Once you’re a doctor or lawyer, do so goddamn much pro bono work in the AA community, or hours at the free clinic, that nobody can doubt your commitment to social justice.
Spend a year volunteering in Liberia or Sierra Leone. Nobody can say shit to you if you get Ebola while helping dying people. Sadly, these racist scumbags will just slink back into polite society and no one will care in a couple years.
I think you’re misunderstanding the OP. He seems to be asking how a person can improve themselves not how they can improve their public image.
But the suggestions are good. It’s not necessary for a white racist to go full John Howard Griffin but it would be good for him to live and work in a poor black community and see firsthand the difficulties people face while getting to know them as individuals.
Regarding the Google problem: Set up lots of innocuous social media stuff (like a cooking blog or whatever) under your own name, update them regularly, get your family and friends to give them lots of Google hits so they pop up as the most relevant results. If the first page of results is all innocent stuff, most people are not going to look beyond that.
I guess I’m interpreting a little differently. I read the OP’s as saying you’re already had a change of heart, now you just need to get on with life as best you can.
Back to back stints in the Peace Corps - request to be sent to some small, isolated village in Africa to do whatever.
It would be nice if there were a “Groundhog Day” (the movie) means by which he is not able to end his term until he’s “changed his perspective”, but back-to-back stints should be enough.
By going off the grid, his YouTube fame will have faded, and he can return to the states as an unknown. The Peace Corps experience will be a means to “reset” his life - when he comes back he may choose to complete his education, or he may take an entirely different path altogether. At 19 he’s young enough to handle such a reset.
Actually, when I posted the OP, I was thinking about the public image side,more than personal improvement.
On the personal side, a person with good intentions can change, can become a born-again Christian, or a recovered alcoholic, or whatever, and his family and friends will notice the improvement.
But once you have a huge internet presence which showing unforgivable sins, your problem isn’t just just with your family and friends. Your problem is with the whole world.
For example, one post suggested “finishing law school as planned”. But to do that, this freshman who just got expelled will first have to get accepted to another university, and then law school.And to be a lawyer, he has to pass the background/character examination, etc…
The young guy is facing a lot of hoops to jump through, before anybody will believe that he really is not a racist scumbag.
A generation ago, a 19 year old who screwed up could have applied to a new university without ever mentioning that he had been expelled, and life would go on pretty easily.
I hadn’t thought of this…would it be feasible?Would google give low priority to multiple references from the New York Times, etc? Articles in Wikipedia?
Young men famous for fucking up early in life, and their eventual fates:
J. Gordon Whitehead, who punched Harry Houdini in the stomach. Houdini’s death a few days later may or may not have be the result, but Whitehead was screwed for life.
Grover Cleveland Bergdoll, maybe not the only American who didn’t want to enlist in WWI, but made the most infamous. A fugitive for years, then imprisoned, then sent to a mental hospital. (and his name is coincidentally similar to Bowe Bergdahl)
Stever Bartman, still living in Chicago, keeping his head down.
I think all that shunning and ostracizing those with racist views does is teach them that they’re not allowed to talk about their unpopular viewpoints. Whether that meets the goal of the shunners is debatable, are the racists really changed or do they just learn to shut up?
Such a kid should write an article about this experience, describing how the whole scandal represented his “come to Jesus” moment that forced him to do some introspection and self-improvement.
Such an article could point out some things. Like how the need to feel superior and part of an exclusive organization is common to both racists and hardcore fraternity members.
You know, I don’t think I care all that much what the idiots think (assuming they do think) just as long as they shut up. For awhile I thought we were getting close to that glorious day, as being openly racist was sort of unpopular for a while there. But with the growth of the anonymous internet conversation, sadly, the idiots never do shut up. I’d love it if we could shun and ostracize those with racist views enough to shut them up but it doesn’t seem to be working any more.
It meets part of the goal. Racist beliefs that have no life outside of the racist’s head are relatively innocuous compared to racist thoughts that are shared to general approval or apathy.
