Political Correctness: Make a Judgment

(She's bending over when she says that. )

And now for something completely different...

Ha!

Russell Simmons wants to ban the words "bitch," "ho" and "nigger" from rap, saying they should be considered "extreme curse words".

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070424/ENT04/70424018

I saw that. He was on Okra last week and I think she's had a big influence. I don't think he'll be able to make any headway, though--but it's nice to see somebody try.

You don't want it forced--institutionally--I just wish the artists hated it as bad as I do.

Simmons' was an empty gesture, full of hype and sound. It does nothing to attack the rampant misogyny and glorification of pimps and "bling" that is the rottenness eating at the center of hiphop and having a blighting effect on the culture.

Russell Simmons went for something quick, that sounded good, but his proposed "banning" of those three words will prove to be a photo op for Russell Simmons.

Anderson Cooper did a segment "Stop Snitchin'" last night. Richard Simmons did pretty well I thought. I also thought why hasn't Cooper and mainstream media snitched on Bushie's war and mass murder in Iraq? What kind of example of extreme violence are we setting as a nation with hundreds of thousands dead in an unjust, unneeded war as one former CIC had the guts to call it? Anyway Richard Simmons, SIMMONS: The important thing you have to recognize is that truth that comes out of their mouths is so -- is so biting sometimes. People are offended. But the truth is we are a misogynistic society. Every time we turn on "Cops", somebody is beating their wife. We don't talk about it in great detail.

So when you hear the words out of a rapper's mouth, suddenly now you recognize misogamy or that we're racist? Or -- rappers are almost never racist -- but -- or that we're homophobic or that we're violent?

The rappers can't be possibly as violent as some of the choices we all support. We're fearful and we support the unconscious, also, about the people -- we keep talking about the 3,000 people in such a sad event. But why not talk about the 3,000 Africans who died in the last few hours, preventable deaths?

There's a lack of consciousness on the part of all the rigid, smart people, the sophisticates who sit by while we bombing innocent people, sit by while we're misogynistic. They sit by while poverty is on the rise, dramatic not only in this country but worldwide. And we're abusive of mother earth and everything on it. Sometimes the poets bring it to our attention.

COOPER: Right, but the last time -- I haven't heard 50 Cent speak about the environment or sing about the environment or sing about what's going on in Africa. I just listened to his lyrics today and every other word is -- are all these unspeakable words. And you've been saying he's...

SIMMONS: It's like a battlefield.

COOPER: Wait a minute. He lives in New Jersey. He lives in New Jersey in a gated community. That's a battlefield?

SIMMONS: 50 Cent is still a product of that environment. He's just escaped. And he's...

COOPER: But you know what? We all are a product of where we came from, and we evolve. SIMMONS: Alicia Keys is a product of the same environment.

COOPER: Right, and...

SIMMONS: And she's a hip-hop artist with a great program in Africa. Jay-Z is bringing water to people in Africa. Ludacris has the Ludacris Foundation. Chingy for Change, the Shawn Carter Foundation. P. Diddy has Daddy Palace (ph).

COOPER: He had Daddy Peace on Thanksgiving. Is it enough?

SIMMONS: I have five charities that work out of my office.

COOPER: OK, but...

SIMMONS: I'm making a point about hip-hop. It's a diverse group of messages. Some of those messages make you uncomfortable.

COOPER: I just had Geoffrey Canada on, who's a very well- respected African-American educator, runs the Children's Zone in Harlem and he says look, this is basically -- these are lies.

SIMMONS: They're blaming the messenger for the message. They're trying to break the mirror for what they're reflecting. They're reflecting on a truth in our community.

COOPER: You're saying -- you're saying that the artists simply are reflecting the reality of the streets?

SIMMONS: It's not always simple. Sometimes it's complex. But they're artists. They've always been under attack, from the history -- not only America. I remember when Run-DMC couldn't come to town without making the cover of the paper.

COOPER: But Run-DMC wouldn't get a contract today because the language he was using isn't rough enough. The stuff he was singing about...

SIMMONS: That's not true.

COOPER: He's mild by comparison to the stuff...

SIMMONS: The top ten records of the year, most are dance records. Eight of the ten, I would guess, are dance records. There's a diverse group of messages and we could -- and it's true that, I think, when they told you also that people are pushing them for dirt, it's not true. Rappers say what they want to say. And that's a fact. And I've been in the record business my whole life, and we want them to say what they want to say because honesty and authenticity sells.

COOPER: I've had people directly in these meetings who have told me off the record that they are encouraged to get into feuds and fights with each other. They're encouraged to call each other snitches because it builds up street cred and it sells records.

