Ever wish someone had something insightful to say about the use of the N-word? Well, look no further:
The N-word is a grotesque, odious, evil stain on the English language. … Yet far from receding in society, it’s spreading; out of the once clearly defined confines of private usage in the black community, into the public hallways of every school in America. This has to be wrong, doesn’t it? Better, surely, to have it expunged completely. Eradicated, obliterated, tied to a literary post and whipped into such brutal submission that it never rears its vicious head again.
Those words are from the world’s leading expert on race relations–drum roll, please–Piers Morgan?
Not surprisingly there has been lots of backlash. And also not surprisingly, Mr. Morgan can’t seem to understand why.
Team Blackness also discussed net neutrality, how street harassment is a two-way street (?), and the no memes no #CosbyMeme.
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aimai
Really? Tied to a whipping post? Really? OFFS.
In other news I’m reading a marvellous book that everyone should read “Writing With Scissors: American Scrapbooks from the Civil War to the Harlem Renaissance.” by Ellen Gruber Garvey. It is just one of the best books I’ve read about readers, newspapers, the civil war, the battle for the meaning of the civil war, and African American responses to degrading representations of their community in the white press. This book is so multifaceted that you can just keep coming back and back to it, always learning something new and something that puts today’s bizarre relationship between race, politics, and popular media representations into new perspective.
Amir Khalid
This bit made me cringe.
Oh, and the doppelgänger gremlin has lightly brushed past your post again.
Face
A word so offensive that it’s used in nearly all rap/hip-hop lyrics (or was, from the early 90s to mid 00’s). A word so repulsive to Blacks that Black athletes routinely use it as a term of endearment to each other in locker rooms, sidelines, etc. A word so verboten that the NFL banned its use on the field, yet the largely African-American-dominated NBA did not. Such the strange word.
Betty Cracker
@aimai: Yeah, that “tied to the whipping post” thing makes me suspect Morgan was trolling. I don’t know for sure, since I don’t give a shit what he says, ever, about anything. But it’s hard to believe even a human being with as tenuous as grasp on sentience as Morgan wouldn’t understand that that phrasing was…unfortunate.
Baud
@aimai:
He was sooooo close….
Amir Khalid
@Face:
Is it a word that you yearn to use yourself?
Cervantes
Wait — “street harassment is a two-way street”?
How?
Face
@Amir Khalid: No.
Villago Delenda Est
Piers Morgan needs to be beaten senseless with a nerf bat.
Shouldn’t take more than one hit. He’s there already.
This:
marks him as too stupid to be allowed to continue to live. Pretty much what I’d expect from a Brit who worked for one of the vilest creatures on this planet, Rupert Murdoch.
Morgan’s migration across the pond is emblematic of the rapid decline of CNN under Time-Warner MBA asshat management. CNN is dogshit from top to bottom now. No wonder Ted Turner self-exiled to Montana where he could have a good chance of never seeing how his child has been abused by the worthless swill of Time-Warner.
Cervantes
@Face:
I see you like thinking about words. Here’s one you need to master: “context.”
Quaker in a Basement
Morgan is not just a white man blundering into a conversation among black people, he’s a British white man blundering into a conversation among American black people. I can’t fathom why he supposes that his opinion matters.
Cervantes
@Quaker in a Basement:
Yes, you can.
Fathom a little bit harder.
Besides, if he were to let a little thing like ignorance of the topic keep him out of conversations …
ruemara
@Cervantes:
Assumes facts not in evidence.
Lee
If you have read through the twitter feed of someone under the age of 19, you will see it too many times.
KG
Jeremy Clarkson should be knighted just for punching Piers Morgan. Sure, it’s been a decade, but it’s still award worthy.
gussie
I call my wife a dirty little bitch sometimes, and describe exactly how much I enjoy her big ass, so I don’t see why I can’t say the same thing in a business meeting. Women. So illogical.
KG
@gussie: so, then, you’re not a Will Ferrell character?
Calouste
Piers Morgan used to be the editor of the (no longer existing) News of the World. That’s all you need to know about him.
