This is like sipping coffee and then attempting to ignore its saltiness at which you flinch, despite having always known that coffee is bitter by nature.
A fellow Davidson alum, Cameron Harris, recently added to the obnoxiously large batch of fake political and election-centered news that slimed its way throughout the United States and beyond. Authoring a fraudulent story about a fake man who stumbled upon some votes purportedly developed by Hillary Clinton’s campaign, this young grad got his false headline to spread to around six million people, reaching across national borders. I left out emphasis in that previous sentence, because the surprise is lacking from a personal standpoint. Do I know him? No, I never did, and I probably never will. Is that important? Nope, and I’ll tell ya why. Even IF he is not well-off, even IF he is well-intentioned (but also, please tell me the moral intentions of his recent endeavor, because I don’t see them) this is not an isolated case of a small town boy who happened to make big while simply trying to pay off student and car loans. This is yet another young white guy utilizing his white privilege in multiple ways to make a buck off of other people’s harm.
This political manufacturer of the hour has the privilege to comfortably ignore the kind of following a news story as such can garner; if it doesn’t reach a wide audience, he can go back to finding other methods of employment, with still a higher chance of finding a job than many non-white, non-male individuals can. And even still, if the story does take off (as it did), he has the chance to sit back with his cash as his addition to the spewage of fake Trump-supporter-rage-inducing news flows evermore, as the false claims of his clickbait ignite even more ignorant hatred and voter influence.
It frankly and simply does not change my mind if he’s not well off. We all have bills to pay. He can take it from me that I am not without my fair share of large student and medical loans, but I am with my fair heaping of moral beliefs. The means to your ends matter more often than not, and this is a perfect case representative of that hard truth. The guy still managed to reach the viewership of the New York Times with his fraudulent election piece, and subsequently found the gal to request his fellow Americans to engage in a “larger dialogue about how Americans approach the media” as his way of “apologizing”. He did all of this while, in what seems to be attempts to defend his endeavor, emphasizing "the money, not the politics, was the point".
You cannot claim “politics aside," buddy. You literally crafted a story about an invented man finding fraudulent votes right before the election. You then proceeded to have a large chunk of your statement released in a recent article from a Charlotte Observer contributor to reflect your disappointment in your fellow Americans and how you think “our nation cannot move forward from such a divisive election cycle if we continue to seek comfort in our own beliefs and refuse to challenge our personal world views" (Did I really just read that request, an entitled request from an author of a falsely crafted intentionally-anger-inducing political article asking for the rest of the nation to move forward from a divisive election, accurately?) Do we really need to go into detail about, if he had done the same thing as you had, the historically-based chances of a black man getting his own New York Times story, a nice photo-op AND his carefully crafted-to-avoid-real-blame apology in another major paper? I think we do; they are pretty slim chances. Despite your self-aware faultiness, you are still heavily quoted and made $100 grand off of news viewage and ads from your fake work. This is a smack-in-the-face privilege that usually touches none other than the white man.
The similar problematic methods of achieving particular ventures is unfortunately not lost in other realms of vital social issues. After fumingly venturing from the library with a couple balanced books of economic studies and loving womanist essays, I stood gazing across the train tracks last night amongst an unassuming line of women. Several of us were holding reading material, and I had a plethora of emotions suddenly come my way. Aside from automatically feeling generally safer, I always feel a slight bit of pride standing amongst a group of women, mainly just wishfully but kind of naively tricking my mind into thinking this is an emblematic picture of what it could look like if we actually came together in the kind of unity we blissfully desire to speak about but don't always act upon for each other; various women empowered to stand in support while we each pursue our various goals (simply imaged, admittedly in a posterboard-iconic way, here to me by collectively reading to our hearts’ content before catching the train). But this is not a dream that should really be taken in any kind of fairytale sense of the word. This past weekend was the Women’s March on Washington, more broadly taking place nationwide in a collective protest to the upcoming Trump presidency. This past weekend I also read from multiple black women activists expressing understandable disdain for the upcoming march and the very likely potential of its accompanying exclusive white feminism that has historically taken to many political rallies. In other words, we need to take a long and hard look before, during, and after this march to ensure not only that this kind of energy for political activism continues in all efforts of the intersecting public and private spheres, but that it expands to be inclusive of all; people of color, immigrants and the LGBTQ community just as much as the next white woman. Certain ideas need more filtering, a heavier dusting off of the sparkly package they came in, and a hard look at their foundational truth. On a different note but much the same way, an idea to make money while ignoring potential democratic and moral effects should probably be heavily questioned, if not completely trashed.
So again, this coffee is bitter, but I know coffee well, and it has always been bitter before you add sugar to it. But if you leave the coffee alone, you can taste its real character, caffeinated truth and all. Just as inclusive intersectional feminism rightfully demands more of the Women’s March and related initiatives, let’s demand in the same breath that this story and others like it are not softened with a sugary “he’s a young dude who was only in need of money and he now realizes his fault”, when we know Harris was very well aware of how he was adding to the disgustingly large amount of click-bait intended to throw off voters. We need to see stories like this for what they are, and observe the ugly truths of many facets of entitled American society which they uncover, without adding any white sugar.
If you’d like to continue the dialog, for the rest of my life, you can find me sipping bitter coffee in all weather. I’ll be taking my coffee black.
*Title's quotation extracted from Fox46 Charlotte outlet*
