Ethnic Conflicts and Books
Name: Seowon Lee/이서원
Recently, There has been multiple cases of reports stating that books are causing discrimination and fights on social networking sites, internet forums, and chat rooms. Although the primary reason behind this conflict has not been revealed, People confirmed that the sub-cause of this is related to discrimination in books.
On January 5th 2020, a certain post on an unidentified website was uploaded. This post contained a quote that could have been uncomfortable for Asians to read as it hinted things about racism. Although the post has been removed, the after-effect of the post has become clear when chaos broke out in the comment section of that website. While people who were unclear of the situation stood by and watched, the comment section was filled with racist quotes and inappropriate language that targeted Asians. Although the moderators of the website tried to take control of this, they were unable to. and news quickly spread across china about this case.
After tracking down the person who was behind this, People found out that the book which inspired this to happen was a book about stopping racism. in the process of the author writing the book, it was confirmed that the author had made personal quotes about how the author thought that Asians are more ‘less intelligent than Americans’ and ‘are more selfish’. Although these quotes are purely a person’s opinions, the reader of that book interpreted it as a real thing and decided to post it on the website.
However, this is not the only case of something similar to this happening. In August of 2020 at a small neighborhood book club in Texas, a fight broke out between two people. These people were also fighting because of a discriminative quote in a book. Although the fight was quickly shut down, nearby people who were also in the internet conflict quickly realized the book as the same one on the internet conflict accident.
In between these scenarios, There were a few things that were very similar to each other. one of which was that the books they were reading were supporting racism and contained personal quotes about the author’s thoughts and feelings as well as a personal persuasive style of writing about ethnic conflicts (mostly about Asians). There is also another aspect; of which the books were written by the same well-known author.
After a psychiatric evaluation on these people, it was proven that the books inspired a chemical-chain reaction in their brain that stimulated their limbic system ( the part of the brain that controls emotion and actions based on these emotion) And with a overwhelming amount of this chemical surging into their brains, people couldn’t contain themselves and started fighting.
To conclude, these conflicts happened because of people believing that the book is credible and correct. Although, after these conflicts the book has been temporarily held back from the publishers, These problems, small or big, are still rising from the crowd in the world.
