white youtube prankster

 

The following post originally appeared on The Smoking Section and was written by Bansky. It’s original title is, “An Open Letter to White YouTube Pranksters.”

By: Bansky

Hey White people, come gather around, I have some very important advice I need to share with all of you en masse. This is potentially life-altering and life-saving. It’s actually pretty simple, so much so that I’m shocked it has to be mentioned at all.

White people – more specifically, the younger White males engaging in these senseless acts – please, for your own safety, stop going to “the hood” and messing with Black people, I don’t want one of you to end up dead.

For anyone not up to speed, here’s the jig: young white dudes, or otherwise non-Black and non-Latino people are wandering into ghettos across America, and antagonizing “urban” people for laughs and calling them “In the Hood!!!” pranks.

Under the guise of a prank, they engage only Black people and do dumb shit like take people’s phones as they’re using them to “check the time.”

[…]

I’m not sure if this is some weird racist humor that just doesn’t tickle my fancy. Maybe it’s some social experiment that uses racial tropes as its punchline and a means of instruction and enlightenment, or both lumped into one. I imagine a select group of White Americans react to these videos in a way similar to how Black guys react to magic. “OMG! That black dude was pissed! He broke his phone lulz!” or something along those lines, otherwise these videos probably wouldn’t keep being made.

There is some humor here, because I have to admit, like when some jackass keeps walking up to only Black folks and asking “you want to kiss my ass.” I finally laughed when he got knocked out, literally. Worst part is this goober thought it was funny too, and now he’s laughing to the tune of 1.7 million views worth of AdSense dollars.*

But what if I went into an affluent neighborhood, approached only White people and started attacking them like it was The Purge or something? Is this acceptable as long as it’s under the guise of a practical joke and called “In the Burbs!!” If I’m daring ornery old white guys into a fight, there’s a good chance that I may actually have to take a punch or two and this is probably true for brown, yellow, orange or purple people, too.

But that isn’t being acknowledged here, instead these reactions are being treated as “Black people reactions.” “Get a look at how these Black folks react to me doing funny stuff.” Nope, these are the reactions of anybody put into these ridiculous situations.

Click here to read the rest.