Pessimistic Politics: Driving in the Wedges

You’ve no doubt heard about the big scandal involving shock jock Don Imus and his on-air racist comments, wherein he referred to the black members of the Rutgers University’s women’s basketball team as “nappy-headed hos.” Even if you haven’t heard of this story, my simple mentioning of the phrase “racist comments” is likely more than enough for you to condemn Imus, even if you never in your life heard of him. I know I haven’t, and despite the fact his comments weren’t, dare I say, very nice, I can’t move myself to get behind the anti-Imus movement and call for his dismissal and/or public execution. I don’t really think what he said was bad enough to warrant this fiasco.

Despite the risk of having millions of casual equal rights supporters draw and quarter me for my barbaric reasoning, not to mention running the risk of causing a massive atmospheric apocalypse resulting from massive multitudes gasping simultaneously at my blasphemous remarks, I stand behind my belief that Don Imus’s comment was not, despite what many will have you believe, a call for the complete and unquestionable annihilation of any and all blacks living on God’s green Earth. It was an insensitive comment, to be sure, but wasn’t the end of the world.

Let me firmly establish that I believe racism is very wrong. Judging people solely by the color of their skin, their place of origin, their gender, or any number of superficial attributes is both unjust and pompous. Racial, ethical, and gender discrimination has no place in an enlightened society, a society that treats all people as people, fairly and justly.

Big surprise, we don’t live in that kind of society.

Americans have been wrestling with the political correctness of racism since the civil rights movements of the sixties, which established, among other things, that racism is bad. Before then, people were generally accepting of racial undertones, even if they weren’t what a rational person would consider racist. Just look at how blacks were depicted in Warner Bros cartoons of the era, or how Asians were caricatured in Disney’s World War II shorts. Even our animation was racist!

Nowadays, average citizens like you and me are walking around with a chip on their shoulder, daring anyone to knock it off and offend their sense of political correctness. We constantly fret about saying something that will offend people, making a typical race-related conversation as stressful as brain surgery. We’re especially concerned with making racially insensitive remarks, going as far as to use inaccurate terms like “African American” to describe someone who was born and raised in America who just happens to have dark skin. Using the term “black” is touchy for some people, including me at one point.

I struggled with this issue when I left the racial safety of high school, with its sea of white, and occasionally tanned faces for college, where I encountered more black students in a single day than in my entire public school career. I first decided to go with the safety term “African American,” but as I grew older, this started sounding preposterous and long-winded. I then made a vow not to mention a skin color at all, but in surprisingly quick fashion, this made conversation much more difficult, because I, like so many other Americans, felt compelled to specify race for some reason when someone had different skin than mine. At that point, I decided if I was going to mention skin color, I might as well be blunt and start calling black people black people. If I was going to offend someone, I was going to offend them no matter what, so I figured I may as well be quick about it.

I realize I have no idea what a typical black person goes through when they hear comments like Imus’s. Being a white kid from Suburbia, USA, I have never faced racial discrimination once in my entire life. I was always taught that racism was bad, but to actually know what being degraded because of the color of your skin is something that is completely beyond my comprehension.

I can chalk this up to my school career. In elementary school, there was literally a single black kid in my grade, and he may have been the only black kid in the entire school. He was actually the only black kid I clearly remember during my entire school career, though I vaguely remember my first dance being with a black girl. I knew another girl that could be considered black, but I’m not entirely sure.

Despite my general intolerance for the intolerant, I still believe the Don Imus scandal is being blown way out of proportion. Was his comment insensitive? Very. Was it foolhardy? Oh yeah. Was it meant to undermine every black person in America? I don’t think so, and that’s what gets me about this situation.

Honestly, I can’t speak for the man. He insists he isn’t racist. Maybe he isn’t, or maybe he keeps a white robe and hood in the back of his closet, but that’s not my point here. My point is that we’re still petty enough to get the entire nation in an uproar and are willing to end a man’s career simply because he insulted someone.

