Flanagan filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida in March 2000 against WTWC-TV. According to court documents, Flanagan, who is black, had been employed at WTWC as a newscaster and anchor. He alleged racism in his workplace and retaliation for reporting it. The parties reached a settlement, the terms of which were not disclosed.

Flanagan, in a suicide note, stated how the Charleston church shooting a couple of months prior in which Dylan Roof, a white male, took the lives of nine black people, was the last straw. He even praised Seung–Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech shooter calling him his “boy”. Both of Flanagan’s victims were white, and Flanagan was intent to retaliate in what he believes is a race war.

As expected, many people immediately lost their minds on Twitter trying to latch the senseless shooting onto the Black Lives Matter movement:

If a disgruntled white ex-employee had shot 3 blacks, killing 2, the #blacklivesmatter crowd would already be in the streets looting.

 

#WDBJ shooter was a black SJW. Feminists and #blacklivesmatter are at fault here. Racists

 

#BlackLivesMatter Is at fault for #WDBJ. Make no mistake about it. We live in a world where you can lose a job and its “Racism’s” fault.

It’s hardly a surprise that this would follow this tragedy. Instead of expressing sympathy and sending condolences to the families of the victims, some people decide to use this opportunity to take a dump on a movement trying to save as many black lives as possible. Whenever something like this happens, you can best believe that they will find some way to blame this on black people. The action of one man is enough for them to blame it on an entire movement.

What most people fail to understand is that the Black Lives Matter movement is not about showing that the lives of some matter more than others. Living in this society has shown that that is true, but only in favor of whites. Instead, this movement is meant to show that all lives should be respected and treated as equal as others. In a racist society like America, black lives are considered expendable and worth less than that of whites. The Black Lives Movement is meant to show how wrong that is and that black lives are worth as much as white lives and should be treated as such.

Vester Flanagan’s actions should not and will not be counted as part of such a movement, nor should it define what Black Lives Matter is about. However, many racists have sought to attach his actions as the fault of the movement. As stated earlier, this is no surprise. Racists try to so hard to prove that Black Lives Matter is racist itself by countering with their own statement that all lives matter. But in America, all lives never mattered, unless they were white.

Vester Flanagan

During this difficult time, let’s express our sympathies to the victims and their families. To use the shooting to unload one’s racism is utterly disrespectful to the lives and families of Alison Parker and Adam Ward and is harmful against a movement that  seeks to uplift, honor and save the lives of those who are constantly disrespected in this nation.

The post #WDBJ, Vester Flanagan, & Why Black Lives STILL Matter appeared first on Madness & Reality.

Yet, when famous people disagree, it seems that much worse. Maybe it’s the fact that millions are going to see it. Or, it could have to do with the fact that many expect a lot of them to be much smarter. In any case, there are times where people in the spotlight show just how damning their words can be.

Don’t believe me? Let me show you two case examples.

Exhibit A: #BlackLivesMatter confused by Raven Symone

This isn’t surprising to see coming from Raven Symone. She is the epitome of “black woman disagreeing for the sake of playing devil’s advocate”. Oh, and I was putting that nicely. There are times where I think she is completely clueless or trying too hard to be profound. Other times, I just think that her paychecks play a part in the fallacies she play into. Whatever works for her ego or pocket book, I suppose.

Let me get into where she disagreed with #blacklivesmatter:

“I understand what the ‘Black Lives Matter’ hashtag means. It came in conjunction with everything that was going on with the police in Ferguson. You have to be sensitive in that statement, but he is right, all lives matter… I think you have to open yourself up. It should be all lives matter.” [1]

This comment was in response to her defending the Democratic presidential candidateMartin O’Malley. He stated that “All Lives Matter” during the discussion of police brutalityagainst Black people at a rally. He was met with boos. And rightfully so: would you announce “all rapes matter!” at a forum for healing female rape victims? Exactly.

