by Craig Colby
“Sharia law declared in Iowa City”. I saw a post with a headline like this on my Facebook news feed. It was accompanied by a picture of several women in full black Niqab. I clicked the link. A warning popped up saying the site contained misinformation. The warning was right. The story was a complete lie.
The link had been posted by an acquaintance from high school named Chris. I told him in the comments that the story was false. Chris quickly thanked me. Not for pointing out the misinformation though. My comment had earned Chris a dinner of wings and beer from his friends. He bet his buddies that if he posted this lie, one of his libtard friends would jump in and correct him. Chris congratulated me on taking the bait. We had a brief exchange, during which I pointed out that sharing these lies creates problems for Muslims, including some of my neighbours. In the end, I called Chris an anatomically unflattering name and unfriended him. I don’t dump people for having different opinions, but I will for spreading hate. Chris had it coming, but it also meant he had one less dissenting voice in his social media circle when he posted harmful lies.
I thought about Chris when a Muslim family was killed by a 20-year-old white man in his pickup truck. Not much has been released about the driver except that he targeted his victims because of their religion. How much material like this had the killer seen? What echo chamber had spurred him to murder?
Hate crimes are on the rise across the board. Social media, especially Facebook, has been tagged as a likely contributor. It feeds people more of what they like, encouraging sameness, and prioritizes posts that get a lot of reactions. This means volatile material appears more frequently in news feeds. Homogeny and hate go hand-in-hand so that tech giants can make money on the information highway. It’s bad for the world but good for business.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Commerce once drove the mixing of cultures. In 130 B.C.E. the Han Dynasty opened the Chinese border to start trade with the west. This was the beginning of the Silk Road, a trade route through Asia and Europe, where different cultures mixed to exchange their treasures. Technological advancements migrated from country to country too. Paper, and the methods used to make it, moved from China to Europe. Buddhism travelled from India to China. Renaissance themes appeared in Hindu temples. By appreciating our differences, the world became a better place.
Comparing the results of the Information Highway and the Silk Road teaches us an important lesson. Diversity is better for the world. Social inbreeding only leads to deformities. 215 children in a mass grave at a residential school site in Kamloops B.C. are a testament to what happens when one society thinks everyone needs to be like them. We need to do better.
We can’t let people entrenched in their own superiority, whether it’s based in culture, religion, gender, colour or orientation, get away with spreading discrimination, but there has to be a better way to do it than the one I chose with Chris. A cussing out rarely achieves a positive result, as any episode of Jerry Springer will show you. I still haven’t figured out a way to influence the isolationists. However, there’s a current transportation route that might show us the way. You can find that perfect example on the Old Town Road.
In 2019 rapper/singer/songwriter Lil Nas X remixed his song, Old Town Road, with vocals from country star Billy Ray Cyrus. Over 18 million units were sold of a collaboration between a young, black, gay, urban artist teamed with an old, white, straight, country star. You couldn’t’ walk down the street without hearing kids singing it. Their collaboration went to number 1 and earned two Grammy awards. A lyric from the song insists “can’t nobody tell me nothing”, but this song did more by showing than telling anyway.
We need more coming together and being loud about it. The entrenched isolationists aren’t going to listen to anything we say. Maybe they’ll come around, though, if they see diversity enough to figure out its value for themselves. Jackie Robinson smashing the colour barrier in baseball was an inspiration to societal integration. The Pride Movement led the way to public support for gay marriage. We haven’t arrived at a happily mixed Promised Land yet, but we’re way further down the road because brave people showed us that we’re better together.
When we get past the pandemic, let’s really be together, as publicly as possible. To beat a system built on sameness, let’s post pictures with our friends who are defined differently than ourselves. Go public with our thoughts on the strengths of diversity as much as possible. And when you see those posts from your friends, like, comment and share the hell out of them. That’s what puts those posts into the algorithm’s rotation. We need to be like Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus. Our shared experience is the horse we need to ride ‘til we can’t no more. Maybe I’m naïve to think sharing some pictures can make a difference, but this is the road that leads where I want to go.
#BetterTogether
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Craig Colby is a television executive producer, producer, director, writer and story editor. He runs a storytelling consulting and production service for businesses.