The taboo of racist remarks and stereotypes have always confused me because of how utterly hypocritical they are. Whereas insults about certain other aspects of a person are tolerated, once we start laying down the cracks about skin color, that’s when we curl up into our protective ball of fear and pray that it goes away. Well, guess what? Trying to sugar coat the problem or outright ignoring it isn’t going to make it go away.

Insulting someone based on their race is perhaps one of the most taboo things you can do, several notches beyond two men streaking through a church, oiled up and stark naked, slapping each others' butts with Bibles. We also get pretty worked up about jokes regarding people with handicaps. Things like gender, origin, sexual preference, and religious beliefs are usually up for a lighthearted prodding, but if one takes the fun a step too far towards discrimination, it immediately jumps into the “BAD” category. As a whole, we’re still not too concerned about making fun of people of other people’s weight, habits, social status, financial status, or intelligence (unless they’re retarded, which is BAD).

I understand that most of these examples are aspects of a person that can be changed, whereas the more serious no-no’s are difficult, if not impossible to change, but that’s not the point. Why should we have to be inferior because of someone else’s opinion? Who are these other people to judge?

Human beings, that’s who, which makes them jerks by nature. I’m not going to dilute anyone into thinking we’ll one day all start holding hands and singing while eating birthday cake and ice cream with sprinkles. Because we’re never going to be perfect, we might as well joke about each other to keep things in perspective.

So what makes one insult more volatile than another? Should we raise an uproar every time some moron resorts to name calling as his sole debate tactic? Do I have millions of dollars waiting for me because kids used to make fun of my hair style or my weight? Of course not, because, as I alluded to, people are jerks. If we made a big fuss every time someone says something bad about another person, we’d never get anything done.

For example: it’s no secret that we at Pocky Box think George W. Bush is an idiot, or evil, or greedy, or all of the previous. This is something a large chunk of the nation ponders, and the sentiment is so strong that military leaders started complaining that putting down our Commander in Chief is hurting the moral of the nation and our troops, which means the terrorists have won. And yet no one makes a big deal when someone lays the smack down on Bush. It’s become background noise anymore.

Now I know what most of you are thinking: “Chris, you racist idiot, you’re forgetting that white people enslaved black people less than two hundred years ago!” Yeah, almost a hundred-and-fifty years ago. There are a lot of people alive today who had to go through that one.

Remember a back in 1999 when there was talk of the government paying the ancestors of slaves reparation? My first impression was it was a load of crap, and that impression remains to this day. I need to emphasize that slavery is wrong. No person has a right to kidnap another person and force them to do manual labor. How would you like it if some foreigners swarmed in, put a sack over your head, took you halfway across the world, and sold you to some cheap lazy farmer? I bet you wouldn’t like it too well.

If the government handed checks to the actual slaves, I would completely support it, but the lone flaw in this idea is that all of people who were enslaved in the nineteenth century (feel free to verify this) are dead. And to be honest, the idea of handing a check over to a twenty-year-old college student who’s suffering the evil oppressions of scholarship applications is taking things a step too far. Just because their ancestors suffered doesn’t mean they suffered, and I don’t think today’s generation should be rewarded for it. There are any number of worthy causes that money could go to, like tax cuts for the disgustingly wealthy.

And I don’t think that I should feel bad for slavery. I can assure you that I, personally, wasn’t involved in it. Growing up, I’ve always opposed slavery and I have no ill-feelings towards black people that I wouldn’t have towards a white person. Therefore, I don’t in any way owe someone I never met for something some jerk, who neither of us have met, did to that stranger’s ancestor, who, again, neither of us ever met.

But back to the point of racist comments. You could easily say “Well, what about the Civil Rights movement of the 60s? There are still people alive today who were oppressed then!” Good point, but last I checked, it was four decades later, blacks have the right to vote, and the Jim Crow laws have been long abolished. Just like slavery, we have to come to grips that this was a mistake of the past that can’t be changed. We’ve learned from are mistakes, and I doubt a vast majority of Americans will allow them to be repeated.

