Mobile phones were invented in 1947 and became useful and popular from the 1980s, with first generation (1G), and from there until the current fourth generation (4G). And in 2020 mobile phones have just made their first revolution (1R): until today, racism has never been so boring! As Will Smith, a smart guy (and best known for being likeable in the films Men in Black I, II and III) said so well: “There is no more racism, it just happens that he is being filmed”.
It cannot be said that the mobile phone invented racism. Racism has existed at least since a Homo sapiens hunted a mammoth, had to go to the cave and when he returned he saw a neighbor Homo sapiens feasting on the carcass. He called it “late” and word pulls word the other called it “racist”. That was 300,000 years ago and racism was invented.
A good while later, in 1959, an American journalist, white John Howard Griffin, walked through Mississippi and Louisiana, southern states of America, his face darkened by some drugs he took on purpose to pass as black. He wrote a book, In the Skin of a Negro, and the world discovered that a peasant dressed in bib could whistle a white woman in a beautiful pleated skirt. After all, southern America had seen Hollywood films and was much more modern than the Pilgrims Fathers, the intolerant Calvinists who had landed three and a half centuries before … But if the gardener was a black man, he might end up hanging and swing on the branch of a tree. Billie Holiday sings a Blue about this: “Strange Fruit”, strange fruits. There it is, racism again.
But look at the two examples I gave about racism: one, too old; the other, too literary. They were to be forgotten. From the news of the dispute between two specimens of Homo sapiens until we heard about it, the Attila invasion, the guillotine of the French Revolution and the Spanish fever had already happened – so much death. Why should we worry about an argument between neighbors around a carcass? The other was a much more recent book, but always a book, with the dryness of the paper and the lack of vivid images, and on top of that, pleated skirts went out of fashion a long time ago … Anyway, those racisms weren’t exciting.
As Will Smith said so well, racism existed and continues to exist. Even better, he said, what’s new is that now, I don’t know, in a city that we never thought deserved a visit from us, for example, Minneapolis, racism risks entering our homes with the detail of we see a police knee resting on a man’s neck with his face dumped on the asphalt.
The new thing is that now we can stop the image in the detail of the policeman having a hand in his pocket, with the tranquility of those who know they have all the time in the world. And we can resume the movement of the image to hear the sound: “Mother… Mother…” Go back and confirm: that humiliated man bisarma said “mother”. And twice. “Please, man …” Yes, it is true, a man with his face on the pavement called another man who had his knee in his neck: “man”, man! Extraordinary irony of an unquestionable reality, those who are there are, in fact, two men, two alike – and how that, however, is so, so not true. And we can increase and decrease the size of what we see, hunt for details, close-up or small, and realize that we have enormity in our hand.
And we can show the images and sound as many times as we want. And in a moment, it seems to us that the cell phone stopped the image. And then we realize that it was not a key on the cell phone that sent, nor we typing without meaning to: it was a man who stopped breathing. I had never realized the freedom of breathing. I, you, we can never forget, as happened in the initial Homo sapiens, nor with the testimony of white John Howard Griffin through Mississippi below. We are not even fortunate for the Germans neighboring the concentration camps, we cannot apologize: “We didn’t see…”
Saw. We were, we are, with the images, the colors and the sound in hand. If we want to understand the great demonstrations around the world in favor of George Floyd, especially those in America, it is time to sweep away the feeling of custom: it is always like this, then we forget… This time, racism has a powerful and appealing app against him: the mobile phone . J’Accuse no longer needs Zola to report, any citizen has enough talent. And that’s why I have a suggestion, already in June, for Time magazine. You can now proclaim who the Man of the Year 2020 is: the mobile phone. Men and women of all colors are grateful.
*Journalist