SIMMONS: I have street cred. I saw your "60 Minutes" piece. COOPER: Right.

SIMMONS: And Cam'ron said that he wouldn't tell on a cop. He said it was a code of the street.

COOPER: He said he wouldn't tell about a serial killer living next door to him.

SIMMONS: He was making a point. I think you'd been pushing a corner. He was making a point about not telling -- talking to the police and I think that's sad, I think.

But I have a program in Detroit where the police and community talk a lot, you know. There's a program that promotes dialogue that's critical. And I think that the lack of dialogue -- and you look at people who live in poverty and tremendous struggle. And they feel like the police are an occupying force.

And I told Commissioner Kelly a few weeks ago he should take that program and bring it to New York, because it's very successful. And when you live in such poverty, those people seeing the police seem like they're holding the system up and the system is holding you down.

COOPER: Do you believe someone who witnesses a crime comes forward and tells police what they saw, do you believe they're a snitch?

SIMMONS: I'm a snitch instantly. If I see a crime, I'm telling instantly. So -- and I tell people every day. And I tell rappers every day, if you don't tell, you're an idiot. That's my opinion, but they have a right to have their opinion.

COOPER: We're going to leave it there. Russell Simmons, thanks. link

And in the interest of Equal Time for both sides, here's an excerpt from the interview on the same show with Cooper and Geoffry Canada; He's a highly respected educator, president and CEO of the Children's Zone in Harlem, and the author of "Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun: A Personal History of Violence in America"

COOPER: Let me start out by asking you, Russell Simmons has now proposed eliminating the word bitch, ho, and the N-word from the so- called clean versions of rap songs. What do you think about the proposal?

CANADA: Well, you know, I think it's a good first start. And I applaud Russell Simmons and the Hip-Hop Action Network for doing that. But it really is only a first step.

And let me tell you one of the things I'm concerned about. So, you begin to bleep out certain words. But kids aren't stupid. You put a word like trigger and then you say, because that's my blank, and you don't think kids put the word in there themselves? I think it may be more damaging to have the kids putting the words in than having somebody else.

You start talking about really about getting into the mind of a young person -- and I'm not talking -- see, they think I'm talking about 22, 23. I'm not talking about those.

I'm talking about 8-, 9- and 10-year-olds who are growing up listening to this music.

COOPER: That's who is really listening to the music?

CANADA: And we're asking them to substitute curse words, swear words, murdering kinds of images themselves, instead of hearing it, and thinking that's better.

COOPER: You have no doubt this is killing young black...

CANADA: I have no doubt in my mind. I have no doubt in my mind that it is setting the cultural context for murder, that, if you tell a kid that, look, take his life, get a gun, use the gun, kill that guy, go and shoot him, you say it over and over, there are kids who are out there -- not every kid.

They're going to say, oh, Geoff, you're saying this is the reason there's homicide in the black community? It is not the only reason, but it is certainly setting a cultural context for murder in our communities.

COOPER: So, how do you change it?

CANADA: Part of -- part of the challenge is, all of us in positions of leadership have to say, there's a line.

You know what? People think -- don't think there's a line. They think, look, this is -- this is what I see the deal is. If African- Americans want to go around calling themselves the N-word, if they want to call their girls and their women bitches, if they want to call their girls and their women hos, if they want to glorify crime and murder, and if they want to -- fine, it's up to them. What do I -- I can't say anything about African-Americans. Take the money, call yourself whatever you want.

We got to stop that. No, I do not give anybody permission to call any African-American woman a name like that. And I don't want to be called by the "N" word and whoever thought they had permission, I'm saying you don't have permission in our community to do that anymore.

This is a life and death issue in the inner cities. African- American men are slaughtering one another at record numbers. They are being arrested at such numbers that it is shocking. It is just shocking.

When you look at the employment of African-American men, it is stunning in this country. This is a crisis. And they're thinking this is music. This is more than music. This is really about the fate of a people and whether or not we're leading people on a path to their own destruction.

COOPER: Is targeting the record companies also a way to go? Is pointing out, you know, the lyrics, pointing out who it is who's profiting? Because they're making big money from this stuff.

CANADA: My understanding is this is the cheapest way for a record company to make money maybe in the history of music. You don't need orchestras. You don't really need any music. You don't have to spend money on developing talent and teaching them how to dance and you just need a bunch of kids to say a bunch of horrible things and look tough and mean and dangerous. And there's a good chance that you can sell a million records.

Cooper: Someone who is involved in the record industry said to me off the record that these decisions, like what rapper is going to feud with what rapper and who's going to call who a snitch, these are actually decisions made and encouraged by record companies. They say to the artist, look, can you get in a beef with 50 Cent or can you get in a beef with, you know, The Game? And it will help propel sales.