In a vague way, I can understand why racial slurs are considered so offensive. In one charged word, it seems like hundreds of years of progress is swept aside. It can make a person feel like they’re suddenly reduced to the horrible status their ancestors were subjected to.

The thing is, it’s not true. Blacks will never be enslaved again. Blacks hold great seats of power, and we’re on the verge of having a black president. It can almost be said that racist slurs will one day have no power.

That day, of course, is not today. Another thing about this scandal that really irritates me is how the massive media is giving Imus’s remark more and more power. Having seen the offending broadcast (it’s been hard to miss, since the networks keep playing it over and over, just in case we forget), I can say that I wouldn’t have given the remark a second thought. It was said so casually, and to be honest, I didn’t have any idea what “nappy-headed” meant, and I doubt many other people did either. Now we know there’s a second “N” word!

Seriously, I think those behind the civil rights movements, despite their good intentions, have done more harm than good here. By highlighting this phrase over and over, we’re giving the remark more and more power, which will never do us any good. While some become more offended, others will point to their hypocrisy, and a new battle will sprout from the ashes. I think Al Sharpton did black people a disservice this time.

This rings with the same tune as another incident I dubbed the Sweetest Day Riots. Back in October of 2005, the National Socials Movement (or, to capture your attention, the Nazis) announced that they would be having a rally in Toledo on Sweetest Day. The media, in their typical subtle fashion, kept informing everyone when and where the rally was taking place, and helpfully suggested that we just ignore them. You can guess what happened after that.

Hundreds of black protestors rioted, causing thousands in property damage, and giving one big boost to the NSM. Not only could the NSM point at the riot and say “See?! Look at how ‘they’ are!” but recruitment shot up following the rally. Even an old friend, who sympathized with the group, made the leap and joined up. Of course, membership steadily declined when the new recruits realized they had to actually do stuff, but for a brief moment, it seemed like they had won. Check out my article on the riot for more information.

This incident also highlights the fact that there is a terrible double standard between whites and blacks when it comes to racism. While it’s common for black people to refer to each other as "nigga," an odd sign of respect, if a white person uses the word, or its offensive parent, nigger, suddenly the word becomes an evil tool of white oppression.

This was precisely the premise of an episode of the long-cancelled drama Boston Public (yes, I did watch that show). The situation started with a white student referring to his black friend as “nigga,” causing another black student to attack him. This lead to a potentially informative class discussion that was interrupted by the show’s self-righteous black teacher and the conservative black principal. The issue was never really concluded, except to say that white people aren’t allowed say “nigger.”

The hypocrisy of this can be found in anti-white entertainment that drifts along in the mainstream. I, personally, can take a ribbing as a white person because I understand some of it is true, but the idea that people are laughing at stupid white people jokes while rallying against off-handed anti-black racist quips seems, at least to me, to be more than a little stupid, if one is ignoring the fact that it's also hypocritical and arrogant.

I also can’t understand the self-depreciating humor some of these presentations have. Black entertainers gleefully throw every black stereotype in the book at audiences and it’s supposed to be comedy, but the moment a white person even implies one of these attributes, in entertainment or not, the resulting hellfire will be more than the irony can quench.

The absolute best examples of this phenomenon can be found in two recent movies that will annoy me for the rest of my life: Soul Plane and Undercover Brother.

Soul Plane is the lesser of the two evils. It starts out with a lone black man being treated poorly on an airline (not necessarily because he’s black, mind you, but because he’s a customer) and, due to employee negligence, ends up having his beloved dog killed and then gets stuck in the plane’s toilet. So he sues the airline for one hundred million dollars and wins. So what’s a responsible, average black man supposed to do with this money? Start an airline that treats people with respect! And how does he accomplish this? By whipping out every racial stereotype in the book.

