Burying 'nigger'
Posted by: d_arnold | Filed under: NAACP, popular culture, race
The NAACP decided to engage in their first relevant act of the new millenium (truly, what have they done?) and it's...burying the word "nigger"? Come on! It's nice to see that black America has all of its' problems solved to the point where this is the primary concern. Our schools are educating kids exactly as they should be. Our colleges are priced reasonably enough for all kids to attend. Everyone has reasonable child care and health care. Black folks are getting equal pay for equal work. Kids are growing up to realize that you can have a future and you don't have to limit yourself to illegal pharmaceutical sales or athletics. The poor, especially the black poor are bridging the digital divi...
...oh, wait, we don't have these things?
Then, why are we wasting time with this?
I see the NAACP's publicity stunt (it wouldn't be a publicity stunt if it had relevance) as another bourgeois way to "pile-on" to hip-hop. Hip-hop has needed to be more responsible for what is said on the mic way before Michael "Kramer" Richards and Dumb Anus (excuse me, Don Imus) even uttered the words they showed their asses in the national limelight.
Why do they get to shirk responsibility and deflect it upon us. Imus essentially said "Oh, the rappers do it, so it must be ok." What happened to responsibility for the words that are used that folks have been preaching to hip-hop since its' existence? Responsibility is a bedfellow of the first amendment not something you can remove at your convenience like a comforter on a warm night. Absolving some from that responsibility and admonishing others for the same act is hypocrisy, my friends. The public has left Imus alone since he decided to blame his malfeasance on hip-hop...and bourgeois and misguided black folk have jumped on hip-hop's case....again.
If only institutional racism or educational reform could elicit such a response from the black elite (I refuse to call them black leaders...who are they leading?)...