Exhibit B: Stephen A. Smith vs. #Blacklivesmatter

Now, Stephen A. Smith is another situation altogether. He just doesn’t care what people feel about his opinion. As stubborn and bullheaded as he is, Smith still has some common sense about him. Yet, when it comes to #blacklivesmatter, it doesn’t seem that common sense stayed the common denominator for his words.

Okay, Stephen A. Smith. I understand where YOU are coming from as well.

No More #Blacklivesmatter Exhibits

Alright, I’m going to break this down for those that have very little understanding of what #Blacklivesmatter means and why Raven Symone and Stephen A Smith are full of shit. So, let’s get to it.

#Blacklivesmatter = in life, black lives should matter to everyone. This is not to excuse other races. However, Black people tend to go through a lot of things that make it seem like our lives are meaningless. Especially in situations where we are at the prey of powers that are over us, black people are people just like everyone else. So please, just treat us like soul vessels that you would want to be treated as. Sounds fair, right?

#Alllivesmatter = everyone should be treated fairly no matter what their race, creed, sexual preference, gender, age, or whatever it is that would separate them from the greater majority may be. People have rights. People should actually be able to exercise those rights like politicians exercise their jaw muscles. No one should be greater than the other.

All explanations aside, Raven Symone doesn’t understand that Black people are having too many issues with reminding the world that WE ARE PEOPLE. Of course #alllivesmatter. However, people say #blacklivesmatter because it seems that so many of us forget that fact. And this is truly a problem when those that are here “to protect us” typically want to regard us as less than human.

So, yeah: Raven Symone can have a seat. I will be her personal usher.

Stephen A. Smith is off because he is playing the respectability politics game. You see, he wants to make “being black” synonymous with “people killing each other”. What he, and many others tend to miss, is that crime is about proximity. Thus, most crime is going to be intraracial. So, people tend to commit crimes against people they deal with. Since Americais pretty segregated, that should explain the high percentage of “race on race crime”.

To be serious, if people want “black on black crime” to decrease then there have to be certain measures taken to mitigate the crime. Or, Black people can start committing crimes against other races. Pick which one you want.

#Blacklivesmatter like #Alllivesmatter

If he can’t see between the lines with that one, then I can’t help Smith. Nor can I help anybody else that feels the need to mention “black on black crime”. Everyone should have an issue with people to mistreat Blacks. Personally, I would hope that people would understand this. However, they don’t. Sadly, I bet someone will read all of this and give some type of rebuttal.

Oh, well. #Blacklivesmatter just like #Alllivesmatter.

[Originally posted at Chocolate Covered Lies]

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I wish there are things that I can say that will open your minds, but I’m not that brilliant in my choice of words. Instead, I’ve allowed your words to cause painful feelings of anger and frustration, your words in the guise of having an “open conversation” where you represent the “other side”. Your side usually defends racism in some way, shape or form masked as an intelligent disagreement or rebuttal to any and all claims and facts that racism is still around and is still hurting millions of people of color in this country alone.

By stating in your words, as many or as few as possible, that racism is not a major factor in today’s world is to allow racism to go unchecked. Whether you want to face it or not, that is part of the problem! It’s like having a disease and pretending that you’re still 100% fine. You’re helping a cancer destroy a country that many of you claim that you love. You don’t want to see this disease. You want to pretend that it’s not there or even have faith that it will go away on its own. But as you continue to convince yourselves and others that lie, that disease is tearing apart the nation that you wave flags for. So, how can you sit there and defend something that is killing many people, including children?

There are mounds upon mounds of proof that racism is structural and institutional. Why do you refuse to take them seriously and instead believe in the falsehood that it’s all hype? I can only guess that since you haven’t really experienced what it’s truly like, you think it’s never there in the first place. You never knew what it’s like to live as a person of color in this nation. And this is not an attempt to play on your sympathies, but this is merely stating a common sense fact that you can never truly know anyone unless you’ve walked a mile in their shoes.

