Riley Cooper? Just kidding. The Fritz Pollard Alliance has been pushing it for a couple of years.
The NFL competition committee, which does things like suggest rules changes, is considering the idea. Here’s the immediate background. The change is being supported by the Fritz Pollard Alliance, which is named for the first black head coach in the NFL and encourages the hiring of minorities.
I agree about the source of the objection which was why I responded as I did but lets not ignore the lopsided way that racism is perceived in America. When people of color say racist things we don’t label that person a racist. Given the history it’s easy to see why that happens but is that really the best way for America to deal with the problem? I think it would be better if we could all just admit that we all have stupid and offensive stereotypes floating around in our heads and that the fight against racism isn’t a battle of the Good ostracizing those few Bad apples like Paula Dean but of everyone fighting the Bad within ourselves.
I always get annoyed whenever I hear people whining about “Why can’t I use the word 'nigger”.
Actually, white people most certainly can use the word without getting dinged, you just can’t use it as an insult without people getting angry.
I doubt any black people are going to get upset if someone says “I don’t think the book The Nigger of a Narcissus” should be on the reading list"
If you use it as an insult or where most people would interpret it as an insult, that’s when you run into problems.
Beyond that, yes different words have different meanings depending on who uses them.
I would never refer to my mother as “Elizabeth” even though every other person who knows her does so, except for my sister, and if I ever did it would certainly be seen as a sign of disrespect.
I’m reasonably certain if I started whining “double standards” most people would assume I was joking or nuts.
We don’t?
You mean people’s ignorance of historical and structural racism? You mean the fact that most people don’t understand the issues that make our legal system so racially imbalanced?
… oh. You mean you think black people don’t get called racist often enough. Yes, that’s the major racial unfairness in our society today. :rolleyes:
I don’t think we do, in general. Certainly there are those that are quick to hurl the accusation of racism at people of color but I believe we can agree what their motivation is.
Nope. I mean the words I actually used. I realize this is a hot button issue but try to contain your instinct to jump to conclusions. Yes I understand that there is an ugly history of racial bias that underlies the current social conventions. I wish I had thought to insert a caveat like that into my post to avoid confusion… Oh wait, I did.
My point here is that we (the non-White Power set) don’t write people of color off as racists when they utter racial nonsense. Jessie Jackson once said that he was relieved when youths approaching him turned out to be white. He got away with some bullshit walking back of that statement where a white politician would have found a quagmire.
I’m not sure Jackson meant what you’re saying he meant. If you mean people gave him the benefit of the doubt because he’s black and a famous civil rights activist (and thus was probably not trying to disparage black people as a whole), you’re right. Gosh, that 20-year-old quote really does make things seem unfair. Of course people also tore him a new one over “Hymietown,” and rightly so. If I were writing about the lopsided ways in which racism is perceived in America, “black people sometimes get away with saying racist stuff” would not be part of the topic. That’s primarily because it’s not true: a group of white people call the president a racist every time the wind changes. In fact there are people who spend a lot of their time screaming “racist” any time a person of color mentions race.
My first impression was that the rule’s purpose was to crack down on the word’s use in a friendly context (read: it’s use between black players). Is there really a problem in the NFL with white guys using racial slurs towards blacks as a taunt on the playing field? I would think that their own black teammates wouldn’t like such a thing and that opposing players would start a fight over it.
If the purpose is to stop white guys from insulting blacks, then I’m all for the rule. If it is meant to stop blacks from joking around/playfully insulting other black players, then I think this is a nanny state rule preventing grown men from speaking as they normally do to each other and is a solution in search of a problem.
This is a league that doesn’t care if its players are bashing their brains out on the field or if the name of one of its teams is a racial slur. If they find a way to penalize players for this at all, they’re not going to penalize anybody who says “nice play, nigga!” It’ll be if someone uses the slang word against an opponent or official in a more pejorative way. That’s what happened in the Williams-Ellison incident. They’re both black, so no racial slur was intended in that sense, but according to reports Williams said it to Ellison and Ellison didn’t like it at all. Which is another reminder that people who say “black people can use it all the time and I’m white and I can’t and it’s not fair!” don’t understand the situation very well.
The NFL is a nanny state.
Not to mention it already has rules against “taunting” and other forms of “unsportsmanlike conduct”.
There is nothing wrong with a company setting rules for their employee’s speech as concerns their image and product.
First Amendment Rights concern only the relationship between a citizen and the government.
I think everybody understands that the NFL is allowed to do this. The question is whether it’s a good idea and whether a rule like this would be enforceable.
Doesn’t the NHL already have rules against this? I don’t know if MLB does or not. I doubt if the NBA does.
The NHL has a more general rule: directing abusive language someone else is unsportsmanlike conduct and a minor penalty. NFL referees have enough to deal with as it is; I’m not sure it’s practical to ask them to pay attention to the language used by 22 guys standing on a field 160 feet wide. The league could use recordings to review incidents later and issue fines. Or you might just see the kind of thing you see in the NBA: guys can talk all they want, but if turns into a big argument that disrupts the game, penalties will be called.
Huh, I stand corrected. Maybe, its just an urban legend. Does that make the rest of my point invalid?:eek:
So one Asian artist who thinks that it would be cool to try and coin a catchphrase uses the phrase “chinked-out” to describe the act of making hip hop and R&B sound more Asian. I don’t think these things are comparable to the use of ~igger in the black community. I don’t see Asians accepting and adopting the term chinkout despite the fact that one twenty something Asian singer/songwriter/record producer/actor/film director in Taiwan that I have never heard of thinks we need to reclaim the word chink the way blacks have “reclaimed” the word ~igger. Its not helpful to serious discussions.
The words ‘nanny state’ being used have different connotations. It sure as shit is enforceable, whether it is a good idea is a business decision.
It can mean different things, but I think in this case he’s saying the rule is unnecessary and intrusive to the point of being insulting to everybody’s intelligence.
From a practical (not legal) standpoint, I think it would be really hard. The field is huge and the stadium is loud. There are 22 players on it at all times, not counting players who go on and off between each play. Guys are probably jawing at each other after every play and players on the sideline might get involved too. At least some of the refs have other responsibilities, including watching how the players are lined up. And they’re also supposed to listen for inappropriate language?
Way to miss the point there. I’m not crusading against the unfairness of whites not being able to freely use the term “nigger”. You might have noticed that my first post was to mock that very idea.
As for me I wasn’t there and don’t know the reverend but I put more credence in the initial interpretation of the story where Jackson didn’t feel threatened once he realized that the that youths approaching him were white (a racist stereotype) and not his later claim that he was relieved (IIRC) because the fact that there were white people nearby meant that police protection wasn’t far behind. YMMV
But we know the motivation of those people, right? They are anti-black or trying to exploit the anti-black feelings of others. I am perfectly OK with calling those people racists. My point is that I don’t think it helps race relations to label those who merely utter racial stereotypes as racists. If instead of judging people when it happens those around that person just tried to help them see why it was wrong believe such hurtful nonsense then maybe we would be on the tract to lessen racism overall in America. And it is my belief that we need to do more. Racism is not going away.