Hope everyone’s spring break is going fantastic! I actually stayed up last night catching up on some shows. Definitely worth it! If all of you are avid “Youtubers,” today’s popular video (and popular video for all of March) is Alexandra Wallace’s infamous video on Asians in the UCLA library. What intrigued me was the level of racism that still exists so strongly in today’s community. One can debate as to whether her video was really THAT offensive considering that some Asians actually even thought it was pretty funny. However, the prevalence of racism (even on a surface level) is evidently there, otherwise, it wouldn’t have become this big of an issue.
Racism and YouTube are both hot topics today and have been for a while, but what I wanted to talk about was the First Amendment. Do we need to make changes to it? Yes, it allows for the freedom of speech, which is why, according to the New York Times UCLA would do a “disservice to itself and the First Amendment if it goes ahead and disciplines her for the content of her words.” Because of the freedom of speech, Americans are saying that Alexandra cannot be punished just because her words were hurtful and a bit offensive; however, this was before the creation of media and internet. The reason for Ms. Wallace’s punishment, the NYT states, is “harassment against a group of students,” but technically, it wasn’t a specific threat or against the law. The words were simply a bit ignorant and biased. But who CAN’T say that on YouTube these days? During the days of the First Amendment and no technology, it was so much easier to determine what was against the law or not. So should we make a new amendment? One that involves the World Wide Web? One that involves a more applicable 21st century rule? Well, I guess that’s not something that’s exactly up to me, but it’s nice to think of possibilities to prevent these events from occurring again. Maybe if our amendments were more specific, then these occurrences could be dealt with more precaution and order rather than ambiguity and debate. The media is such an influential and powerful aspect of our lives today – it’s impossible to ignore that statement, so why not make some new changes to the original? Just some food for thought. Maybe it starts with us avid media watchers and fans
