The Stream

Video: Could you translate this racist comment?

Social experiment gives Lithuanians an up close and personal look at racism.

The Lithuanian Centre for Human Rights posted a video of an unusual social experiment: Lithuanians responding to a casting call for an advertisement found themselves in a “waiting room” with a black actor pretending to be a recent immigrant to Lithuania. The actor then requests help translating what someone wrote to him on Facebook, but the experiment subjects find themselves struggling with how to translate the comments, because they turn out to be a racist tirade against the actor. The video is intended to promote a newly-launched Lithuanian language website that is “full of advices [sic] on how all of us can react to racial, homophobic, other kind of bullying and hate speech”.

 

Check out the video. How would you react to a situation like this? Do you think it’s an effective way to educate people about dealing with bigotry?