Another Holocene Human
@Quaker in a Basement: I love getting cartoonish lectures on American racism by white Brits who turn around and show such little self-awareness of their own ignorance and failings on such issues, case in point: Warren Ellis. Let me wank on and on about how HP Lovecraft was such a big racist while I turn a superhero team lead by a Black man into an almost all white team lead by an avatar of moi, and devote endless embarrassing pages and even whole issues to various Asian cultures I don’t understand and certainly don’t speak the language to, oh look, taking a detour into American South to deliver a Very Special message about American racism that I fantasized up while thinking up retorts to online trolls on my livejournal because I refuse to either stick to what I know or do actual research beyond watching movies….
RaflW
@Quaker in a Basement:
Because part of Whiteness is the assumption that what a white person says or thinks is always germane, always additive to a conversation or issue.
Amir Khalid
@KG:
Then again, Jeremy Clarkson has his own history of uttering racist slurs on Top Gear, for which he is on a final warning from the BBC. So he’s most likely not gong to be on the honours list anytime soon.
Quaker in a Basement
@RaflW: Well, yeah, there’s that. If only my people could hush up and listen sometimes.
Amir Khalid
@Quaker in a Basement:
He might conceivably claim to be speaking with some personal insight, his wife being black (albeit not American).
Villago Delenda Est
I might note that this sentence:
while true, shares those qualities with any number of other words in the English language. Slurs against “the other” are common in every language there is. Even in the idealized, utopian future of Star Trek, slurs are being invented against the various alien races that the Federation encounters.
Culture of Truth
but white people were whipped too!!
rikyrah
Black twitter trolled him but good
Belafon
@Culture of Truth: Starship Troopers doesn’t count.
RaflW
Mmmmm, no.
The N-word is a grotesque, odious, evil stain on the history of white Americans.
Also, many complicit Brits as well as colonialists of a number of nations.
The stain is on us, not on the language. I get that he was probably speaking more broadly than the literal language, but my point is that calling it a stain on the language separates (and thus deemphasizes) the behavior of people by focusing on the language of people.
No amount of “out, out damn spot” (which is what I think Piers is hoping for with the outright ban idea) will cleanse the language. It is us owning the legacy of white supremacy, and working to dismantle it, that could wash away the stain of past action implicit in and freighted in nigger.
Amir Khalid
By the way, how should we look at incidents like this?
cmorenc
Frankly, I join Piers in failure to understand why the N-word shouldn’t be considered unforgivably racist when said by anyone other than an AA person (except e.g. in literature or dramatic performances where it is appropriate to the times presented e.g. Huck Finn) – and an unacceptable form of self-disrespect by AA persons. If that somehow makes me inadequately clued in to the socio-ethnic subtleties of contemporary times, then so be it – the practice of AA’s calling each other the N-word as e.g. an affectionately abrasive or sarcastic sign of familiarity is NOT constructively productive. But I don’t expect you all to stop saying that just because some befuddled cracker said you shouldn’t (and if your point is that I’m too much of a befuddled outsider to have any right to comment on it – well, I’m still spot-on right that you aren’t helping yourself any saying it, even just among each other.
FridayNext
@Villago Delenda Est:
In fact the word “alien” to mean someone not from here, is a bit suspect when used in the context of interstellar flight, especially on planets that have no indigenous sentient life (as is often the case in Star Trek and other sci-fi universes.) In the “Alien” movie franchise who really is the alien and who isn’t?
Belafon
@cmorenc: Look at what he suggested we do to the word, and think real hard about the imagery. Also, what @RaflW said.
Cacti
Yes indeed.
“Nigger” has always been closely confined to the black community.
Suburban whites who use the term in good faith just can’t understand what all the fuss is about.
…sigh…
Cacti
@cmorenc:
Now that is some high quality whitesplaining.
gene108
I think it might sometimes be better for white people to use the word nigger, because you’d then know who’s a flaming asshole racist.
Right now the flaming asshole racists reverting to dog whistles have a bunch of plausible deniability to deflect from the fact they are flaming asshole racists.
Tree With Water
Morgan could make it an regular event, “today’s banished slur”. After all, everyone would get behind at least one. He could even have a little fun with it. “Tonight’s word is ‘bimbo’, because Sarah Palin has feelings too”.
RaflW
Certainly there are other strong thinkers on this, but I tend to turn to Ta-Nehisi Coates as one of my ways to check my own white guy thoughts.