Everything from a plane that’s painted purple and outfitted with velvet interior to the serving of fried chicken smacks of ethnic and racial stereotyping. Even better, the lone white family (whose last name is supposed to sound like “honky”) on the flight is lead by a generally clueless and disliked dork of a father who can only rectify his ignorance by absorbing the stereotypical ghetto culture and be lead into the black light. Once he learns to be black, all is well.

But this doesn’t compare to Undercover Brother, which features about the same stereotypes and does one better. An evil organization known as The Man has executed Operation: Whitewash, a plan to turn a popular black presidential candidate into a puppet for the white man. It’s up to the B.R.O.T.H.E.R.H.O.O.D. (lead by the Chief, played by Chi McBride, who, with no irony whatsoever, agreed to this role, despite playing the conservative principal of Boston Public) to stop their insidious plot by sending out a racial epitome of a secret agent to stop The Man.

I really don’t need to go any further to point out the basic message: white people want to destroy black people and have a highly influential organization set up to do so, because they’re evil. Add to the main henchman’s (played by SNL dropout and failed movie star Chris Kattan) unwilling and involuntary use of ghetto slang, as well as the leader, the Man’s willing use of said slang, and you have a movie that tells its audience one thing: wite peeplez iz dum, but can be saved if they embrace the superiority of black culture.

At least this is what I got out of these movies, and I wouldn’t have a problem with them if white-power jokes were considered acceptable in mainstream America. But they’re not, because while black-power movements are progressive, white-power movements are racist. It just seems to me that we have some seriously screwed-up mores when Don Imus gets fired for a casual, possibly accidental remark, but nothing happens to movie directors Jessy Terrero or Malcolm D. Lee for their respective works, not to mention the creative staff behind them.

It’s double standards like these that cause some of the race relation problems, and if we don’t learn to overcome our fear of offending someone with a word or phrase, then that utterance will gain even more power. The fact is, “nappy-headed ho” is only a string of words, two of which describe a stereotypical hairstyle for black girls, and the other, well, calling someone a whore is offensive to most people, but I think the second part was lost in light of the first, which I suspect the meaning of was lost to millions. At least until the civil rights movement and the media found it for them.

Thanks to the media and civil rights leaders, this slang now controls us. I’m not going to scream about the First Amendment being violated on this one, because what Imus said was slander, since I doubt very much that all of the girls had the same hairstyle, and I don’t see any reason to believe they moonlight as prostitutes. It does disturb me to think that three words could cause the entire nation to stop whatever they were doing and switch into Fatally Self-Righteous mode.

This incident also suggests that we, as a nation, are no longer capable of critical thought. Instead of sitting back and examining the situation and considering its context and relevancy, we automatically listen to the media and decided Imus is bad and should be severely punished, even if we don’t really know why.

But I can’t debate that there are people who are sincerely offended by racist remarks, and again, I can’t condemn or blame them. We also have to accept that, right now, social morals say that words like “nigger” and now “nappy-headed” are bad.

So what’s my stance on the fate of Don Imus? I can’t pass a personal judgment without knowing if his comment was completely intentional and full of malice, or some stupid quip that he didn’t think through. If it was the latter, I don’t think he should be fired, since it was just an insensitive comment and not an organized effort to destroy black people. If he truly meant what he said, then we have to look at it as an insult and weigh it against the insults of every other media personality in the country. Even if this was the case, Imus would never admit to it. In either case, Imus violated the social rules, as petty as they may seem, and he should take his lumps. A career execution seems far too rough. A two week suspension would have been the most appropriate.

There’s a lesson to be learned from this. Not the one about racial slurs being the Ultimate Work of Satan, but another, more profound piece of advice that is more important. We, as a society, have to stop letting simple words control us. There are few people alive today that can really appreciate the word “nigger.” We shouldn’t let the word have power anymore, because we’ve matured as a society and have come to more easily accept those who are different. The word, in its original context, is obsolete.

This is where the real challenge comes in: can we, as a community, throw out are conceptions of race? Probably not, but we can at least accept that we are all people, both for the good and for the bad, and respect each other’s right to live in peace. A right we should never let a single word destroy, because it can’t unless we let it.