My Old Transformers 2 Review

Eight years ago I made a video review of Transformers 2. In the video I expressed how outraged and offended I was over the blatant racism and use of overtly negative black racial stereotypes. I was beside myself. Granted, I may have been especially sensitive to the subject matter since my girlfriend of almost a year at the time just happened to be black. The twin autobots in the film were the embodiment of every negative and poisonous black youth stereotype you could muster including them being illiterate (no seriously, robots that couldn’t read) and a lack of intelligence. In the video I juxtaposed the positive portrayal of Jazz in the first film to highlight how offensive these characters were. instead of making these characters strong positive characters like Jazz, I said in the video they opted to portray them as “hood niggas” to highlight just how offensive those characters are. I refused to sugarcoat what I felt the movie did. I was angry. I used extremely ugly language to properly call out and label an extremely ugly situation the movie created with those characters.

That was 8 years ago and it seems everyone who watched my ENTIRE review understood it perfectly. However, this weekend, 8 years later, someone took that video and selectively picked out the 3 SECONDS where I used the phrase “hood niggas” while editing out all of the context of the video. Clearly the person had an agenda. They made their own 3-second video, of a review I did 8 years ago, obviously in an attempt to make it appear like I was saying something I was clearly saying the opposite of. It sickens me that I even have to write this “explanation”, but that’s the nature of trolls online today. I encourage you to watch the full true context of this nonsense, please view my full review here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvYgzfhwEfI

My objective was not to offend anyone, but rather to share my outrage with others and communicate just how offended I was as an individual over the reckless and heinous use of negative black stereotypes. The reason my review is still online today is because everyone who saw it viewed it in context and understood it as such. In 8 years I never received any complaints from anyone misunderstanding my point. I never heard from any viewers expressing they were offended or hurt by my use of the phrase in context. If anyone had, I would have removed the video EIGHT YEARS AGO. But now, when a bunch of people see it for the first time out of context in a 3 second selectively edited video, it becomes a different beast (and to some degree that’s understandable). Obviously, I feel terrible and am deeply sorry if anyone took offense or felt hurt by my choice of words. I hope in context it at least is clear that my intent was to express outrage over what I considered to be an unacceptable portrayal of an entire people group.

I know the trolls that create these sorts of things are just trying to get a reaction, and it sucks that they’ve succeeded in getting me to respond. It especially bothers me that I have to deal with these trolls the day after my friend died, and instead of being on the phone with my friends back home grieving, I’m having to deal with this. Terrible day.

**UPDATE** Apparently the post with the 3 second video has been deleted by the person who put it up. Ummm… thank you???