Are you a racist? Do you like saying racist things on Facebook? If you answered ‘yes’ to both of those questions you might want to reconsider your bigoted lifestyle choices…
This new campaign in Brazil has seen racist comments people have written online being plastered on billboards near their house – in a bid to try and teach them their words have an effect in real life, rather than to ‘expose’ the people behind them.
The project is called ‘Virtual racism, real consequences‘, and uses the location tag on Facebook to find where the offenders live. They then buy billboard space nearby and post the comments on the board, with the commenter’s name and photo blurred out.
A nonprofit group called Criola group, who defend the rights of black women in Brazil, are behind the campaign. According Business Insider the project was started after Brazilian journalist Maria Júlia Coutinho was the victim of racist Facebook comments.
Coutinho was the first black weather presenter on a Brazilian prime-time programme. When she corrected another anchor who used incorrect terminology people took to Facebook to dish out a load of vile racist insults, targeting everything from her hair to her race.
The project aims to show that racist comments online have real world repercussions:
We omit names and faces of the authors because we have no intention of exposing anyone. We just want to educate people so that in future they think about the consequences before posting racist comments.
Hopefully it’ll make people think twice about being massive racist bastards in the future.