Last night he tweeted
As I said earlier in the thread, the language (and any banning) is just a marker. It’s a deeply wounded set of letters who’s bleeding will not be staunched by their removal from sight.
RaflW
@Cacti:
I’ll be using that, if you don’t mind. Please accept my gratitude. Let me know if I owe more than that, because appropriating your words without fair compensation would just be me perpetuating my privilege.
BGK
OT, but needful of an explanation:
I recently saw the phrase used in a comment of disbelief at what some bobblehead said, “chucktodds gotta chucktodd.” I thought I understood, but am now having deep self-doubt.
What is the defining characteristic of a “chucktodd?” Also too, what is a concise definition of “to chucktodd?”
Thanks in advance.
Quaker in a Basement
@Amir Khalid: Then his wife might have something relevant to say. Mr. Morgan doesn’t acquire it by marriage.
Roger Moore
@Quaker in a Basement:
Because people pay him to say what’s on his mind. Give somebody a paid platform, and there’s a pretty good chance they’ll believe their opinion matters. The dumber they are, the more likely they are to believe that their opinion on any topic is valid and valuable.
Cacti
@RaflW:
I can’t take credit for it.
The first time I saw it was when it was used to describe Rand Paul’s visit to Howard University, when he decided he needed to explain black history to black students, at a premiere historically black university.
Another Holocene Human
@RaflW: +1
Amir Khalid
@Quaker in a Basement:
Actually, my bad. I’d mistaken him for Niall Ferguson, whose wife actually is black. (All these white people look the same to me.) Forget I said it.
Another Holocene Human
@Roger Moore: I thought his job was to put his nose up entertainment figures’ tuchuses so they would amaze and delight an audience of geriatrics in between commercials for [pills] and [potions] and bathtubs you can walk into without risk of a fall.
Cacti
@Roger Moore:
And he has an English accent. In this country, that gives someone saying stupid shit an immediate patina of authority. If he said it with a southern drawl, he’d just be regarded as your average redneck.
Another Holocene Human
@RaflW: That’s very true–look at how “disabled” replaced “handicapped” (and continues to be policed) even though linguistically “handicapped” is superior*. (“Disabled” is such a clunker that a large swathe of advocates went about immediately and unsuccessfully trying to replace it as soon as it hit ascendancy in 1990.)
*-and before you police me, I suggest you fucking google your misconception of where that word comes from and what it means and STILL means. thanks.
MaxL
You should definitely start using “whitesplaining” all the time. You’ll be a comment thread hero from 2009. And because condescending FTW.
Another Holocene Human
To continue the discussion of Mississippi from earlier, it seems like the Southeast has some overlapping challenges:
A white population that is evangelical-Republican and who stokes racial resentment
A Black population that faces voter suppression and intimidation and can’t even break white/GOP super-majorities in the state leges
Many majority-minority districts (towns, cities, counties) where the minority–whites–have political and financial control
Radio Rwanda is on 24/7 but very little of opposition voices get through (exception is the Tom Joyner Morning Show but whites as a rule aren’t tuning in, so white liberals and lefties feel so alone)
Massive income inequality and corporate control plus nothing like labor laws, RTW, and massive on-the-job intimidation
Local corruption and this includes both political parties. Lots of soft corruption where a wealthy cabal run local government and steer all monies to their pet projects and enrich their friends (aka “honest graft”) while majority of residents basically have no say in all of these tax breaks/development projects, road projects, which schools open and close, just numerous issues that affect them directly
Big airdrops of cash and hate whipped up daily to keep GOP Senators in place
Hate churches
Quaker in a Basement
@Amir Khalid: Forget you said what? Whatever. Carry on.
Another Holocene Human
@Another Holocene Human: Targeted political organizing to get Blacks in power in Black communities is an obvious starting place. That’s going on in Georgia right now, starting from the Atlanta power base. (Tally’s another power base which is part of the reason their district went blue this time. Jacksonville could be in the future but the undertow of corruption has smothered efforts for now. Tally is a college town while Jax is a “Christian” town which kinda says it all.) Jackson, MS has the potential to become a minibase although it doesn’t have anything like the size/wealth/resources of ATL.