Yet, some of you claim to know me and my people better than we know ourselves. Not only is that insulting but also arrogant and ignorant. It’s another attempt to avoid another person’s truth, a truth you refuse to consider as another dimension to a life that you know little about and refuse to know. I’ve seen it happen many times and it pisses me off.

Many of you will not wonder what’s going on with that person or why is he/she in the state of mind that he/she is in because that’s not in your nature. Many of you don’t care to know what’s wrong with that person like a descent human being should. Hell, you wouldn’t dream of taking an effort to find out how to fix their problems. No. You, instead, would look down and put down that person in all your fury, because you’re too full of yourselves with egotism and rage to care. And a select group of you use that to persuade yourselves that your skin color somehow signifies near God-like superiority.

I know the conservative and liberal lot of you will come in full force to cast me down into the fires of hell for speaking my mind. Like I said, I’m not that brilliant of a writer. But try to convince me that you’re not soulless, mindless douchebags with one track minds, and maybe I’ll listen. Maybe.

Maybe you should start listening to what people of color are trying to tell you instead of crying about hurt feelings when you’re participating in the damage. Maybe you should not make assumptions and just hear the words of people whose experiences you are unfamiliar with. Maybe you should act more like a civilized person and just listen.

The post Just Listen: A Message For Racist Internet Trolls appeared first on Madness & Reality.

Recently, a high school graduate named Michael Brown, who was about to start his college career, was gunned down in a neighborhood in Ferguson, Missouri, by police. Brown was a young black male.

Unarmed. As expected, the police said that he and his friend, another black male, were the aggressors who ultimately sealed Brown’s fate. However, witnesses are coming forward to give their accounts on what happened that tragic day, all of them being strikingly similar and drastically different from what the police report. But one thing was clear, all witness said that the cop was the total cause of this young man’s violent death, a young man who’s only crime was being spotted by a jackass with a badge. This happened on heels of the murder of Eric Garner and beating of Marlene Pinnock and on the eve of the then-future murders of Ezell Ford and John Crawford, all of which the perpetrators are cops.

To make a long story short, the community demanded answers. The police chief and his comrades basically told them to go fuck themselves, in so many words. The people started protesting. Some were even looting and rioting. The people were tired of the continuous, years-long racial profiling by police.So, they decided that enough was enough. And before you know it, the police declared war on the black people of Ferguson and against the news media for apparently sticking their noses where they don’t belong.

Speaking of the news media, while reports about Michael Brown’s death started circulating, the social media noticed something troubling. Brown, as stated earlier, was a high school graduate who was two days away from starting college. The news always have pictures to illustrate their articles and reports. Brown obviously had several pictures, one of which was his cap and gown photo. One would think that would be the best picture to use when reporting on the death of a young man seeking higher education. Instead, the mainstream news media decided to use the photo of Brown in street wear throwing a peace sign which, to those unaware, was thought to have been a gang sign.

It’s the same trickery they used after Trayvon Martin was murdered. The news media, especially those serving the whims of the right, will use images that conjure negative stereotypes in order to prevent sympathy for the victim from the viewing public. If the victim “looked” like a gang banger i.e. wears oversized clothing with sagging pants and is black, then to the public’s mind, he deserved to die, because judging by looks alone, he was up to no good.

Social media caught this, and responded with the hashtag #IfTheyGunnedMeDown. Black folks on Twitter and Facebook came up with a brilliant movement. They would use photos of themselves or other black people. At least one picture would have them wearing street clothes (including hoodies), throwing hand signs, whatever fits the mainstream’s narrative of the “typical black person”. However, they would also have pictures that you rarely see in the media: graduation pictures, family pictures (including happy black fathers with their children), pictures of them smiling, anything that the media won’t dare produce nearly as much. Then, a rhetorical question is asked. Which picture would the news media use?

