If anyone has been on youtube or facebook lately, you might have heard of or seen this video which has actually been removed by many sites due to the vulgarity and violence depicted. Pictured above is just a glipse of what occurs in the video, which consists of 7 delinquents mercilessly beating up an Asian student targeted because of his race. To make matters worse, the original upload date of this video was yesterday, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a time where equality is meant to be recognized and celebrated. Now reportedly, at least one of the perpetrators has been arrested, as depicted here. Based on many youtube and blog comments, the hate directed towards these malicious individuals is quite apparent, but in light of MLK day do you think we should be a little more forgiving? Martin Luther King Jr. chose to take the high road during the civil rights movement, a time of much violence, tension, and hate. By stooping down to the levels of these delinquents and wishing harm upon them, it shows that we are no better than them, which seems to be a disservice to the late reverend. In light of MLK day, I hope this video will unify us as a nation under the goal to end hate and bigotry rather than to incite more anger and alienation.
This is the only working link to the "Helpless Asian Man" video that I am aware of.
Warning: NSFW. The images in this video may be disturbing. There are also abundant profanities and racial slurs.
4 comments:
Unfortunately, I don't think that things like this-violence against other races is ever going to stop. Although, it paints a very negative outlook on our culture, I think no matter what we do, no matter what day of the year it is there are always going to be people who feel that they are doing right, by assaulting someone else. However, I do feel that there is a way to keep violence against different races to a minimum. People need to stand together and act united in our opposition to violence and prejudice, in order for justice and quality to prevail.
First of all, I see the irony in posting it on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, but I think the probability of the malicious act actually taking place on that day is improbable. To address Vinh's question, I don't believe that because this video came to light on MLK Day that the 7 abusers should just be reprimanded and then released. I believe that because this was posted on MLK Day that they should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. If their terrible act had been perpetrated on another non-holiday day, we would definitely not be discussing this sort of leniency, but would be making sure that they were punished.
In light of Dustin's point, I just wanted to clarify my question about whether we should be a little more "forgiving" towards the aggressors in this video. I didn't mean forgiving in the sense that leniency should be given to these criminals. Of course these individuals should be punished to the highest degree. I just meant to point out that most of the comments I saw about this video consisted of ideas of violence and retribution, feelings that Martin Luther King Jr. strove to avoid during his Civil Rights campaign.
1. I had not watched the video until reading this blog post and to say the least, I was shocked. The behavior of the 7 delinquents seemed almost unreal. Where we live, there is so much cultural diversity and so we are used to other races and people looking different than we may. This video is news that there are still racist people and that some of them are younger. But as Kimi said, we need to stand together and teach diversity. I hope there can be a day where we can all accept each other, but until then we have to work with the situation at hand. Nobody should be abused for who they are.
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