CANADA: You know, one of the scary things about this business is that everybody understands that what's driving it right now is some sense of credibility that you are a criminal, a gangster and potentially a murderer. The closer you can get to those kind of things, the more people want to listen to your music. Now, that's dangerous and that's scary.

And you know, people use that as sort of the juxtaposition of why we can't change the music. Everybody wants to listen to this music, but this is what I tell folk. This music is aimed at sort of folk who are emotionally at a level like middle school kids. This is you beat me; I beat you back up. You hit me, I hit you harder. You shot me, I shoot you. You have a gun, I have a machine gun. I mean, it goes on and on and on.

We go through that period as men, and we get to a place where we learn to deal with differences and problems in a different way. As long as you are keeping that aimed at that emotional level, then you can never have enough cursing, you can never have enough violence, you can never have enough exploitation of women and denigration of women. It just gets worse and worse and worse, and that's what we've seen happening over the last 20 years.

I just remind people, when this rap thing started, this was really about a bunch of African-Americans deciding we're not going to fight anymore. Instead of fighting, we're going to break dance. Instead of fighting, we're going to rhyme, your rhyme versus mine. I bring your posse, you bring yours. We're going to have a battle. It was all metaphysical. There was no actual fighting going on.

This has turned 180 degrees, where now they're saying this is the way black people deal with things, versus how the form first started when it was really helpful to our community.

snood, I thought Canada was great too. But what kept going through my mind was the mass murder America is committing in Iraq. Needless slaughter is hardly an example of the kind leadership that instills respect in our kids. A fish rots from the head down. I'm not excusing anything but do believe a kinder, gentler domestic and foreign policy would be a great first step towards kinder and gentler lyrics. America hardly has leadership at the top that promotes the sanctity of life.

A Correction!




I made the statement above about four white people surrounding Snood in this conversation. This was a mistake on my part. There were three people-Lash, Occum Bill, and Setanta.







Please point to the post where I said that anyone claimed to have more authority about black people than Snood. I have maintained that more than one have claimed to have equal knowledge to him. Those people were Occum Bill and Lash.

Strictly speaking, what they said was that Snood being black did not entitle him to claim any more knowledge about black people than anyone else.


Please note the following.



Source Even if one wishes to argue that this quote was made by Lash in reference to a man knowing more about women than other women, the fact is that Lash herself was the one who implied the black-white and man-woman issues were pretty much the same.


Source

Both of these people made subsequent posts reinforcing the notion that Snood's blackness does not mean he can claim he has any special insight about any black person other than himself. This is the equivalent of saying that anyone not black has as good an insight into any other given black person as Snood.

Setanta did not say the same thing. Rather, he assailed Snood for a different ridiculous reason, which will be covered in the next post.

Snood:



Setanta:


Snood certainly has special knowledge about how black men are treated in society-knowledge which you or I cannot understand. To regard and to treat are synonymous.

The online version of the Merriam Webster Online dictionary for treat 2b : to regard and deal with in a specified manner -- usually used with as <treat> http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/treat

From Roget's Thesaurus for "regard"[/url"]
Main Entry: regard Part of Speech: verb 2 Definition: believe Synonyms: account, adjudge, admire, assay, assess, consider, deem, esteem, estimate, judge, look upon, rate, reckon, respect, revere, see, suppose, surmise, think, treat, value, view.

Even if you do not agree with the above sources that regard is exactly synonymous with treat, you must admit they are close enough that they are frequently used interchangeably in common parlance. If we go into a restaurant, store or other facility and the people there regard us well, we generally get treated well. If they regard us not so well, we generally get treated not so well. You have been hammering at this small, possibly nonexistent distinction for several posts to criticize Snood.

Keltic, you aren't welcomed on this thread. Why don't you start one elsewhere?

I don't for a moment consider that "to regard" and "to treat" are even close to synonymous. I've been "hammering" the point because neither Snood, nor you, nor i can know how others regard us, while we can easily see how we are treated. I've also been "hammering" the point because you came along to act like a putz and claim that i was saying i know better than Snood what the experience of a black man in America is. I've never made such a claim, and i am frankly sick of your "contribution," which has largely consisted of slinging nasty epithets such as "racist whitey" at those with whom you were apparently determined not to agree before you'd even read what was written here.

Do me a favor, and don't quote or comment upon anything i've written any longer. You won't change my position on Snood's original statement, and i'm sick of being the target of your vitriol. You disgust me, and i don't intend to play your nasty game any longer.