Evangelical churches are experiencing a slow–too slow for my taste–loss, especially of young people. The internet has helped atheists and other dissenters find each other and to organize. Gen-X and younger white activists are bringing court cases all over the Southeast challenging church/state collusion. This is important politically because the evangelical movement became an arm of the Republican Party and the ‘quitters’ are not just rejecting the religion they are rejecting the political philosophy and propaganda they’ve been fed through the churches as well. There are nowhere near enough of these quitters in electoral terms but they have been important in terms of direct activism.
Dem Party corruption–this is a serious issue that hurts the prospects for shared power. The GOP is only too eager to encourage this and thus delegitimize Dem leadership and the Dem party can’t seem to do anything on their own to address it. I think it only really gets challenged with real grassroots power-building. Groups outside the party registering people to vote and taking on local elections and local spending decisions.
RaflW
@MaxL: I’m open to hearing why that would be condescending.
I’m also curious where, above, I said I’d use it “all the time.”
Major Major Major Major
I will say that I get a sadistic thrill every time I get to say ‘faggot’ in front of breeders.
Nothing quite so fraught as the linguistic relationship with the n-word but it’s a fun little power grab.
ETA: I’m gay, obviously
Citizen_X
Kind of how I feel about the given name “Piers.”
Also, who the hell appointed him American Word Cop?
Another Holocene Human
Years ago the Communist Party funded some efforts to organize workers in cotton mills in the South but they never put the manpower or the money to see such efforts through. Nowadays it seems as though the fascists have total mindshare of poor whites in the South making bi-racial organizing efforts impossible (see: Tennessee) even though most people don’t really give a shit about “social equality” (cats and dogs living together!) any more. (The Communists were thrown into a tizzy over local demands to run a string through the union hall separating Blacks from whites … the organizers resisted, then caved, then got fired by Party headquarters for allowing it, lol.)
I should explain that “social equality” was a code word for the end of segregation. Whites in the South do, overall, care a great deal about equality and hate the union precisely because it is a vehicle for African-American social, political, financial, and physical advancement. Also from what I’ve seen a lot of delusional souls taking a prisoner’s paradox choice to avoid the union thinking that management will make them a supervisor but apparently not catching on that every other white male in the workplace of a certain age did the same thing so guess what you’re not special. But go on, keep kissing the ass of people you hate.
Another Holocene Human
@Citizen_X: Piers is less Frenchy than Pierre.
rea
I’ve been run down
I’ve been lied to
And I don’t know why
I let that mean woman make me a fool
She took all my money
Wrecks my new car
Now she’s with one of my good time buddies
They’re drinkin’ in some cross town bar
Sometimes I feel
Sometimes I feel
Like I’ve been tied to the whipping post
Tied to the whipping post
Tied to the whipping post
Good Lord, I feel like I’m dyin’
Another Holocene Human
@Major Major Major Major: Try saying breeders in front of breeders these days, wow. Flame wars on RawStory within the last month on that one, couldn’t figure out if it was the same disingenuous jerks who scream about the word ‘cis’ (obviously the correct word is “straight” /sarcasm) or if it’s the same confused people who sincerely believed that handicapped meant a beggar and didn’t know santorum was the name of a senator until 2012 or who shared KONY 2012 on FB repeating crap they don’t understand because they weren’t born yet when Queer Nation was flinging that word around as an ironic play on Religious Right aspirations and pretensions, or if it’s just babes in the woods who sense something pejorative about being ‘marked’ instead of their usual state of being unmarked (“straight”, again) combined with gee golly whillickers, that sounds like something out of a sci-fi horror movie.
Nope, can’t call them “breeders” any more, because it hurts their fee-fees and they have no interest in coming in on the joke. A little part of me feels like we won our rights but lost our allies. Maybe even lost our community. WTF is going on in the online trans community right now? What I’ve gathered is that apparently being a gender outlaw makes you a suppressive person because “REAL” trans people are actually gender conformists whose biological details are not your business, okay I’m cool on the not your business but I can’t believe I’ve just been kicked out again? Wha-huh? How did trans go from being an inclusive label for gender and sexual minorities to being some sort of super-narrowly-defined label for some sort of super essentialist/reductionist/medicalist bullshit that should have stayed in the 1960s? Ugh.
