(via nation.com.pk)
Hey the internet, hows your week going? That bad? I can understand. It’s been rough for all of us. Good thing today the President said a bad word while talking about a bad thing and now we can all stop talking about the bad thing and start talking about the bad word, but shhh, don’t say the bad word.
That would be bad. Real bad. It would make people feel uncomfortable, and not the people that word is supposed to make feel uncomfortable, but they probably wouldn’t like it either.
Warning, this next part will have some troubling language. Language used by the leader of the free world and not a rapper or actor in a Quentin Tarantino movie. Reader discretion is advised.
“And it’s not just a matter of it not being polite to say ‘nigger’ in public. That’s not the measure of whether racism still exists or not. It’s not just a matter of overt discrimination. Societies don’t, overnight, completely erase everything that happened 200 to 300 years prior.”
See here’s the the thing. It was never polite to say the N-word in public to black people. I guess it wasn’t polite to say it to them privately either. But really now it seems like it is a matter of not saying the word to ease the feelings of white people. In a weird way this was an inevitable move by white people. For a hundred years whites have been co-opting black culture. We’ve taken music, art, and fashion and now we’ve finally taken being offended by white people saying the n-word for ourselves. “Bold move Whitey,” said by a white person drinking craft beer from Australia while writing a blog on the internet.
It tastes like Guinness, but whiter.
I don’t think the President is the first person to point out that while not saying the N-word is a good thing, it certainly isn’t fixing racism in America. Some would say it can even be patronizing to be offended on someone else’s behalf. But I think we should look at a bit further. There are plenty of people who still don’t understand why saying the N-word is bad just that it is and they shouldn’t do it because something bad will happen if they do. Which isn’t really progress.
To quote a handsome and brilliant stand up comedian, “If your only reason for not saying the N-word is your afraid black people will kick you ass, you’re still a racist.” I think that sums it up pretty well.
The troubling thing is that in the segment of the interview where the President talks about race he made a lot of really good points and out lined real strategy for helping fix America’s Racism problem, but we aren’t talking about any of those. Even in writing this I am feeding into the media distraction machine that prevents things from getting done. We are talking about a word. A powerful word, but still just a word. Because that’s easier than actually enacting change. Change that we need, but change that would make a lot of people feel uncomfortable. We’d rather make a concession like being offended by a word than do anything real.
To quote the same Adonis-like comedian from earlier who put it best several years ago, “We gave up one word to maintain the status quo? What a great deal that was for us.”
What a great deal indeed, and what a good joke. I assume the reason that guy isn’t on television or doing interviews on famous podcasts is because he is too ahead of his time. But back to the point at hand. The President made some good points about fixing America’s racism problem. Most of which come down to investing in people. And the thing is when you invest in people it makes it better for everyone, not just one group. And things need to get better for everyone not just one group. Otherwise we will just be doomed to keep repeating this same shitty cycle over and over again.
