Bernard Hopkins Lost a Fan

Off Topic
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[quote]TheBodyGuard wrote:
dk44 wrote:
I don’t see why Imus can’t say what the fuck he wants, why B-Hop can’t say what the fuck he wants, and why Joe fucking Blow can’t say what he wants.

Let the consumer decide. If you like Imus you will keep listening, if you like B-Hop you will keep watching (or if you hate him you would still watch in hopes of him losing). If you want to hear Nas say “fuck whitey” then go buy his CD and listen to it until you go deaf, and the same goes for David Allen Coe.

Both sides get to pissy about this shit. I can understand people questioning Obama and his pastor, since he is running to represent all people, but fucking Hopkins, Imus, and the rest of these morons don’t represent shit so who cares.

I actually agree very strongly with this. However, I take exception with minorities having free license to make these comments, in humor or otherwise. I take exception to the obvious double standard. Listen to black radio sometime or watch a black comedian and you will see this double standard at work. Yes, I can change the station if I want - I know that. That’s NOT the point.

[/quote]

Yes I understand what you are saying but part of me thinks that the double standard is justified sometimes.

If a black person uses a racial slur directed toward a white person it is certainly offensive but generally it is more of a local thing, an expression of hatred or anger toward a single person. When a white person uses a racial slur toward a black person it carries the weight of hundreds of years of oppression, rape, slavery, etc.

Any word or action carries an effect not just because of what it is but what it connotes historically as well. The swastika might be derived from a Indian symbol of good luck (if memory serves me right?) but you better believe that history has irrevocably altered its meaning now. Racial slurs just carry more weight and meaning when going from white to black than black to white.

Mostly when I think about topics like this I keep coming back to the South Park episode that deals with this. The lesson: you just won’t understand it if you aren’t on the minority side of the fence so you might as well not try. If we all just act right and treat people for who they are and how they act slowly this kind of shit will dissapear.

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[quote]jtrinsey wrote:

If a black person uses a racial slur directed toward a white person it is certainly offensive but generally it is more of a local thing, an expression of hatred or anger toward a single person. When a white person uses a racial slur toward a black person it carries the weight of hundreds of years of oppression, rape, slavery, etc.

[/quote]

I disagree with part of this.

Racism is not an individual thing. The whole meaning of the word is that it covers an entire race. A black person having a prejudice against whites covers the entire white race just as much as a white person being racist against blacks.

Racial hatred is never based upon a single person. If your hatred is narrowed down to a single person, you’re not really being racist anymore, you just hate that person as an individual.

It just so happens that racial slurs against blacks have a lot more history behind them, and thus carry a little more weight. If a black guy calls me a cracker, I would probably laugh, because that’s a stupid insult to me. However, if that word was used while my ancestors were being lynched, I probably wouldn’t be laughing.