When
most people think about racism, they think about what is common in the news:
discrimination against African Americans. However, when a volunteer digital map
editor abused the system to display racist terminology, a different group was
targeted - Jews. For many years following the Holocaust, American anti-Semitism
(discrimination against Jews) was on the decline; however, recently, it has
begun to rise again. This escalation has many causes, some of which are the
increasing concentration of Jews in New York City, the rise of white supremacy,
the rising number of Jewish children attending Jewish schools instead of public
schools, and the relatively new ability to hide behind a screen and protect
anonymity.
First, with the
widespread technological phenomenon that is the Internet, it is possible to
interact with a large number of people who live on opposite ends of the Earth
in a minimal amount of time, forming a global community. This global community
often communicates through social media, such as Snapchat. With Snapchat, it is
possible to send pictures of yourself to anyone in the world (as long as they
have Wi-Fi and the app), and you can see where your friends are at any given
time via a digital mapping system. This is especially useful if you have
friends/families in different states or countries. However, this system has
some drawbacks too, as discovered on August 30th, when Snapchat users woke up
to find that someone
had labeled New York City as “Jewtropolis.” New York City is perhaps the
most well-known city in the United States, and possibly one of the most
recognizable cities in the world. Thus, “Jewtropolis” was noticed by a fair
number of people.
The person who made this
alteration to the map managed to get the edit through someone paid to block
fake changes, and they did so anonymously (though the leading digital map
company, Mapbox, managed to trace them, the public does not have access to this
information). The digital map gave this mystery man/woman the power to
anonymously and negatively impact many people around the world by spreading
their anti-Semitic views. Online mapping systems have begun to come under fire
in recent years - and perhaps for a good reason. With the “Jewtropolis”
incident, the problem was that some random person was able to vandalize an
entire system and project their views to do so. Google,
a much larger and more well-known company, relies on a similar system with the
same vulnerabilities. The “map checkers” employed are only human - they
can’t catch every error or vandalism. This is becoming an issue, especially
since the general public puts their complete faith in online map systems like
Snapchat’s and Google’s.
One might argue that changing
New York City to Jewtropolis was not a big deal and was only a joke, however, mislabeling
maps is not something that should be taken so lightly. As a society, we use
maps to label things. Maps help us navigate the massive, confusing world around
us. In fact, according to Dennis Wood – who has a PhD in geography – maps “affirm
the existence of the things on them” (Wood). Without
maps, the very existence of our nations could be brought into question. So
mislabeling the things that, in many ways, hold society together to “make a
joke” at the expense of others can be seen as a sign that something much more
grave than the incident itself is at hand. Perhaps this something is the
rise in hate groups and white supremacy that the United States is facing. When
white supremacists decide who is white and who isn’t, they draw a line between people.
The people on their side of the line are considered “superior”, and the people on
the other side are not. Needless to say, the people who are not considered
white by the white supremacists then face discrimination. Just the act of
declaring your race superior to all others is discriminatory. Jews, unfortunately,
fall into the group of people who have to deal with the consequences of being deemed “nonwhite”
by white supremacists, and the discrimination they face was just affirmed
by the mislabeling of a map.
Why was New York City
chosen? The answer to this isn’t simple and is only known to the person who did
the deed. It’s necessary to mention that other locations were targeted -
however, only NYC’s edit made the map. Even considering this, it is possible to
hypothesize. First of all, New York City is a city known by many and lived in
by many. In places like the Tri-State Area, whenever someone mentions that they
are “going to the city,” they usually mean NYC, even if other cities are closer
(for example, I used to live several hours away from NYC, and that was the only
city I ever thought of for a long time). On Snapchat’s map, for example, even
if the user was not in NYC or even super close to it, NYC is prominently
displayed. Thus, if something “happens” to NYC, a lot of people find out about
it - in this case, an anti-Semitic message was sent. Additionally, NYC
has a huge Jewish population. The Jewish population in New York is only
second to one other place - Israel. However, the population is not very
diffused - it is very heavily concentrated. In NYC, an increasing number of
Jewish children are attending Jewish schools - which separates them from their
non-Jewish peers. This makes it difficult for the two groups to interact and
emphasizes that they are different - and differences in lifestyles can give
rise to discrimination. The interactions between non-Jewish children and Jewish
children are unintentionally limited, which can give the Jews an outsider
status in the eyes of the non-Jewish children. It’s
separation due to differences. If the population was more diffused across
New York, and even if it was more diffused across the United States, this
outsider status could be lessened, and anti-Semitism could become less common.
When populations are concentrated like this, the diffusion of both people and
ideas/religion/culture to other places is just that more important (“The
Concerns of Human Geography”). This could have been another factor that
influenced the person who labeled NYC “Jewtropolis” - the Jewish population is
significantly higher in NYC than anywhere else in the United States.
In conclusion, many
events could have led up to “Jewtropolis.” It could have been a “harmless”
prank or a joke, or it could have been a discriminatory-charged outburst. It’s
true that the person who edited the map could have just done it as a “spur of
the moment” kind of thing, but his/her other, less-successful attempts at
slander via the online mapping system say otherwise. It also can’t be a
coincidence that New York, the “chosen” city, has the world’s second-highest
population of Jews, or that its Jewish population is beginning to isolate
itself. Additionally, it is unlikely that using the mapping system of a
globally-popular social media platform was spontaneous and not pre-planned.
Discrimination towards Jews might not be as well-known as discrimination
towards African Americans or Latinos, but that does not mean that it is any
less appalling, and it should definitely not be making its way onto our maps.
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