Cyber-racism.

The concept of racism is nothing new to this world. It's been a part of human civilization ever since the evolution of culture. It has, however, never become more relevant to our daily lives than in the present. With strides in technology, people find themselves living with other people from different ethnic and racial backgrounds, they find themselves interacting with other cultures, and forming judgments based on skin color, behavior, speech and habit. People living in minority groups are increasingly finding it stressful to deal with mainstream authority and oppression, more so with races that have classically held power and privilege.

The USA is an interesting country in that it is a country essentially based on an amalgam of different immigrants. This immigration process started right from the time when Columbus landed. The white Europeans evicted the native Americans from there lands and subjugated them to torture and slavery. The native Americans themselves were a diverse group of peoples scattered across the land. This set the dice rolling with more European colonists coming in to fight for their piece of pie. In the ages of imperialism, Africans were brought in numerous hordes into the continent. Africans from different cultures, from an entire continent, each African representing a different tribe. After this slavery-tide, came waves of immigration during the world wars; with large numbers of Europeans fleeing the war in Europe. And finally, post-second world war saw the rise in immigration of Asians - Chinese, Indians, Koreans, Japanese into the mainland.

So the question of race becomes very important to the people of United States. In spite of this amalgam of peoples living in this country, all the positions of privilege were classically held by the whites - seen by the absence of a single president who was also a person of color, until maybe probably now; among other things.



The US however has shrugged off a lot of its duties in dealing with racism - both systemic and personal. This came to light in the recent UN conference on racism in Geneva. The international community has recognized racism as a necessary evil and has very strict laws in dealing with it. For example, in Germany, there are laws that ban the existence of the extreme-pro-Aryan neo-Nazi party. This should however not be interpreted as absence of racism in these countries.
In spite of international pressure , the US has grappled with policies on racism and sadly, many racists in this country are in fact supported by law. The first crucial amendment to the US constitution which guarantees freedom of speech and expression has often been misused, abused and taken advantage of, in the States, when people propagate hate crimes, hate speeches, and set-up websites of white supremacy. It is sad, that the US government does not see that freedom always comes with duties - duties to human values. In fact philosophers have time and again pointed out that there is no such thing as absolute freedom. While hate speeches are widely illegal across the world, it's so common in the States, that if one searches for white supremacy on google, a number of websites show up - websites filled with racist hate speeches, anti-semitist feelings and homophobia.
One such website is www.stormfront.org, bringing me to the topic of cyber-racism.
It is the first of the 2000 and odd websites that are now available and propagate white supremacy, anti-semitism, and neo-nazism. In many countries these sites would have been censored and the creator of such websites would have been persecuted - more evidence of the ambiguous stand of the US government on race. In fact the US is now a safe haven for the new generation of cyber-racists.
It comes as a shock to many people across the world - almost like a loophole in spite of all the international laws against racism. Five years ago there was just one such website propagating white supremacy. Now there are over a thousand sites, easily accessible by public. Even more shocking is that some of these websites target kids. The members of these websites recruit new members from chat-rooms, which are now increasingly filled with naive and vulnerable youth. It is indeed a pity that creators of these websites can walk free without facing any legal consequences.
The world and the international community are now alarmed at the rise of such websites. For not only is the world wide web internationally accessible, the white supremists now have a way of propagating hate across the world. As feared, this is exactly what is happening. Blocking is of course an option, but a lot of good websites end up getting blocked too. Not only this, cyber-racists can easily set up their own servers or move on to other servers.
The internationaly community, after experiencing US reluctance in dealing with racism, has come up with certain measures that might be passed into practice very soon.
1. If internet companies publish racist material, their directors should be liable for criminal charges on trips abroad, where they could even be arrested.
2. If racism cannot be legally proved, it maybe easier to get a conviction on grounds of discrimination
3. Another legal route to cracking down on internet racism may be to confiscate the copyright of a racist work put onto a US server from abroad. Armed with the copyright, that government could then force any US provider to remove the offensive material from the site.

Hopefully, if US citizens do elect a black president, there would probably be better handling of policies concerning racism. For not only is this a country's problem , but a problem of the world - spread through cyberspace, and targeting the most vulnerable population - the youth.These measures therefore have to be implemented soon, to prevent racists from winning this war through cyberspace.