This online movement reveals the racial bias in the media, which is  owned and almost operated by white people. Media images of black people have been minimal, and the images that do appear are mostly unflattering, to say the least. And the news is no exception. Whenever something bad happens and black people are involved, it’s immediately reported and sometimes overreported. But anything positive involving black people doesn’t get a whole lot of approval behind the scenes, unless it involves a white person helping them in some way. Figures.

It shows that, more than ever, black people must create their own independent media with no influence from white owned mega corporations. Only then would there ever be any hope in our truths being told without any filters or censors desperate for sensationalism and fear mongering for ratings value.

The post Ferguson, Media Bias and #IfTheyGunnedMeDown appeared first on Madness & Reality.

From this Morning’s Press Conference

Protestors have packed the lobby of the #Ferguson police headquarters. Not being let into the press confere… https://t.co/auVlJeqMoI

— Antonio French (@AntonioFrench) August 10, 2014

Hundreds have joined the protest in #Ferguson https://t.co/Sj6eAhcH1p

— Antonio French (@AntonioFrench) August 10, 2014

Saturday Night in Ferguson – The Police response to the crowds gathered in response to the shooting of an unarmed teenager in broad daylight who as many witnesses attest had his hands up at the time he gunned down.

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I am not a person directly affected by the commodification of this word, so I cannot pretend to speak of experiences I have not encountered. Nevertheless the fact that the term finds itself becoming further popularised in mainstream culture through meme’s presents a variety of problems for everyone. Firstly the online commodification of the term brings with it the eventuality that someone somewhere in the opposite side of the world is shouting out the word without any understanding of the term and it’s offensive nature. More importantly that the individual blurting out the term doesn’t fully understand it’s history is a major issue because they are simply furthering societal ignorance in my eyes.

You cannot separate the word from its long history. It would be like trying to separate the events of the second world war from the term WW2, it is ridiculous to even attempt in doing so and you’d just find yourself on Question Time in a matter of days being called every name under the sun!

The term itself is quite fluid and dynamic in the affiliations made with it historically, but it can never be denied that its history is soaked in blood for generations of people from lynching to the inhumane treatment of slaves. Generally speaking the word has previously found its place in popular culture through mainstream rap and hip-hop with middle-upper class non-black listeners, listeners who find it perfectly normal to use it as part of their everyday vocabulary. Now the music industry in my eyes is small potatoes to what the Internet is currently in the process of doing.

Just type the phrase ‘ni**as be like’ on google you will be overwhelmed by the amount of social network accounts titled specifically ‘ni**as be like’. The Facebook page host 2.2 million likes where as the twitter page has 127 thousand followers with various accounts on Instagram hosting a thousand followers. What I feel meme’s are currently in the process of doing through such popular accounts is further endorsing the use of the word, but for new audiences! New non-black audiences who do not fully understand the lengthy and bloody history of the word, I am no history expert either! These new audiences who would otherwise shudder at the thought of being called a racist for using the term are now are able to use ‘ni**’ because it’s plastered all over the net and seen by these new audiences on a daily bases. Ultimately making it normalised.

The ‘likes’, ‘follower’s etc for these accounts show the growing popularity of such pages, however what makes the situation very absurd is the fact that a lot (not all) of the material released by such accounts (although rude) has little to do with black men or black people for that matter.

Any apologist would be joyous at such news stating no direct harm is being done! However the expansion of the word as an umbrella definition for online comedy presents a much bigger issue like I have explained.

My greatest fear is that we may find white/brown/yellow/red (and whatever colour we have been designated) who are aware of the history of the word but willfully ignore the implications of its use for ‘light humour’ or ‘banter’. The more the word becomes accepted and synonymous with present day things in our life the more easier it becomes to erase it’s history, a history already shunted by the British education system.