MaxL
@RaflW: How would it not be condescending? Would you ever say blacksplaining?
Not looking to be the language monitor. But they really do hate us because of the affect of smug intellectual superiority. Nobody will ever agree with us if the first thing we say is one word shorthand for “You have no authentic perspective.” It sounds exactly like “You are stupid.”
cmorenc didn’t sound like he was troilling. Maybe just older? Probably hearing the n-word on John Stewart? Hell, my dad would have the same question.
RaflW
@Another Holocene Human:
This, ultimately, is the goal. If poor whites saw their circumstances as bound up with those of blacks, latinos, and so on, then cross-racial organizing for power against economic elites would be easier and more effective.
Can’t have that, so whites are perpetually inculcated in a set of beliefs in otherness and who has value in society.
For those who may have noticed #pointergate, that was in part the white power structure noticing that our white, female mayor was out door knocking in black, lower-turnout precincts. They attempted, ham-handedly, to shame her with the bullshit “gang sign” idea.
It was laughable, thankfully. But it was instructive in the effort to push down/punish self-organizing (ie: N.O.C. and Navell Gordon) and cross-organizing (mayor, others).
Another Holocene Human
I’m home with a massive headache so I gotta rant. Somehow by being an out and open trans person I am now someone who “mocks” trans. No, seriously, read the insane stuff they are writing on Tumblr and elsewhere. It just reads to me as a new hunt for a respectability politics, like those rich white male gays who booted out the drag queens and the queers and people of color back in the late 1990s. Once again being on the barricades counts for nothing because it’s time to step aside for our more better gender conforming betters who will go on TV and be the respectable trans person. And, hey, I’m plenty respectable in my real life but I didn’t choose to go a medical route because being a nerd understanding my brain structure was enough for me and I’ll wear whatever clothes I like, tyvm.
I know every generation steps on the one before but whatever happened to accepting the rainbow, you know? Why are all these poeple who aren’t in drag confidently expounding that “drag is” this and “drag is” that. What a load of hypocrites.
Another Holocene Human
@RaflW: Yeah, that was ugly.
I love how Black twitter has been responding to the gang signs bullshit. When I was much younger I absorbed hour after hour of local news coverage (and the newspapers, also, too) with just totally biased, condescending, racist claptrap about “urban youth culture” and demonizing Black criminals or victims while searching for the answers in “society” when whites went wrong. There still aren’t enough African-Americans on the nightly news or on newspaper editorial boards but the Internet is striking back. That’s kind of wonderful and amazing.
Like, life eventually taught me what shit all of that was but it would be nice if some younger people find out sooner instead of going through decades of derp until they maybe get there never. Assuming the ones who need to hear it are listening.
The Thin Black Duke
It’s not that complicated.
Don’t call an African-American a “nigger”.
Don’t call a woman a “cunt”.
Don’t call a gay male a “faggot”.
Why is this so hard for some white guys to understand?
Belafon
@The Thin Black Duke: “But blacks are being paid by the government to sit around and use that word in their rap songs and making a lot of money off of it.” – Winger dude
(Not meant to actually make sense)
Cacti
@MaxL:
You might have a point if non-whites occupied a privileged position in American society that allowed them to talk down to members of every other racial group without ever being held to account for it.
There’s already a white racial slur for black people who don’t show sufficient obsequiousness: uppity.
ruemara
@BGK: I have no idea what a chucktodd does, but I’ve been calling him a face-merkin supermodel. It does seem to be all he does.
Another Holocene Human
@MaxL:
You don’t deserve this much for your tone-trolling, since you could easily FUCKING GOOGLE IT, but it’s called STRUCTURAL RACISM you know that thing that’s been around since before U.S.A. was a country.
Whites–like Piers Morgan, hrmmm–think their personal opinions and assfax are special and worthy of consideration while they shout down minority voices who attempt to reclaim the conversation about themselves.
It’s not whitesplaining when white people have an honest and fact-based discussion about white culture and the white power structure and why whites think the way they do. But it certainly is whitesplaining when white men and women run around telling Blacks and Asians and so on what they’re thinking and what goes on in their communities and refuse to entertain any evidence to the contrary.
