(no subject)

[novapsyche]

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.

Comments

[vrax.livejournal.com]

"I really fear for the future of my country."

Shit, I fear for the present.

I remember the first time I went to a corner store with my best friend as a kid. I noticed that one of the clerks was following us, which seemed odd and foreign to me at the time. I asked my friend "Hey man, why do you think that guy's watching us?" He answered "Because I'm black."

That was my first experience with racial discrimination but it wouldn't be my last.

Imus needs to go. Frankly, Mencia should go too. There's nothing wrong with pointing out, and reveling in, the differences that we all bring to the table, but when any joke or punchline relies on a negative stereotype for effect I think that's just hate speech with a smily face on it.

Chappelle is not in the same category as Mencia when it comes to productive racial commentary as comedy. There is a difference there folks.

The big issue, for me at any rate, is doing something to eliminate the constant boogeyman fear-mongering on the nightly news. How many times do I have to hear "An unidentified black male"? When will they change the 'rules' of broadcasting to allow single victim non-white murders to be covered. Or robberies committed by whites. And we've got to do something about the fact that more and more minority males are spending more and more of their lives incarcerated.

Oh goodness, I could go on forever. Anyway, novapsyche, it's not silly to fight the good fight, nor to keep watching lest an opportunity go unnoticed.

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

I don't know that the fight in which I participated was good. I started off well, but as things... degenerated, I began responding similarly. Not completely debased, like some (my GOD, the language there is astonishing), but, for example, when someone piped up that he had several Black friends, I replied, "Spoken like a true bigot."

Not my shining hour as far as race relations go.

[vrax.livejournal.com]

But here you are reflecting on it and hopefully learning from it, and that's the best any of us can do.

Also, that is a total classic bigot line.