novapsyche | (no subject)

Entry tags:

media,
race

(no subject)

I know it's silly of me to continue to watch the thread over at MSNBC over the Imus controversy. It's degenerated even from where it was two days ago. I think I read it because like a train wreck it is so grotesque you can't look away.

There are people who chastise Black people for being "thin-skinned" and overly sensitive. "It's just a word! Get over it!" Or, "I haven't seen you chained and picking cotton lately." As

greeneyedkzin said over in

ginmar's journal, "Once again, we have a demonstration of how 'cancha take a joke' is asking less-privileged people to be complicit in their own denigration."

Then you have people who switch roles and claim victim status. Someone actually said, "It has become a social stigma to be a white person." Someone else stated that while Blacks are allowed to call each other the N-word, if a White person says something racial then "they" (Blacks) want to kill them. Kill them.

Remember, this controversy started out by a celebrity, who happens to be a Caucasian male, saying denigrating things about basketball players, who happen to be black and female. But somehow, the conversation (if you want to call it that) has drifted into Blacks wanting to kill Whites.

Then you have people who equate racism with a fad, like bellbottoms. "People of my generation have gotten over racism." "It's so 1990s."

I really fear for the future of my country.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I think this goes a lot the same way debates about rape goes. Yes, men are raped. Yes, there are women who make false claims of rape, and men are victimized when that happens. However, neither of those excuse the fact that there's an unacceptable level of sexual assault going on in this country and that a change in societal attitudes about gender and sexuality is deeply needed.

Yes, there are some minorities who "play the race card." Yes, there are some Black folks (or insert minority of choice) who are think-skinned and are constantly looking for a fight about race. Yes, there are some minorities who engage in behavior that reinforces cultural stereotypes or do a disservice to the cause of racial justice.

None of that negates the facts that:
1. Racism is still alive and well in the USA. It's not just for your grandfather's generation.
2. People need to be called out and publicly censured when they make racist comments.
3. A better way of discussing and addressing racial issues in this country needs to be found (though fuck me if I know how to do it...).

sorry about all the typos. The more passionate I get, the worse the typing.
-"debates about rape go"
-"thin-skinned"

Yes, there are some Black folks (or insert minority of choice) who are think-skinned and are constantly looking for a fight about race.

The problem is that every time you give those people a national soap-box to spout from all it does is EMPHASIZE differences rather than smooth them over. This Imus thing would be a non-issue if it hadn't gotten the news media in a frenzy, and that frenzy has people picking sides largely by race, which does more damage to racial relations than that comment! Was his comment funny? To some people it was, to some it wasn't, but that's the case with any kind of humor. Find me a comedian who does NOT do any racially-charged jokes and I'll point out a comedian who doesn't have much of an audience. Almost all jokes have a "victim", whether it be slapstick or stand-up, but most of the victims laugh with the comic. You see jokes charged with gender stereotypes, racial stereotypes, economic stereotypes, class stereotypes, and so on, but that's just the standard. Hell, that's Carlos Mencia's stock-in-trade and he's a funny guy! He makes jokes about black people stealing the "bling" at the Olympics and the black people in the audience laugh with him because it's a compliment. Maybe it's a delivery issue, that Imus just isn't funny, but you can't say what he said was any more racist than Carlos's opening jokes.

I think there are a lot of assumptions in your comments here, namely that

1. The goal should be to minimize differences.
2. That it's OK for one person to make racially-charged jokes just because another person "gets away" with it (Tu Quoque fallacy here?).
3. That people are picking sides by race.

I'm not saying you're wrong on any of those, just that they're pretty big assumptions.

1) The goal should be to minimize differences OF TREATMENT. A diverse culture is fine so long as no segment of it is exclusive to outsiders, which black culture really is. You can't both say "We're different, we want to be treated differently" and "Treat us as equals." The two are mutually exclusive.

2) If it's not OK for ANYBODY to make racially-charged jokes, your first mission should be to shut down all stand-up comedy in this country. Once you do that, THEN it's fair to start banging on the doors of guys who do that on the radio. You can't call what Imus said "despicable, deplorable, unconscionable" while at the same time laughing at Chappelle's skits about Whitey. They're equally racist, but (in my opinion) neither was said in hatred like Mel Gibson's or Michael Richards's were. There's a difference racially-charged and racial-hatred charged.