Rand Paul telling just-so stories about Jim Crow to a roomful of African-American college students at an HBCU (most of whom did not get their credentials from a club they founded themselves, like Aqua Buddha did, and most of whom don’t routinely plagiarize every writing assignment either, great example you’re setting there, Rand) does indeed qualify as whitesplaining.
Amir Khalid
@The Thin Black Duke:
I guess it’s just human nature to object to limits on one’s privilege. Even the limits imposed by a sense of decency and respect for others. Especially those limits in this instance, because decency and respect for others are themselves impositions on the privilege these men enjoy.
Another Holocene Human
@ruemara: I guess he was listening because he got a trim. Lost weight, too. Guess he was tired of being confused with the liberal fascism guy.
Another Holocene Human
@Cacti: But somebody on Tumblr called him a meanie-pants that one time and some other people he didn’t actually know IRL blocked or unfollowed him and he had a giant sad and now he wants other people to feel pain too. The end.
Another Holocene Human
@Belafon: On the subject of false consciousness, gangster rap was bankrolled by young white males with disposable income (parental allowances mainly, interesting gender research on that out there if you’re interested).
That was some years ago because young people now don’t pay for music.
White males were gobbling up that nigga nigga nigga stuff and ensuring there was more of it.
Turning around and blaming the Black community for insufficient ideological purity (let’s review unemployment levels for young Black males while we’re at it, last ten years should be enough to make the point) is just DARVO in action.
Roger Moore
@The Thin Black Duke:
Because it involves Those People telling them what they can and can’t do. What’s the point of privilege if you can’t flaunt it by pissing on the unprivileged?
RaflW
@MaxL:
I’ve just drafted and deleted three different ways to try and approach your comment. Its not working out. Try #4:
I think this thread has been, for the most part, pretty thoughtful and we’re digging into some difficult edges. Discussing white privilege is hard. If that comes across as condescending, I honor your feeling but I also know that for a lot of folks in the white-dominant US, they have been condescended to and far, far worse for centuries. They have often been told “You have no authentic perspective.”
I’ll ask you to trust me to continue to use the good care I think I’ve shown in multiple comments in this thread. You don’t have to, you can think I’m an insufferable liberal bore who makes things worse. But I don’t think that’s based on you knowing very much at all about me.
And, I think I can also find a comment someone else made funny, and snarky, and sharp and applaud it. That’s part of the specific culture here at BJ. In that context, the “whitepsplaining” zinger is not equivalent to the larger cultural butthurt you describe of liberal over-corrective behavior (there could be a whole other treatise on why the “oh I’ve been corrected by whiny liberals” is itself an effort to shut people up).
There it is. I’m hoping to move on.
Mandalay
@RaflW: Pedictably, Morgan is now playing the victim after getting called on his rant by TNC on Twitter:
Ouch! How to eviscerate an asshole in less than 140 characters.
chopper
@BGK:
How many chucks could a chucktodd chuck if a chucktodd could chuck todds?
RaflW
@Mandalay:
Piers saying “Don’t be so patronizing” is quite some choot-spa (I just crack myself up every time I think of La Bachmann emitting that one).
Another Holocene Human
@Mandalay: TNC must have been suited up in forest fire gear to deliver that BURN!
bemused
Morgan steps in it so often, he has got to be trolling, considering his career history.
Mandalay
@cmorenc:
Heh. I just pointed out that Morgan was predictably playing the victim, but you have outdone him: you are preemptively playing the victim!
Ripley
@chopper: All of them, Katie.
drkrick
@The Thin Black Duke:
And if that seems like some kind of injustice, think very, very hard (and very, very quietly) about why you are foolish enough to think so.
MaxL
@RaflW: Your posts are thoughtful and you owe me no explanation. I was only half serious in my first comment.
I wasn’t looking to be a tone troll. But that is what this thread is about, right? Mocking a critically poor choice of metaphor by a sap on TV. So, I suppose I was and I hate that guy, too.
MaxL
@Another Holocene Human: I wish I had been trolling, it would have been a good one! I posted it thinking it was sort of meta.
I am well aware of the argument you are making and believe it and make one often in this context.
