FBS-Short Take #2 Fake News
The truth about fake news is its a tactic that destabilizes our sense of what the truth is. But the truth is, if you black you never really knew what to believe anyway. I mean the whole history of the black in this country could be considered a subcategory or mother category to Fake News. Much of it blatant lies and misinformation, ignorance, hatred, and confusion.
The first stage when one enters any disciplined understanding of the black is the contemplation of the lies told about us. The delving behind the veil of Fake News and into the truth about us. All serious paths to the black must swim through the sea of lies. Most of us have been forced at one point in time in our lives to get an A in a course that is full of lies.
In the google age, education is often self serve surfing. Folks swish through the documents and the web-so certain that, because they can find information that it must be good or decent information. Though I got beefs with education, I will say lessons on the validity of sources is one of the most important functions of an good education. Most institutions do this good work.
Folks can blame Trump, but Trump didn't destabilize knowledge-the internet did, google did. And there is some good in the ways that knowledge has opened up-though it could be the death of us. The enormous profits of these tech companies that oversee the transformation of knowledge in Modern Day Society is another idea to consider. Though they seem to stand by the side, they are in on it. Internet is anything goes. (This comes to you via facebook).
As for the history of Fake News take for instance Africa as a "dark continent". The trade in fake news on Africa is still thriving. The trade in fake news about the Black is at the heart of the Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Sandra Bland trials. The issue there is that it may not topple the system. Matter of fact, that type of fake news is at the heart of the system. Imagine the awesome power of fake news that suggested America was a mostly uninhabited country open for mass immigration, in spite of the presences of Native Americans.
The danger of the call of fake news is that it can destabilize the system of information that we all rely on, which is essential to the maintenance of democracy. I wrote this second post to be clear-yes, there is danger in the power to assert that news reporting is defacto fake news. But we should also be clear that most media institutions are also institutions of power. A good thing about America is the devotion to matters of the humanities as though they can be refined like science towards objectivity and towards the elimination of bias; but then again, for anybody in the black or a marginalized group-it becomes obvious that the media plays a role in destabilizing and marginalizing people, ideas, cultures, and resources.
The media-or the dissemination of information is an important function in the colonial conquest of the world. One could even argue it is the most essential component. For once people are conquered with guns and violence, it is the information that renames the conquest into an inevitable confrontation with the way things are, and assigns a series of cultural values that people are convinced they must strive for, as compared to a freedom or independence, that holds them in place.
Fake News has always been here and is here to stay. One might ask the old folks how they dealt with Fake News-Maybe some of them old Southern folks. If you know something about them-you have a good idea of what they would say.