If you wont' watch a Chappelle show episode, how would YOU know what kind of jokes he makes? For your information, he makes racially-related jokes, but doesn't "dig on whitey." I also don't think Mencia makes (for the most part) racial-hatred jokes, he's usually making fun of racial stereotypes.

Imus wasn't being clever, he was just being racist. There's a difference between making fun of a stereotype and perpetuating it.

I'm not a big fan of the same kind of humor when it comes to gender, either. I am being consistent. I HATE the kind of standup that goes, "Oh, you know how women are. They're always doing X, Y and Z. And you know dudes are different, they're always doing A, B, and C."

I HAVE seen Chappelle show episodes. Four or five. That's *why* I won't watch any more of them.

Chapelle goes around calling specific people bitches and whores?

Because that's what much of this is about. Imus did not make general statements. He called a specific group of women whores, using racial epithets.

I don't know that Chappelle et al have ever done anything similar.

Chapelle goes around calling specific people bitches and whores?

Huh? I don't think so. I don't watch his show just because I don't think it's funny.

Another assumption:
If you ignore it, it'll go away.

I don't think that's true. I think people need to be called out on their racist comments every time. I'm not brave enough to do it every time, but I try.

We need a climate where it's not acceptable for people to make racist comments without penalty. I'm talking social penalty, obviously. People have freedom of speech, but there's also freedom to socially sanction racist jackasses.

We need a climate where it's not acceptable for people to make racist comments without penalty.

In that case it has to be all-encompassing. Racist comments (of the Gibson ilk) and racist jokes (Mencia et al) are often too close together to tell the difference. Often it's a matter of tone, delivery, context, and yes, even race of the speaker. While 90-95% of the time you can tell the difference, satire's a fine art form and often intent is the only difference between hate-speech and mockery of same, and intent isn't always easy to discern. (Especially in print form.) For example, is Apu on The Simpsons a perpetuation of a racial stereotype, or mockery of that stereotype? Or maybe both? Mockery of a thing DOES perpetuate it. Fighting over it DOES perpetuate it. You want the stereotypes and hate-speech to go away? Get rid of all of it, then. And on both sides of the aisle. No more of black guys saying, "Hey, my nigga!" to one another, no more rap songs talking about bitches and hos, no more of any of that. As long as it's perpetuated on one side, the other will use it. You don't hear Jews calling one another kikes, do you?

Picking and choosing comments to slam just because it's a slow news week makes things worse, not better. Especially when it's a guy like Imus, whose entire career was built on being a shock-jock. People listen to him HOPING to be offended, just like Howard Stern or Ice-T (back in his rapper days) or a hundred others, so when he says something offensive it's hardly a surprise. What you're talking about is basically cutting out an entire segment of "acceptable" speech, and while I think it's a great idea I don't see it happening any time soon.

Please be clear that I'm not talking about censorship, but public *censure*. Calling people on unacceptably racist talk, every time, is what I'm talking about.

I realize that it can be hard to draw the line, but I think that's where you leave it up to folks to go with their conscious, whether they think, like the commenter below, that Mencia and his ilk need to go as well as the Imus-types, or whether you're OK with people who make racially-charged jokes that make fun of stereotypes while you will not support comedians, artists, and so on who make blatantly racist jokes or comments.

I really have to say that I:
- agree with
- applaud
- am heartened by
...every word that I have read, that you have posted thus far in this thread.

I am a brown-skinned Caribbean man of predominantly African (but significantly 'blended') extraction, who does not identify in the slightest with the perspectives often expressed by African-Americans on the issue of race.

Racism has been primarily an intellectual exercise for me. I've observed it, but have never really cared; I've always felt secure in my own familial/cultural/economic roots to feel primarily amused by the few instances.

I do find myself outraged more and more, however, by the blindness and hypocrisy that seems more and more to be spouted by others like me- others who have not personally been touched.

I have not been hurt by racism, but I have read and studied and looked, and its ongoing effects are clear. To deny American racism is an injustice on the order of denial of the Jewish Holocaust or of the near-extermination of Native American cultures.

Justice starts with remembrance.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only