Thing is, as long as we are pointing and laughing at what some fool on the TV said, I’d think a point about the terms of art in internet comment threads would be in bounds. A good troll would have known better, eh?
kc
Well, Piers Morgan is tone deaf for sure. But does anyone ever feel like we spend a lot of time getting outraged about stuff that doesn’t really affect anyone in real life?
kc
@Another Holocene Human:
This is the world that we (on the left) have made for ourselves.
Cervantes
@cmorenc:
Could you explain the bolded items, please?
(Thanks.)
Morzer
Discussing anything with Smears Porkgun is like wrestling the proverbial pig.
cmorenc
@Belafon:
Um, yes Piers did get a bit oblivious in his choice of metaphors in the last sentence of his quote – he would have been much better-stated and better-off generally quitting a sentence earlier:
Villago Delenda Est
@Mandalay: Loves me some TNC.
cmorenc
@Cervantes:
Let’s just say that wearing baggy jeans hanging down so five inches of your pattern-print boxer shorts are showing as well as the outline of your ass-crack, doesn’t exactly help anyone either, regardless of how common that style of wearing them is among some communities. Some words, some clothes are simply offensively self-deprecating and cannot be excused by ethnic culture. And yes, I’m aware there are some white male youth who adopt this style, it isn’t exclusively found among some AA black male youth.
BTW: criticizing the above (or the original quoted material) as “whitesplaining” is pure bullshit. Some things are just plain generically terrible or dumb things to say or do, regardless of your ethnic background.
Omnes Omnibus
@cmorenc: Do you have similar gripes about other rebellious youth fashions? Punk? Mod? Rude boy? Goth?
Quaker in a Basement
@cmorenc: Look, if you hold the opinion that wearing pants a particular way is dumb or that using racial slurs is offensive, well you’re entitled to that opinion, and so is Piers Morgan. Where Morgan drifts out of his depth is when he presumes to lecture the people most deeply affected by a specific racial slur how they ought to think about it and how they should or should not use the word in conversations that don’t pertain to Piers Morgan. As Coates points out, black folks have been having this debate for a long, long time. When Morgan unburdens himself of his advice on the matter, he’s revealing a deep ignorance, one that is not in short supply.
300baud
@cmorenc:
He says, whitesplaining.
One of the common problems of privilege is that one mistakes the standards of one’s particular group as “normal” or “objective”, thereby definining views from other groups as abnormal, emotional, ignorant.
Unless anybody can order a terrible-meter off Amazon, point it at the phenomenon under discussion, and say, “Yes, my meter also shows that as 3.2 metric terribles,” then your “some things are just plain terrible” is just a fancy way of saying, “there are some things I personally don’t like.”
But of course, you have to erase yourself from the statements using false objectivity, because then otherwise we would say, “Oh, could your views on black people be related to your experience as a white person and your ignorance of black experience?”
Cervantes
@cmorenc:
Thanks, but I do wish you had explained the three previously bolded items instead of giving me two more items to query!
In this case the two questions are: How do you know what people in other communities find helpful or unhelpful? And are you suggesting that “simply offensively self-deprecating” has some sort of objective meaning?
Not terms I use.
In the abstract, perhaps, but details matter.
EthylEster
@cmorenc wrote:
Don’t. The guy is a major league asshole.
EthylEster
@Amir Khalid:
His current wife is African, actually.
And mistaking Morgan for Ferguson is understandable…both blowhards who obviously love the sound of their voices.
RaflW
@300baud:
Thank you.
It occurs to me that gaming Wall Street, ripping off millions of people’s home equity, pushing for the complete denial of climate science are all just plain generically terrible or dumb things to say or do. And they all are done almost entirely by white people.
Yet we are not all tarred by the choices of some white people to be crooks, liars and white collar thieves. But in the telling of cmorenc, it seems, a whole lot of black people must be critiqued because some element of black youth culture dresses “disrespectfully.”
sempronia
“Piers” is a good name for a cat.
Interrobang
@Another Holocene Human: Thank you thank you thank you thank you! I have cerebral palsy, and dammit, I’m handicapped, i.e. slowed down, not disabled, i.e. shut down.
If I had a time machine, I’d go back to find the asshole who suggested “handicapped” was a pejorative and should be replaced with “disabled,” which is actually kinda a pejorative, and talk them out of it.