Racists in Brazil are being forced to confront the racist comments they post on the internet because of a new campaign's initiative to make billboards of these comments planted near the racists home.
Led by the non-profit Criola organization which states it "works to defend black women rights, in a cross and integrated perspective" the campaign, "Virtual racism, real consequences," gives racist commenters on Facebook or Twitter anonymity by blurring their personal information such as their photo and name on the billboard while putting their comments on a public stage in the real world. The group uses location tags on the comments to find out where the user lives to erect the billboard, Business Insider reports.
The Criola group says, "We omit names and faces of the authors because we have no intention of exposing anyone. We just want to educate people so that in future they think about the consequences before posting racist comments." The group's campaign started after Brazilians bombarded racist comments against Brazilian journalist Maria Júlia Coutinho, the first black weather anchor on Brazilian prime-time news, on Facebook in July, in the same ignorant vein as the one pictured above, which relatively translates to "I got home stinking of black people." As Business Insider states, "preto" is an offensive word for "black" in Portuguese.
