Twitter goes beyond banning ‘misinformation’ to censor satire and memes

August 12, 2021

The infraction? Sharing memes that say vaccine mandates and vaccine passports discriminate against black and brown Americans and are therefore "systemically racist," something the Biden administration absolutely does not want them to be.

August 12, 2021

Saying that a vaccine passport is systemically racist is an opinion, one which is held by a fair number of people, but Twitter refuses to allow this opinion to be present on their platform.

Twitter has, however, allowed the sharing of a New York Times article that shows exactly what Lindsay and others who have shared these memes have said, which is that many black Americans are wary of the vaccine, and withholding access to public life until such time as they get vaccinated is, in essence, withholding access to public life from black people.

The Times writes: "In interviews, Black men and women said that much of their distrust of the coronavirus vaccine was shaped by their own experiences with discrimination or their identity as Black Americans."

August 12, 2021

The memes have the look of a Black Lives Matter protest, and show a black person clearly dismayed at having been locked out of society due to their refusal either to undergo a medical treatment, or to prove that they have undergone said treatment.

August 12, 2021

August 12, 2021

Twitter also engaged in "shadow ban" behavior toward Lindsay's account.

August 12, 2021

Statistically, black and brown Americans are some of those most likely to be hesitant of getting vaccinated. This means that should there be a vaccine credential required to engage in public life, black and brown Americans would be shut out of it.

Additionally, there has been an outcry over election integrity laws that have either passed or been proposed in more than 20 states, many of which require voters to obtain and show a free voter ID to ensure that the person casting a vote is actually the person casting a vote. These laws have been called "Jim Crow 2.0" by President Joe Biden whose administration now advocates for vaccine credentialing by businesses and employers both for customers and staff.

For Americans to be told to believe that one form of ID is racist while another form of ID is not racist, when the former simply states a person's identity and the latter proves a person has undergone a medical treatment, screams cognitive dissonance.

The black and brown communities were also some of those hardest hit during the pandemic. It was reported by multiple news outlets early on in the pandemic, and since, that black communities were bearing the brunt of the coronavirus. This was due to several factors, including the prevalence of pre-existing conditions and the likelihood that those in this demographic worked in "front line" jobs in medical and service industries.

"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shared a report in April that found 33 percent of hospitalized patients with COVID-19 were black, although they made up just 18 percent of the community being evaluated," the AMA reported in May 2020.

It was in response to findings such as these that the Biden administration rolled-out their Covid-containment measures on an "equity first" basis, reaching out specifically to black and brown communities first with testing and then with vaccinations.

those extra efforts, "While [w]hite adults account for the largest share (57 percent) of unvaccinated adults, [b]lack and Hispanic people remain less likely than their [w]hite counterparts to have received a vaccine, leaving them at increased risk, particularly as the variant spreads."