Canadian filmmaker Omar Albach took to the streets of Hamilton, Ontario — hometown of the soldier who was shot to death last week in Ottawa — to conduct what he says was a “social experiment” in which a white man appeared to confront a Muslim man.
Zakaria Ghanem dressed in a traditional Muslim gown while Devin Giamou, berates him at a bus stop.
One of the men got punched in the face, the CBC says. It was the white guy.
While it is in some small ways heartening to see that some of our neighbors to the North in Hamilton have no problem with directly confronting that type of bigotry, this is just one more piece in what I see as an alarming trend of well-intentioned people using social media and the ready availability of video recording equipment to conduct ‘social experiments’ and convey some sort of message. In no way is what this group did an experiment, it was a deliberate stunt designed to incite some sort of reaction from a group of unsuspecting people. It’s just like the old Jay Leno bit “Jaywalking” where you go and ask a bunch of people on the street some easy trivia, and infer that all New Yorkers are a bunch of idiots from the selected answers. Or worse, reminds me of the show Jackass. The difference is that this has a serious topic behind it, and real repercussions for those involved.