It is neither my place nor my desire to tell you what to say or do; I am as humanly imperfect as anyone reading this piece. One day soon a black person ignited by the contradictory nature of this situation will do a piece much better then I ever could for I am not at the receiving end of this modern day dilemma. But here I feel we are presented with a scenario where society’s fickle nature becomes ever so visible. Laughter and comedic relief is only human instinct, it is the fundamental part of what makes us who we are. However it seems that when it comes to humour with a racial overtone we all enjoy a laugh…just at the expense of one part of the human family. Moreover I can bet all the coins in my pocket that if tomorrow the phrase was to be altered to ‘crack*rs be like’ then this meme craze would crumble in the matter of days. Ironically it seems the laugh’s on us all for we are furthering ignorance and racism in practice while preaching tolerance and education, enough comedy for you?

The post About That “Niggas Be Like” Meme appeared first on Madness & Reality.

But there will be no funeral. A eulogy won’t be necessary, as the life of Venny won’t be celebrated. However, upon a very sober analysis of this plight, no one’s hands are clean. We have attention whores & likewise, attention tricks; Twitter being the virtual Pimp providing the medium through which this plight flows freely. Twitter not so much sells a dream, like your real life pimp, but it is the pathway through which a dream can be concocted and actualized. You see, Twitter isn’t like the Dolemite, “Bitch betta have my money” pimp. This pimp is liberal and mesmerizing… This pimp does not search the caches and cookies for you; instead, you, your ego and all of your insecurities come searching, or should I say surfing for it.

With adoration and disdain abound, the attention whores and tricks become interchangeable and codependent in this dynamic. The whore and the trick have both hired the pimp to provide the vehicle by which egos are stroked, fancies are tickled, and fantasies actualized with QWERTY keyboards.

These were the only two avatars ever used by Venny

From what I could ascertain from the 22-page article on Bossip about the young lady, I would put Venny on the attention whore side of the dynamic. Her fame seemed to be based on audacious shock value and the disdain for this attribute that was consistent in every tweet. This disdain fueled this so-called Twitter fame, but it also fueled something much more sinister. An adverse effect to the pimp’s dream is there are apparently no boundaries in the virtual world, and although virtual, the personalities housed in bodies sitting behind these flat screens and typing on QWERTY keyboards have real feelings, and real egos that have to be stroked even if what they’re presenting is fake. It’s also like a mask…and if the opportunity is presented to see what’s really behind the mask, that opportunity is as good as seized, without question. Your mask will be removed.

Realistically, I question, if Venny hadn’t been on the chunky side and would have met their high expectations of vanity, then what would have happened? It’s almost like her tricks are saying, “You can’t sell pussy to us because you’re fat!” “You can’t compose tweets that irritate us because you’re fat!” Your existence is limited in real life and on social media, fake or real, because you’re fat. And what if she wasn’t hated, but instead admired? I ask these questions to point out that even a real trick thinks that they have the “right” to buy sex from whores and the dream that the whores have bought into isn’t real. Also, the whore is lambasted for being the whore, while the trick is has gotten exactly what they paid for. But who are these attention whores without their tricks? Isn’t the perceived fame achieved via intra-virtual feeding? If her tweets were that horrible, wouldn’t it have been easier for her to be ignored and NOT to have this so-called “fame”? Ah yes, all too easy, but that’s not exciting. There’s nothing like being validated by the denigration of another. The uplifting of one’s self by the bringing down or “dragging to hell” of another. This speaks more to the human condition and more about the woman who stalked her out at an Applebee’s and those who spawned Venny’s social media fame being inevitably relieved of her demise than it does Venny. Rest in peace Venny.

Pimps, ho’s and Twitter:

This is what Venny really looks like.

The attention whore recognizes the potential in the Pimp to provide the ultimate dream. The ultimate dream of being who and whatever is desired with love and/or hate abound. Oh, but the trick…let us not forget that which makes the whore the whore- the paying customers. The paying customers who fiend for an ego stroke just like the attention whore, but pays by default when engaging. The trick can use the whore to gain more followers, more clout, or to boost their own ego using whatever method that garners the attention they also seek.

The post Pimps, Hoes, & Twitter – An Ode to Venny: Social Media Homicide appeared first on Madness & Reality.

