Racism on Youtube

A few weeks ago, YouTuber and blogger Chescaleigh (Franchesca Leigh) got into a Twitter battle with another YouTuber Shane Dawson about the content of his videos, in particular his use of blackface, racial slurs, and his many ‘characters’ that portray people of colour in an exaggeratedly stereotypical and offensive way. On her blog (http://blog.franchesca.net/post/58450565109/bleach4kidz-if-you-follow-shane-dawson-shanna), she especially points out the huge backlash she received for doing this, saying, “My mentions are currently filled with death threats, the N word and various slurs all because I challenged his use of blackface and called Shanna out for her self hating and rape culture supporting “comedy”.

Shane Dawson has a large following of 33 million subscribers, and his penchant for making videos that portray several ‘characters’ of colour allows his channel to be defined as a racial project as according to Omi and Winant’s definition. They argue, “a racial project can be defined as racist if and only if it creates or reproduces structures of dominance based on essentialist categories of race” (71). Moya and Markus preface their chapter by discussing newsworthy incidents that are racially inflammatory, and argue, “while the events narrated here may have largely receded from collective memory, similar ones are no doubt happening as you read these words” (3). I think that YouTube as a platform for performance and creativity (including comedy) has allowed for the blogosphere, and certainly Twitter as well, to provide an outlet for critical examination and discussion that large numbers of people can participate in at the same time, and the differing ways in which these conversations happen tie in with Moya and Markus’ list of conversations about race and ethnicity. They argue, “people from across the political spectrum rely on some version of one or more of these readily available and malleable conversations to help them manage the pervasive tensions surrounding race and ethnicity” (6). It is particularly interesting that while several bloggers have engaged in discussion about Shane Dawson’s content, there are also thousands of people attacking Chescaleigh for her comments without critically engaging with them. I would say this fits with Moya and Markus’ view that there remains a distinct discomfort in talking about race and ethnicity.