Abstract

 

This paper supports the idea that online advocacy is coping to reduce racism against Black community’s people. It explains in which context Black people’s lives are affected by the issues they face in society every day and also what impact it has on their daily lives and health. It discusses about the factors that makes racism to arise, the negative impacts that it may produce and how the victims are coping with it. It focuses on the effects that online advocacy produces to the victims and also speaks about the mental state of these people. Through the paper some solutions have been exposed that are used to remedy these problems and permit those people to have a better life experience and live peacefully.

 

Keywords: racism, online forums, mental health, advocacy

 

 

Introduction

 

 

Many people every day are victims of racism whether it is in their reality or in their virtual life online and a major group of people going through it is the Black community all around the world. They are victims of violence, verbalization, abuse, they are singled out and experience a lot of contempt in this society. In the United States, racism is an actual experience that leads to mistreatment, unfair burdens, and discrimination against people of color. Racism has its roots in a dominance and power structure that gives White people social advantages and privileges while racial and ethnic minority populations are discriminated against because they are seen as inferior, abnormal, and unwanted. People of color are affected by racism on an individual, group, and institutional/systemic level (Harrell, 2000; Jones, 1997). The individual and communal experiences are frequently overt, apparent, and direct (Keum & Miller, 2017). Over the past few years, forums have been created online for this community for example Black Lives Matter (BLM) which is a more recent one. Those forums invite people from all around the world to join in to combat this threat against human beings. This paper fits within the stream Identity and Online Advocacy as first it exposes ideas of the different identities that are created or developed by Black people whether it is in their reality or while surfing online, secondly, it displays information about how online advocacy helps to protect these people and spread messages of peace and kindness towards them and it also launches reforms to let people know about the rights that each person has and how they can use them to defend themselves at any time.

 

 

Identity on Online Forums

 

In many societies, people are categorized in terms of community, culture, race, amongst many others and this has an impact on their daily life especially for people from Black communities. To support this cause, forums have been created online and they contribute to fight anti-Black racism. These forums are very beneficial because they are found online where millions of people are connected, therefore it is easier to spread messages of peace and try to create mobilizations that can be recognized globally in order to exterminate anti-Black racism. The ways in which White young adults deal with living in a racist society as a benefactor and how they could develop anti-racism campaigning, however, have received little consideration (Denevi & Pastan, 2006). For instance, researchers are starting to look at how White emerging adults are affected by online racism and what motivates them to engage in anti-racist campaigning (Keum, 2021). It’s important to note that the theory of psychosocial costs of racism to Whites (PCRW) (Spanierman & Heppner, 2004) contends that White people who adopt anti-racist viewpoints are likely to experience emotional reactions and social alienation from the dominant communities and norms that benefit from White privilege. Recent studies have demonstrated that those who overcome these emotional hurdles and engage in anti-racism advocacy can gain (Keum et al., 2022). Those who are aware of the harm they have caused and want to redeem themselves without making a public appearance, can do so online. Just by apologizing can ease a lot of conscience and help others not to lose hope. Although while this may not be viable from a criminological standpoint because individuals who died as a direct result of slavery and anti-Black racism cannot now receive a remedy directly, it lays out the case for reparations as linked to ideals of justice, forgiveness, and mending harm. But compensation may also take into account the larger suffering experienced by impacted communities and the intergenerational trauma they have experienced. Repairing harm is a common goal of corrective justice, with the ideal being to put the victim back where they would have been if the wrong hadn’t happened (Nurse, 2021). They help Black people to continue fighting for their rights make people change their mindset about them. Several campaigns have been created to stop the bad impressions people have towards Black people. Through those platforms, Black people who joined feel less alone and find the strength to continue their journey. They are able to learn about their rights and feel supported to report any cases that they are victims of. They can also share their experiences whenever they want to so that they can release the pressure that relies on them. Young members of the group in some ways find some peace while being able to express their feelings on those websites and tend to develop friendships with other people given that most of the time, they are the ones who close in on themselves the most. As explained in Keum et al.’s (2022) research, a disconnection between people’s imagined knowledge of what their peer interaction ought to be and what their actual social interactions are is what is known as loneliness (Buecker et al., 2021). According to earlier studies, young adults report the highest rates of loneliness of any age group (Cigna, 2020; Lee et al., 2020). These forums create a very strong bond among people and sometimes they may feel like being part of a new family where they can be themselves without any judgement. They are accompanied and given advice on how to protect themselves from any act of violence and so on.