As a matter of fact, the last time a black quarterback won the Super Bowl was the first time it was done when Doug Williams – a quarterback nobody wanted – of the Washington Redskins, beat the Denver Broncos, and yet another great white hype. So yeah, how about that for some irony and history?

Peyton Manning got his ass beaten so bad that he doesn’t know whether his name if Kunta or Toby

No seriously, I mean this thing is huge.

And in the age of Obama?

Yeah, we might truly be post-racial now…

Siiiiiike!

Okay, so maybe I’m relishing in blackness just a tad bit much for some. But, don’t worry, as earth shattering as Russell Wilson and the Seattle Seahawks Super Bowl win was, it’s good to know that thanks to Coca Cola’s Super Bowl commercial, that America is still beautiful… and still a pretty racist country full of people not afraid to speak out against the celebration of diversity and multiculturalism.

Check out the Coca Cola commercial below:

The Coca Cola Super Bowl Commercial Was Awesome; Racist Reactions To It, Not So Much.

But as my good friend Yesha Callhan over at Clutch Magazine points out, for some folks, singing “America The Beautifu”l in foreign languages is just unacceptable. I don’t know what you may think, or how you may feel about the ad – heck, you may agree that it was inappropriate.

However, if you’re like some of the racist nutjobs complaining about it on social media and foolishly willing to boycott Coca Cola over this commercial as some have stated. Then, the truth is that it is people like you who are what’s wrong with America; and it’s a shame that the world sees this.

Fueled by the same racism tossed out on social media in reaction to Richard Sherman’s post-game interview with Erin Andrews. Many have taken to Twitter and Facebook to voice their opinions with the creation of the hashtag #BoycottCoke and #SpeakAmerican. Because, of course everyone knows that it was the indigenous Native American people who taught Europeans to speak English.

Hopefully nobody tells them that Russell Wilson is married to a white woman.

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Lawd, help you if you find yourself being Black and doing something entertaining…..

When it comes to White folk, you can be sure that ‘something entertaining’ will be adapted, hijacked, taken, stolen and then re-packaged and given back to the world as a brand new unique ‘must have’ thing to be had by all who can afford, leaving the content creators high and dry. This isn’t something specific to Blacks and Whites in general, rather, the ruling power class always has the resources and insight to take something popular and monetize it.

Welcome to the Matrix, the digital age we live in now makes it possible to observe our collective conversations, opinions and thoughts.

And apparently someone, somewhere cares.

Black Twitter is now the thing of interest which can be studied, evaluated, and broken down into bite size morsels and Twitter (not Black Twitter) has just hired a marketing guru to weld the magnifying glass at our direction.

Twitter is looking for ways to make a big buck off of its racially-diverse user base.

 

According to reports, the social network recently hired a marketing guru to study its demographics, including the online cultural and entertainment force we know as Black Twitter.

 

Marketing veteran Nuria Santamaria, who joined the Twitter family as a multicultural strategist in November, said “advertisers want to know more about racial and ethnic minorities on Twitter, from basic numbers to the languages in which they tweet.”

Since Blacks tweet more than the average person, and much of the conversation found online is honest, punchy and reactionary, the eyes that be are hoping to find insight into what Black Twitter thinks about everything from politics, to foodware.

My question is, will this lead to more advertisements aimed at swaying the buying power of urban African-American’s, Latinos, and Asian Americans, or will this information actually be used to determine the needs and desires of a long overlooked demographic?

I’m not gonna hold my breath for the latter, but it sounded nice to say.

Should we look forward to more neck rolling, finger popping tweets from advertisers attempting to ‘speak our language’?

Or will I have to sit through another cheesy broken Spang-lish commercial selling low fee cable with phone plans that include international call rates?

Will Twitter sell our secrets to the non-Twitter universe? Is this considered snitching….?

These questions and many more will be answered in 140 characters or less.

What say you? Is social media becoming just another place to run from the prying eyes of advertisers?

