Maryland is the fourth most prejudiced place in America
And first for most anti-black tweets per city
It is easier than you would think to get stuck in the little bubble that encompasses the University of Maryland and to forget to pay attention to the outside world. Of course, there is and always has been prejudice across the country, but when you are constantly surrounded by thousands of educated students, most of whom share modern beliefs, it’s easy to forget that the rest of the world isn’t just one big frat party.
Even with new laws and broadening civil rights, like with the legalization of same sex marriage, there are still plenty of extremists out there just waiting to tear people apart- often via social media.
A Wisconsin based apartment hunting business called Abodo created a list of the most prejudiced places in America which may make people think twice about where they want to buy property. The researchers at Abodo based their conclusions on which states and cities had the largest amount of derogatory tweets about minorities between June 2014 and December 2015.
For all you Marylanders, the findings of the Abodo study hit just a little too close to home.
The Free State comes in at number four on the list of the most derogatory tweets overall, and with the help of Baltimore, it moves up to number one on the list of the most anti-black tweets per city. Because of the many racial issues in Baltimore that have made national news over the past few years, this may not come as a surprise to most people.
However, it puts everything in perspective. All of this hate is occurring in our own theoretical back yard, and what are we doing to help it? Not that much. Now maybe people in Baltimore simply tweet more than people in other cities, but either way there are still an immense amount of Maryland citizens who need to learn to be more accepting of others.
Everyone, college students especially, must do their best to keep their minds open and to stand up for minorities so that when our generation runs the country, we will live in a more peaceful society – a society that hopefully does not have any political leaders who endorse the degradation of minorities like some of the politicians do these days.
And if you need a silver lining to all of this, you can take solace in the fact that neither the city of Baltimore nor Maryland as a whole made the lists for most anti Hispanic, anti transgender or anti gay tweets, so it could be worse.