 

The majority of people who experience racism are afraid to speak out in public. Sometimes they fear people’s looks, fear of being rejected or misunderstood. For adults for fear of being laid off or even not finding a job and for young people to be sidelined at school, when expressing themselves online, they may create a fake profile or make use of avatars to represent them. People may encounter online racism through direct racial cyber-aggression, indirect witnessing of racial cyber-aggression, and through consuming online content that depicts the existence, visibility, and brutality of systemic racism in society. This is according to current operationalization of online racism. In contrast to offline racism, online racism explained a distinctive variation in the psychological distress of racial/ethnic minority adults, as well as perceptual influences like unfair views of society and stress about upcoming experiences, implying that online racism may be a distinct contemporary risk factor (Keum & Li, 2022). Several cases were reported where Blacks tried to defend themselves, they ended up being assaulted or even beaten to death. As it is mentioned by Reny & Newman (2021), most recently, the social unrest that followed the police shooting of George Floyd in May 2020 remains as the largest social unrest in the history of the Black Lives Matter movement as well as the broader history of Black resistance opposing brutalization and police violence in the United States (Lebron 2020).

 

Mental Health

 

Mental health is one among the major factors that arises when people are being confronted to racism. The mental health of many people deteriorates due to the racist actions to which they have been victims. Very few of them find the courage to talk about it to their surroundings, sometimes because of fear or shame and so on. But some of them do not hesitate to discuss about it with other peers or with users online itself in order to feel a bit better. There are many who need to go through therapy to remediate their fear and trauma. As mentioned by Keum & Li (2022), little study has looked at the potential mechanisms that support coping methods for coping with online racism, especially for individuals who identify as racial or ethnic minorities, despite growing public health concerns about it. According to current research, seeking social support, resisting it, and advocating for change are examples of favorable racist coping mechanisms that appear to act as barriers against ill health and the use of harmful self-medication methods like alcohol usage. Moreover, ethnic-racial socialization, a procedure through which people are taught from their guardians and parents about race and how to cope with racism starting as early as their formative childhood stages, has been found to have an impact on how people manage with racism. These procedures may not stop racism from happening again, but it helps them to relieve their pain. Psychological treatments help those people to overcome their fears, to feel backed up. Sharing their experiences with online users around the world also helps them feel supported as they may not find that anywhere outside of websites. The psychological effects of these actions to protect them help them keep fighting and stay strong in the hope that one day they can live in harmony like “normal” human beings without feeling different and despised. Based on mounting evidence showing racism is the root cause of numerous adverse health outcomes, this sixth book in the Culture of Health series shows a clear shift Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s emphasis. RWJF is evaluating what it would take to restructure organizations that treat humans differently due to the nature of their race and to make very conscious modifications in their investments to raise that focus (Alonzo, 2022). There may be some people who are totally vulnerable to such actions against them therefore this may have a direct effect on their mental health and experience depression, anxiety, trauma and so on.

 

Conclusion

Online advocacy is helping to reduce the risk of racism against Black people in several ways as explained previously. There is still more to be done to improve those movements as cases of racism are still happening online and also outside the virtual world. Racism has appeared online from the beginning of the Internet in a variety of ways on constantly developing social media platforms (Daniels, 2013; Hughey & Daniels, 2013). For instance, Back (2002) popularized the term “cyber-racism” to explain how White supremacists have utilized the Internet to support and advance their views. The fast development of Internet technology has also given rise to a wide range of ways that individuals can perpetuate and interpret racism on online social networks. Particularly, an increasing number of studies have captured the frequent and open interpersonal exchanges of overt and covert racist remarks on social media platforms (Keum & Miller, 2017). There may be more and more new innovations to be created online to spread the emergence of reducing racism and the fact that these will be displayed at the maximum to the whole world through online interactions would be more favorable. It will help to reinforce the hopes of many among those victims to keep fighting for their “liberation”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reference List:

 

Alonzo, L. (2022). Necessary Conversations. Necessary Conversations: Understanding Racism as a Barrier to Achieving Health Equity (New York, 2022; Online Edn, Oxford Academic, 18 Aug. 2022). https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197641477.001.0001

Keum, B. T., & Li, X. (2022). Coping with online racism: Patterns of online social support seeking and anti-racism advocacy associated with online racism, and correlates of ethnic-racial socialization, perceived health, and alcohol use severity. PLOS ONE, 17(12), e0278763. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278763

Keum, B. T., & Miller, M. J. (2017). Racism in digital era: Development and initial validation of the Perceived Online Racism Scale (PORS v1.0). Journal of Counseling Psychology, 64(3), 310–324. https://doi.org/10.1037/cou0000205

Keum, B. T., Waters, E. M., Wong, M. J., & Salim‐Eissa, R. (2022). Witnessing racism against racial minority individuals online and loneliness among White emerging adults: Anti‐racism advocacy as a moderator. Journal of Community Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcop.22944

Nurse, A. (2021). Reparations in the 21st Century: Contemporary Debates and Issues on Reparations. Reparations and Anti-Black Racism, 111–129. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.46692/9781529216851.010

Reny, T. T., & Newman, B. J. (2021). The Opinion-Mobilizing Effect of Social Protest against Police Violence: Evidence from the 2020 George Floyd Protests. American Political Science Review, 115(4), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055421000460