The Student News Site of North Carolina A&T State University

The A&T Register

The Student News Site of North Carolina A&T State University

The A&T Register

The Student News Site of North Carolina A&T State University

The A&T Register

Aggie Spotlight: Aggie Goes Viral from Class Presentation

Michael Thomas was shocked to learn that a classmate photographed him presenting a project entitled White People Are Crazy and that this photograph had not only been posted on www.tumblr.com but also received 200 notes on the site within one hour of being posted. 

Since its initial post nearly three weeks ago, this photo has received: 100,000 notes on Tumblr, about 20,000 retweets and favorites on Twitter, and has circulated through Facebook, Instagram, and several other social media platforms.

Thomas, a senior English major with a concentration in creative writing created this project for his African American Male Writers class. He was assigned a literary work and was asked to analyze the author’s message about black people. “After looking at Amiri Baraka’s work ‘Dutchman’, I felt like the honest point he was trying to make in his most reduced terms was that white people are crazy,” he explains.

He shares that the general response to this post has varied “…scholarly circles are trying to dissect this ‘White People Are Crazy’ concept, and bored kids on Tumblr are also talking about it; a little bit of everyone.”

Mainly, Thomas feels that the concept for his presentation is familiar to society. “One of the reasons it is so popular is because I did not say anything new. It is just that someone finally said something that people have been wanting to say since the beginning of time. There were a lot of people who identify with it and want to say the same thing just as loud and clear” add Thomas.

Despite its popularity, there has been a lot of negative feedback regarding this post. Thomas explains “there are a lot of people who are upset, read into it way too deeply, are defensive and claim that it is racist.”

Not written with a racist intent, Thomas rebuts critics stating that whether or not the  idea is racist is still up for debate. “It was meant to be humorous…to be honest, black folks are crazy too. We are all crazy, but we are focusing on [white’s] crazy right now.”

Thomas says this project was not created with ill intent, but rather to offer an interesting presentation to the class as he thought the title would be funny. “It was designed to get a reaction. But I did not know until most of the day had gone by that the picture was taken and getting notes on Tumblr… I was not attempting to do anything big, I was just paying attention to the world around me, like I normally do.”

In his personal life he enjoys writing about “…critical race theory, and analyzing what race looks like in our country, how various races interact and exist in our country. I have been writing about this for a long time, but this is the first time people have paid any attention to it. There will be a lot of continued writing on my website www.productmt.com.” He wants to figure out “…how to have fun doing what I do in this public space, and I think we should all be figuring that out too.”

With the attention from this post, Thomas wants to encourage fellow Aggies and social media followers “…to pay attention to the world around you and always feel free to generate questions and make observations. I do not think my ideas about race are any more valuable than anyone else’s who has experienced race in this country, which is everyone. We need to have more open dialogue on campus about race about things deeper than the light skin versus dark skin issues. I think it would be great for everyone to have real conversations and get into the semantics of why race has the impact it does in this country. It is necessary and is one of the ways to cope with not living in a post-racial society. I do not think silence is the solution. Let us get comfortable talking about it because it is going to affect us regardless. ”

Dele Odumosu – Contributor

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