Might this actually be the opportunity to do the work necessary to clean up all thats wrong in America based off the opinion of people who may or may not be the race their avatar represents?

Will Black Twitter do some slick shit like those students who answered falsely in that landmark study on sexuality and skew the results ‘cus they play too much?

Who knows….

Now that I’m thinking about it #FAIL seems the appropriate response with #FML as a close second.

What do you think about Twitter hiring a marketing person specifically for us, y’all, and them? Should Black Twitter be ‘scurred?

#Carryon #Comment #Tweet me @tracyreneejones or don’t….

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Recently, journalist and cable news pundit Goldie Taylor was the latest person to come under attack, at the receiving end of some pretty nasty threats from a prolifically racist Twitter troll who called himself ‘Americanist’, and whose handle was @BreakObama. This person launched an all-out virtual assault on Taylor (and other noted media and social media personalities), tweeting her personal contact information for public consumption, assailing her with nasty racial epithets, and menacingly telling her to watch her back. I mean, you could practically see the fumes of hate blistering from his every word: “@goldietayler, I know where you work. Better watch over your shoulder. But you won’t know before it happens.”  

Goldie and her supporters alerted Twitter admins to no avail. Pleas to suspend the offending account were met with silence. Taylor finally sought the help of a follower… an attorney known on the microblogging site as ‘Wieland’ (@lawscribe) who, thanks to his sharp internet sleuthing, was able to track down and expose the racist cyber terrorist. Wieland then tweeted his findings to @FBIDallas and Twitter, who finally decided to suspend the @BreakObama account this past Monday; an action that should have been dealt with posthaste the moment Goldie Taylor performed the proper protocol per Twitter’s TOS. Particularly since making pointed cyber threats is considered a federal crime and are punishable by up to 5 years in prison and/or a $250,000 fine.

According to a storify curated by Wieland, the threats were traced to Justin Acker of Dallas, TX: a man who works as a ‘Church Compliance Consultant’ (??) for a non-profit/charitable organization, and former history teacher and high school football coach who purportedly helped write the Texas school social studies curriculum- (TEKS).

After having the curtain yanked back on him, @BreakObama promptly deleted his LinkedIn account and I’m sure his other social media pages have since been deactivated. Listen, if you’re going to be about that troll life, spew hate speech and threaten acts of violence against people on the internet, assume that not everyone will be easily intimidated and will likely strike back. Because if you’re brave enough to hurl racial epithets at people on social media and threaten to kill them, then you deserve to be exposed for who and what you truly are… to your employers, colleagues, and to the people who think they know you. Perhaps @BreakObama will reinvent his hateful self under a new online identity, but I’m sure the since the moist rock he resides under has been lifted, it will definitely give him pause.

The stance Wieland and Goldie Taylor took on cyber harassment is a glowing example of  the results you reap when you speak out, and serves as a more suitable  contrast  to this past Sunday’s #TwitterSilence protest— prompted by British journalist Caitlin Moran, in reaction to threats issued to female journalists— and underscores why being silent was problematic, as well as why those [of us] who don’t have the luxury of staying silent, thought the protest was counterproductive. The last thing a person, particularly a woman, should do is remain silent when being threatened online or during any other instance in her life. Many likened the protest to staying indoors and altering your life completely on account of real-time harassment, rather than reporting the abuse and challenging errant misogyny.

#TwitterSilence  relinquishes power to online bullies, who continue to hide behind the cloak of anonymity posting the address and phone number of their target, to cyber stalk, and to threaten harm. And while speaking out won’t do away with the act of trolling in general, it will definitely help weed out potentially dangerous people. I’m a firm believer in collecting receipts and using the information to take legal action against cyber terrorists who cross the line with declarations of an intent to inflict injury and putting them on blast, because as Audre Lorde succinctly wrote in her essay The Transformation of Silence Into Language and Action: “My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you.” Especially if you’re among a collective of women whose voices are often drowned out and who don’t always have resources or an empathetic ear extended to them when they do seek help.

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