Criticism of the media in a fast-consumption/-production age

In times when everyone is complaining about everything, it does not seem strange that so many people complain why the news do focus only on particular countries (see e.g. the editorial in the latest issue of “The Week”). There are currently 195 countries in the world. Not only our time capacity would not allow us to follow the news on all different parts of the world, but also our brains would explode with so much information. 

We live in a time when memory and remembrance have become social issues, with Alzheimer’s posing a serious challenge to technologically advanced societies. With the weakening of our memories we have also unlearned to compare, evaluate, and value. Everyone who regularly and carefully follows the news should know that nowhere else the news are so diverse as in Western countries, not only in the range of countries they cover but also regarding the variety of topics. In 2017, when I was doing my master’s degree in Sociology, I had a module on ethnicity together with a few Chinese overseas students. In their presentations they told us that they had never heard of the word and the concept of “racism”. One of them tried to write her essay on “racism in China”, and though she had online access to many Chinese university libraries, she could only find 3-4 useless papers in Chinese about racism, as she reported us. This example points out the state of media in China and many other countries where the media is (owned and) controlled by the government.

The fast pace of modern everyday lives and the excessive use of modern technologies such as smartphones, internet and social media, do not leave much time for “thinking”. One of the valuable aspects of social media is that they have advanced the status of their users from mere consumers to some kinds of producers. But this has significantly lowered the standards of intellectual products such as articles, books, etc., for they are now being produced also by “the masses”. 

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Is it racist to date only black persons?!

Is it racist to date only black persons?! Definitely not, I believe, and was very surprised when I read an article by a young black woman titled “White people, only dating black people is not progressive – it’s racist”. The author criticizes one of her white male friends, and calls him a racist, because he “only dates black girls”. She tells us how she “felt like an accessory” after seeing a photo of her white male friend with his new black girlfriend on social media, for she thought she would have been “the interchangeable black girl in the picture” or “an extra black girl in the picture” if she had a sexual relationship with her male friend. 

Sexual enjoyment can only happen if one feels a strong sexual attraction to their sexual partner. Human beings are made of “soul” AND body, and bodily characteristics significantly affect sexual attraction. One’s age, weight, height, the shape of the different parts of their body (including face), their skin colour, hair colour/style, etc. all may have an impact on our sexual feelings. Just as someone may feel sexually attracted only to blonde women, slim/overweight women or women with small/big breasts, someone else may feel attracted only to black women. This doesn’t mean that for these persons, when choosing a sexual partner, non-physical characteristics do not count or that they are using their sexual partners as “accessories”. I can’t imagine that the male person criticized in the mentioned article would be willing to have a sexual relationship with any (!) “black girl” just because she was female, young and black, even if her physical characteristics would match his preferences.

I hope nobody would accuse me of sexism because I date only men!

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