novapsyche | (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.

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Carlos Mencia or Dave Chappelle are making fun of racism and racists and are making fun of racial stereotypes, while Imus was just making an out-right racial slur.

I'd feel the same no matter what race the person making the comment or telling the joke was. Lenny Bruce was a white guy who was criticizing racism and forcing people to confront it with his infamous listing of racial slurs (i.e. jigaboo, kike, and so on). That's comedy-as- social critique.

Nothing of what Imus said was clever social critique; it was the equivalent of some old white bastard shouting, "Nigger," at a black person passing on the street and then saying, "Cancha take a joke?" when the passing black person becomes offended.

Part of my problem with this whole thing is that I can't even FIND what Imus said. Amidst all this controversy about how bad a guy he is I can't even find his original statement! He said something about the team being "nappy-headed hos", but without the context I can't even tell if it was a slur or satire or sarcasm. And that, precisely, highlights my point: even if the context makes that statement as vile as everyone's saying it was, the fussing about it makes the issue bigger than the initial wrong ever was.

EDIT: OK, I finally found it. Those same lines would've been completely ignored if they were spouted by a rapper, or even anyone else who happened to be black, and in addition are pretty much this guy's standard schtick if I read things right. Was it racist? Yeah. But I still say it's not on the same level as the Gibson/Richards lines. This guy's like Howard Stern; controversy ==> ratings, so he says shocking things ON PURPOSE. So do rap artists, and they're paid huge money and nobody looks twice. Why are they not taken to task for every record, or even every song? You can't have that kind of double-standard. You can't. That, in itself, is at least as racist.

I don't listen to rappers who perpetuate the ho/pimpin' thing either, for the most part. I listen to a few who make fun of that stereotype, though. No double-standard here.

You ARE being consistent across the board. You aren't a fan of anyone who makes sweeping generalizations in their humor or derogatory comments in their art. It's those who are attacking Imus while turning a blind eye to a far more common black source of the same language that have double-standards.