Free Speech is based on the color of your skin (908 hits)
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Submitted by (V) (View user info) at 2007-04-12 09:37:15 EDT
First and foremost, I am deeply sorry if I offend anyone with this article I've written...........wait, no I'm not.
I am a proponent of free speech, regardless of race, sex or creed. I thoroughly enjoy watching black comedians tear into white people, calling them crackas and honky mothafuckas. It's HYSTERICAL. Dave Chapelle is a comedic genius, and much of his comedy is based upon racial issues. The entire idea behind free speech is that anyone can say anything they want without fear of retribution. This is why it deeply saddens me to see what is going on these last few days with Don Imus and the ensuing media frenzy.
What most people don't understand that this is no longer about Don Imus and some stupid comment that he made because he's pushing 70 and doesn't understand<?B> what's ok to say and what's not ok to say. He obviously heard this slang over and over and over again, not from his white friends, but from a section of the black community, more specifically, the entertainment industry - rappers and lyrics that degrade African-American women and call them hoes and worse. He heard them say it, and figured, "hell, if I've heard it 12,000 times from RAPPERS, it MUST be ok." Let's face it, Imus is a nobody, he was just trying to be cool, and this is just a cover for the bigger issue.
<B>What frightens me the most is not Don Imus or what he said. It's about the chilling effect this entire incident will have on free speech. No longer will you have the constitutional freedom to say what you want without fear of losing your job. Radio DJs on Hot 97 ridicule and lambast white people on a DAILY BASIS, and you know what? I don't care. I find it funny. No one throws a fit over that. To make up for the grave injustices done to African-Americans over the years by white people, the scales have been grossly tipped to the other side.
Sorry, two wrongs don't make a right. I am not a white devil, and I don't appreciate being called one.
I DO appreciate the fact that people like Kamau Kambon are given air time on international television station like CNN to air their views, even though he is calling for the extermination of all white people.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0FI82DOuxE
I thank God that he is allowed these freedoms, because that means that everyone is allowed the same freedoms, right?
Wrong.
It doesn't matter if Don Imus is a redneck, it's about setting the boundaries
of comedy and crippling free speech, (he IS a comedian, and has based his entire
radio career around comedy) and allowing opportunists like Al Sharpton
to take advantage of situations and abuse the system. The guy said something
stupid, he apologized (PROFUSELY, to the point of embarassment) yet it's not
good enough.
"I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right
to say it"
- Not Voltaire
"There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the
troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public.
Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they
have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs. Partly because
they want sympathy, and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not
want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their
jobs."
There is a certain class of race problem-solvers who don't want the patient
to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an
easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make
themselves prominent before the public."
Booker T. Washington - 1911
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Please read this article written by a black sports columnist named Jason Whitlock. Normally, I shouldn't have to bring up the fact that he's black, but today, during this ridiculous "crisis", it seems appropriate.
http://www.kansascity.com/182/story/66339.html
Imus isn't the real bad guy
Instead of wasting time on irrelevant shock jock, black leaders need to be fighting a growing gangster culture.
By JASON WHITLOCK - Columnist
Thank you, Don Imus. You've given us (black people) an excuse to avoid our real problem.
You've given Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson another opportunity to pretend that the old fight, which is now the safe and lucrative fight, is still the most important fight in our push for true economic and social equality.
You've given Vivian Stringer and Rutgers the chance to hold a nationally televised recruiting celebration expertly disguised as a news conference to respond to your poor attempt at humor.
Thank you, Don Imus. You extended Black History Month to April, and we can once again wallow in victimhood, protest like it's 1965 and delude ourselves into believing that fixing your hatred is more necessary than eradicating our self-hatred.
The bigots win again.
While we're fixated on a bad joke cracked by an irrelevant, bad shock jock, I'm sure at least one of the marvelous young women on the Rutgers basketball team is somewhere snapping her fingers to the beat of 50 Cent's or Snoop Dogg's or Young Jeezy's latest ode glorifying nappy-headed pimps and hos.
I ain't saying Jesse, Al and Vivian are gold-diggas, but they don't have the heart to mount a legitimate campaign against the real black-folk killas.
It is us. At this time, we are our own worst enemies. We have allowed our youths to buy into a culture (hip hop) that has been perverted, corrupted and overtaken by prison culture. The music, attitude and behavior expressed in this culture is anti-black, anti-education, demeaning, self-destructive, pro-drug dealing and violent.
Rather than confront this heinous enemy from within, we sit back and wait for someone like Imus to have a slip of the tongue and make the mistake of repeating the things we say about ourselves.
It's embarrassing. Dave Chappelle was offered $50 million to make racially insensitive jokes about black and white people on TV. He was hailed as a genius. Black comedians routinely crack jokes about white and black people, and we all laugh out loud.
I'm no Don Imus apologist. He and his tiny companion Mike Lupica blasted me after I fell out with ESPN. Imus is a hack.
But, in my view, he didn't do anything outside the norm for shock jocks and comedians. He also offered an apology. That should've been the end of this whole affair. Instead, it's only the beginning. It's an opportunity for Stringer, Jackson and Sharpton to step on victim platforms and elevate themselves and their agenda$.
I watched the Rutgers news conference and was ashamed.
Martin Luther King Jr. spoke for eight minutes in 1963 at the March on Washington. At the time, black people could be lynched and denied fundamental rights with little thought. With the comments of a talk-show host most of her players had never heard of before last week serving as her excuse, Vivian Stringer rambled on for 30 minutes about the amazing season her team had.
Somehow, we're supposed to believe that the comments of a man with virtually no connection to the sports world ruined Rutgers' wonderful season. Had a broadcaster with credibility and a platform in the sports world uttered the words Imus did, I could understand a level of outrage.
But an hourlong press conference over a man who has already apologized, already been suspended and is already insignificant is just plain intellectually dishonest. This is opportunism. This is a distraction.
In the grand scheme, Don Imus is no threat to us in general and no threat to black women in particular. If his words are so powerful and so destructive and must be rebuked so forcefully, then what should we do about the idiot rappers on BET, MTV and every black-owned radio station in the country who use words much more powerful and much more destructive?
I don't listen or watch Imus' show regularly. Has he at any point glorified selling crack cocaine to black women? Has he celebrated black men shooting each other randomly? Has he suggested in any way that it's cool to be a baby-daddy rather than a husband and a parent? Does he tell his listeners that they're suckers for pursuing education and that they're selling out their race if they do?
When Imus does any of that, call me and I'll get upset. Until then, he is what he is — a washed-up shock jock who is very easy to ignore when you're not looking to be made a victim.
No. We all know where the real battleground is. We know that the gangsta rappers and their followers in the athletic world have far bigger platforms to negatively define us than some old white man with a bad radio show. There's no money and lots of danger in that battle, so Jesse and Al are going to sit it out.
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