Would You Read A Racist Facebook Message To A Friend?

We see despicable comments on the Internet all the time. But what if you had to read those comments to the person to whom they were addressed? What if you had to tell someone that they were fat, ugly, or unwelcome, because some anonymous person had written it online?

That’s what the Lithuanian Centre for Human Rights got people to do, in this social experiment posted yesterday to YouTube. A black man, claiming to have moved to Lithuania in the previous weeks, is looking at a message on his tablet, in Lithuanian, and he’s unable to read it. As other individuals come and sit down next to him, he asks them to translate the message. Several of the participants refuse to read the message, which calls the man a monkey, a slave, and tells him to go back to Africa. Others, cautiously, read it aloud.

The video leads to a website called Svetima Gėda, which translates (so says Google) to “Foreigner Shame.” The website gives actions to take if you are bullied or observe bullying.

Again – all of this is in Lithuania, but the video is in English, and the message translates to every language. Someone should hire the Lithuanian Centre for Human Rights to make training videos with Sigma Alpha Epsilon.