Dear Editor,

Coming from many different backgrounds and ethnicities, I have learned that it is not the people that are racist, but that the people are taught to be racist, by social media. I agree that it is ‘ridiculous’ that we are still a strong racist country, but I disagree that ‘people’ are racist, and I think we must look at the source of the negative backlash.
We are constantly using social networks to communicate our personal opinions about topics. For the Miss America pageant, many were using things like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to express their disagreements on the final decision. Unfortunately, this can domino affect to the younger generations, who may not necessarily understand the hurtful things they are posting.
People from all ages are using social media to post their opinion, however, we are passing down the negativity to the younger generations by becoming brave behind a computer screen. People are still racist because we grow up reading things from the internet. Nowadays, the younger generations get humor from racist videos; when growing up I used to laugh at Barney slipping on a banana.

Thank you,

Anissa Davis
Junior
Communication Studies Major
California State University, Northridge