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intertribalSome poetry reading thing at the White House, a rapper named Common is invited (didn't this guy date Serena Williams?), Fox News goes crazy because he's a misogynist and a cop-killer, apparently. Jon Stewart responds. Title is from the first half of the segment, which is here (that half goes into how ridiculous this reading of Common's poem is).
I posted the second half not for Jon Stewart's attempt at rapping but because the hypocrisy/double standards (Johnny Cash and Ted Nugent) are pretty hilarious/pathetic.
The comments at EW are interesting - many of them agree that Fox is going after the wrong target, but they're now disagreeing if race has anything to do with Fox's response. It's just because he attacked Bush in a poem, not because he's a black rapper. So now they're arguing about the race card and etc., and it reminds me of something I thought of a while ago - I think the way kids are taught about racism in this country is all wrong. Racism is seen to equal the Ku Klux Klan and Nazis, and maybe Jim Crow, and everybody agrees that the KKK and Nazis are totally evil and crazy, so basically what it comes down to is "I'm not racist because I'm not evil and crazy." Or, "I'm not racist because I don't literally want to kill every member of another race." And basically it means that for the accuser, being accused of racism is worse than racism itself. So of course we end up talking about that instead of about racism itself.
And the whole thing is a false connection, because that isn't what racism is. It's not genocide. It's not "the absolute worst thing a human being can do" (not that I know what that is). It doesn't make you a KKK Grand Dragon Whatever and it doesn't make you Hitler. It doesn't mark you as someone who would beat up or spit at someone of another race. All it does is put you in the company of most of the other people who share your one-ethnicity-dominant country. It's a problem at the system-level, not the individual-level, and I wonder if maybe that's part of the problem - we don't want to admit we function inside a system, or even a society? Regardless, painting it as this big Boogey Man that individuals are supposed to, like, ward off with torches just makes people less and less willing to admit to their own racist behavior without actually putting an end to racist behavior itself.
Do we need a new word? Because I think racism, as a word, is almost useless at this point. It's just this incendiary flashpoint. Should we start using xenophobic or some variant? It seems to trigger less of a knee-jerk "no no no I am not that!" response, although I don't know why.
I posted the second half not for Jon Stewart's attempt at rapping but because the hypocrisy/double standards (Johnny Cash and Ted Nugent) are pretty hilarious/pathetic.
The Daily Show
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The comments at EW are interesting - many of them agree that Fox is going after the wrong target, but they're now disagreeing if race has anything to do with Fox's response. It's just because he attacked Bush in a poem, not because he's a black rapper. So now they're arguing about the race card and etc., and it reminds me of something I thought of a while ago - I think the way kids are taught about racism in this country is all wrong. Racism is seen to equal the Ku Klux Klan and Nazis, and maybe Jim Crow, and everybody agrees that the KKK and Nazis are totally evil and crazy, so basically what it comes down to is "I'm not racist because I'm not evil and crazy." Or, "I'm not racist because I don't literally want to kill every member of another race." And basically it means that for the accuser, being accused of racism is worse than racism itself. So of course we end up talking about that instead of about racism itself.
And the whole thing is a false connection, because that isn't what racism is. It's not genocide. It's not "the absolute worst thing a human being can do" (not that I know what that is). It doesn't make you a KKK Grand Dragon Whatever and it doesn't make you Hitler. It doesn't mark you as someone who would beat up or spit at someone of another race. All it does is put you in the company of most of the other people who share your one-ethnicity-dominant country. It's a problem at the system-level, not the individual-level, and I wonder if maybe that's part of the problem - we don't want to admit we function inside a system, or even a society? Regardless, painting it as this big Boogey Man that individuals are supposed to, like, ward off with torches just makes people less and less willing to admit to their own racist behavior without actually putting an end to racist behavior itself.
Do we need a new word? Because I think racism, as a word, is almost useless at this point. It's just this incendiary flashpoint. Should we start using xenophobic or some variant? It seems to trigger less of a knee-jerk "no no no I am not that!" response, although I don't know why.
