I'm sure that by now most of you have probably seen this video that has been circulating on the internets [sic]. A recent refresh shows that it has been viewed 2,881,624 times on youtube. A lot of my friends on various social networking sites (no, for once not a4a) have posted it with funny little comments.
People are eating this up.
I want to be the first to say that I don't find this shit funny. Like not at all.
The clip opens with two (white) reporters talking about a break-in. Apparently a woman woke up to find an intruder in her bed. She, naturally, started screaming and fought off her would-be attacker until a family member could come and help her chase this man away.
Comic gold right?
The laughs start piling up when the reporters interview the family members of the victim. The star here is the brother of the woman, the man who actually chased the attacker out of the room. He's in a black wife-beater and his hair is up in a red bandana. He, immediately, goes in on the rapist, stating "You are really dumb, you're so dumb, for real". The video ends with a direct threat to the rapist.
The language and demeanor of the victim and her family are, let us just be real, hood. It's particularly jarring in contrast to the suited and booted anchor man and reporter. Their anger is justified and apparent.
It just boils down to this: rape really isn't that funny. Neither is laughing at poor people. And what's really not funny is laughing at people for being 'hood' (read: poor) when they are propelled into the news for being the potential victim of such a violent crime. The man in the video, the subject of all this ridicule, is simply trying to protect his family the best way he knows how. He actually chased a would-be rapist out of a bedroom. This man should be lauded, not laughed at. But because he is black and poor and lives in the projects and is communicating the way he was socialized to communicate, here we have nearly 3 million unique views and hundreds of comments laughing away what little agency this family had left.
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