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Apr. 10th, 2007 01:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
novapsycheI 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![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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.
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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Date: 2007-04-11 02:56 pm (UTC)Racial epithets are NOT equivalent, no matter what you say, because they have denotations and social context.
If a jailer said to a prisoner, "When you sleep, I'm going to come in there and slit your throat," those words have MUCH more power than if the prisoner said to the jailer, "When I get out of here, I'm going to catch you in your sleep and slit your throat."
The reason is that the jailer has the power, and the prisoner's threat is impotent.
With the history of racial inequality in this country, "nigger" has much more potency than any other racial slur ("Wetback" is a pretty close second considering all the racial animosity and issues with illegal immigration) because it has the baggage of the years of not just slavery, but also Jim Crow, segregation, and discrimination that continues today.
I've known people in the last few years that were denied jobs or were not shown appropriate housing because of racial discrimination (in one case, I knew this because my boss straight-out said he didn't think he'd ever hire a black sales agent), so this is not some issue that happened hundreds of years ago. This is a problem TODAY.