Even though you started the thread, there's no reason why anyone can't post their thoughts as frequently (and tangentially) as they want. And although KW's words may here not be welcomed by all, they are not generally unwelcome.

How do you know? Can you state with certainty that they have been welcomed by anyone other than you?

Thus, snood makes the metapoint of this whole digression.

Speak for yourself.

It is my thread--I have no power over it--but I did (in a rare departure from my norm) ask someone to leave.

He has limited his "contributions" to personal attack. If he could possibly return to (and remain on) the topic, I'd feel differently.

I shot the sheriff, but I did not shoot the deputy.
I shot the sheriff, but I did not shoot the deputy.

All around in my home town
Theyre trying to track me down.
They say they want to bring me in guilty
For the killing of a deputy,
For the life of a deputy.
But I say:

I shot the sheriff, but I swear it was in self-defense.
I shot the sheriff, and they say it is a capital offense.

Sheriff john brown always hated me;
For what I dont know.
Every time that I plant a seed
He said, kill it before it grows.
He said, kill it before it grows.
I say:

I shot the sheriff, but I swear it was in self-defense.
I shot the sheriff, but I swear it was in self-defense.

Freedom came my way one day
And I started out of town.
All of a sudden I see sheriff john brown
Aiming to shoot me down.
So I shot, I shot him down.
I say:

I shot the sheriff, but I did not shoot the deputy.
I shot the sheriff, but I did not shoot the deputy.

Reflexes got the better of me
And what is to be must be.
Every day the bucket goes to the well,
But one day the bottom will drop out,
Yes, one day the bottom will drop out.
But I say:

I shot the sheriff, but I did not shoot the deputy, oh no.
I shot the sheriff, but I did not shoot the deputy, oh no.

I have stayed out of this "discussion",but let me see if I can boil it down.

Snood basicly said..."Its a black mans thing,you wouldnt understand",ans several people took exception to that.

IMHO,therein lies the problem.
We need to get past the "its a (fill in the blank) mans thing" and move on.

Snood knows how HE is treated,and he thinks he knows how everyone regards him.
OK,I can go along with that.

By the same token,he must also admit that how he thinks others regard everyone of his race is most likely wrong,because he doesnt know everyone of his race or their experiences.

Is that about it in a nutshell?

Um, no. Got me there.

But, just once more, for all the above responses from Setanta, Mysteryman and Lash.

No, I didn't say "It's a blackman thing, you wouldn't understand." I didn't almost say that, and I didn't suggest that.

I didn't say I can speak for every black person or every black man. Not once . Nowhere.

I am in fact "speaking for myself" when I express this opinion - which some on this thread have agreed with, and some not - that black people know what being a black person is like better than white people do. For the same reason that women would understand better than men what being a woman is like; gays- gays, little people - little people, etc., etc, etc.

This whole thing relates back to when I said that a black man in america would understand better than would a white man how it is that black men are regarded in america. I thought when I said it that it was a no-brainer statement. I still do.

If you disagree, fine. Some do, some don't. It's my opinion, and I'm more than entitled to that.

Now if you folks want to "move on", feel free. If you misstate what I say and attribute it to me, I might speak on it, but ohter than that, I'm a little tired of this dance myself.

Snood writes


While it pains me no end to do so, I have to agree with Setanta on this one. "Treated" and "regarded" are not synonymous and he is right. The color of your skin does not give you any special insight of how black people are regarded any more than the color of my skin gives me any special insight of how white people are regarded. I am 100% certain you have misinterpreted and misjudged how I regard you in the past and I'm reasonably confident that you will misinterpret and misjudge how I regard you in the future. But we do not represent anybody but ourselves.

I know how you have treated me. I know you have clearly expressed that you have resented my point of view or the way I express myself. I know that you have disbelieved me. How do I know this? Because you've let me know. I can assume that you resent these things about me because I'm white. Can I know that for sure if you don't tell me? Do you resent me because I'm me and I don't talk the PC line like KW does? Or do you resent all white people who don't talk PC like KW does? This I have absolutely no way of knowing.

Nor do you have any way of knowing how I or Lash or Set or KW or anybody posting on this thread regard or treat any black man. You only know how you are treated and even then, unless we tell you, you don't know whether its because you're black or because you're you.

I'm pretty darn sure at this point that KW has never had any black friends. Acquaintances or co-workers maybe, but no black friends. And I'm guessing you don't have any close white friends, at least any worthy of the name. I'm guessing that if you did, you would have a different perspective. Throwing the PC garbage out the window is a good first step in having such a relationship. And it definitely gives a person a whole new point of view.