This is VICE Impact’s weekly series, “Slay of The Day,” which takes a look at unique social media posts that left us shook and enlightened how we think about advocacy in the digital age.
Last week we looked at a Tumblr blogger who pointed out the problem of conservatives being hard on welfare, particularly when it comes to who can afford college. This week we return to Twitter, which is a breeding ground for trolling, clap backs and memes.
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In the post below, Twitter users @Laughin_Man and @Imani_Yvonne expose how the story of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” is really a tale about white privilege and gentrification.
The original tweet by @Laughin_Man racked up more than 22,000 likes and 11,301 retweets. The plot thickens when @Imani_Yvonne adds context to the story, which links the little girl in the fable to new wave colonialism within low-income neighborhoods.
This interpretation of the classic children’s story goes way deeper than two users on Twitter. For over a year now, message boards on Quora and Reddit have been flooded with posts asking whether or not “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” is racist. And if you Google the phrase “Is Goldilocks and the,” the second suggestion instant search offers is “Is Goldilocks and the three bears racist”.
The internet has somehow made a far-fetched but still kinda convincing argument that Goldilocks is a stand in for white supremacist values. Still, gentrification is a complex social phenomenon that is often distilled into a simple argument. When affluent communities move into low-income neighborhoods the change in demographic usually prices poor people out of their homes and displaces them elsewhere.
According to a 2015 report by the US Census, race and income correlate. This means there’s a connection between social and economic forms of oppression that causes this displacement.
But that isn’t always the case.
Lance Freeman of Columbia published a study in 2009 that found between 1970 and 2000 gentrifying neighborhoods in cities across the US were becoming more racially diverse. A 2010 study showed that gentrification usually works in favor of highly-educated black residents and is more likely to disadvantage black people with less education. Also, a 2011 study from researchers at NYU determined that an influx of people with more money into low-income neighborhoods wasn’t an accurate prediction for household displacement.
Gentrification can have different effects regionally than it might have on a national scale. According to The Atlantic, community displacement in “knowledge hubs” and “superstar cities” has become an even bigger issue because of the imbalance of supply and demand. Essentially, the pressure for urban living is accelerating and poorer communities in cities like San Fransisco and Oakland are being priced out of their homes.
Whether or not the story of goldilocks is a thinly veiled lesson about gentrification or racism is debatable, but can we all agree that Goldilocks sucks? No matter how cold, hungry or tired you are breaking into a family’s home, eating and wasting their food, then destroying their furniture and sleeping in their beds is weird and wrong. The moral of the story here is that Goldilocks is the worst.
There you have it, and please be sure to join us next week for the best of the online nitty gritty. And let us know YOUR favorite online slays @viceimpact or email impact@vice.com
