Darned tootin’.
Ooh, sah-lam! Snap! You go girl! Da-aaam! High five bro! I been served!
Yah, you’ve been paying attention.
You’re talking to yourself here. I already know this.
Do you have reading comprehension issues? The scale is:
0 = racist
1 = “R” racist.
no, the comprehension problem appears to be with you. Whatever you name it, 0 -1, R vs. r, whatthefuckever. as long as you have a binary scale like that you’ll not be able to effectively deal w/the human condition. It’s more of a gradient than an either/or option. as has been suggested. multiple times. and, I believe, also by the person you’re responding to.
You’re right I don’t understand. Most gay guys I know don’t become women on the weekends, unless they’re drag queens. They may occasionally call each other “girl!” That’s a gay thing. You’re either a drag queen or transgendered but most transgendered don’t turn into women just on the weekends.
I asked for clarification by what you mean when you say the genesis of white on black racism is more important than the genesis of black on white racism. I wanted to know more about your POV.
My point was racism is bad. I don’t think I put any particular emphasis on black racism as you have on white racism. My point is emphasizing white racism as the genesis of racism isn’t going to do much good other than raising a few generations of whites with a chronic case of teh white guilt. What are we supposed to do with our white guilt other than:
Well I guess we’re good then.
What do you want me to do? Import black friends? My five best friends: 2 Latinos, 1 Samoan male and 2 white females. Check my location. It’s very white where I live and there’s nothing I can do about that. I can’t import black friends.
I don’t hang out anymore. When I used to it was the local gay bar and my friends were a pretty darn good mix of Latinos, blacks, whites, mixes, tallies, shorties, fatties, skinnies, lesbians & transgendered. I used to get my assed kicked at pool by my transgendered pool partner every week. I don’t know how I can get much more PC than that.
I figure I’m about as unsegregated as I can be considering where I live and my social habits.
I could list all the black friends (and a couple sex partners) I’ve had over the years but doesn’t it seem patronizing when people list their PC credentials?
This link (NSFW) just got posted on another board I frequent:
http:||captainoftheussinevitable.ytmnsfw.com/?f7a4be433fa6bfb7b1fe269ae1ee73e8
Be sure to change the || to the correct characters.
You know, I agree that Richards is a scum-sucking lowlife, but free speech should have limits?
Listen through the entire interview. I’m sorry for the victims of his rant. I think what he said was inexcusable. BUT…I don’t see WHY they’re asking for money, nor do I think he did anything LEGALLY wrong.
And I find the idea of putting “limits” on free speech to be the worst idea of all.
Not all speech is protected. So while I disagree with the guy’s claim that “free speech should have its limits”, I don’t know if Richards tirade is technically considered constitutionally protected speech.
bolding mine
Maybe someone more legal-minded can give some straightdope.
This site looks like a pretty good overview. In the US, hate speech is not a crime, and I’m pretty sure that’s universal. (Note that speech that is criminal for other reasons may also be hate speech–if I call for killing all the Jews, that might count as an incitement to crime). The closest his speech could get to illegal would be, I think, as “fighting words,” but given that a fight didn’t break out, I don’t think that would pass muster, and according to the site, the “fighting words” exception to free speech has been declining in power in recent decades.
Monty, thanks for that link. Up to this point, I’d been thinking about this incident based on what I read, not on hearing Richards’s rant directly. Hearing him makes all the difference for me: I can see why you with the face and others have no special interest in forgiving him. His voice drove home the undisguised racism that he was demonstrating; that’s not just someone trying to hurt someone else. My apologies for doubting y’all.
Daniel
There’s may be a lot different opinions on this issue, but I hope we can come together and agree that calling him “Ku Klux Kramer” is pretty funny.
I just saw the epsiode “The Pilot.” I was struck by the fact that the character Tom Pepper (played by Larry Hankin) who plays Kramer on “Jerry” (the show within the show) is a mean short-tempered violent jerk, albeit not a racist. I can’t help but wonder now if that was a deliberate take on Michael Richards. Probably not, but I’ll never see that episode the same way again.
“How’d you like it if I ripped your heart out and shoved it down your throat, Costanza.”
Catchy.
I saw that a few days as well. Even funnier, the other day the late Seinfeld was the one where Tim Whatley becomes Jewish and starts telling Jewish jokes. At some point, Kramer comes in and says to Jerry, “Do you hear yourself? You’re a raging anti-dentite! Next thing you’ll be saying they should have their own schools!”
The irony!
This is catchy and very funny. I love the Richards/Stop The Planet of the Apes “you can talk, he can talk” thing.
Thanks, Lissa, once again. Starting with your last paragraph first:
This, to me, is an extremely important point: everyone in a discussion must agree on the definitions or the discussion is usually pointless in that people talk past each other. That may qualify as the most important lesson I’ve ever learned. I learned it, and learned it well, as a young philosophy student: it marks the difference between genuine discussion and mere verbal masturbation.
I don’t want to become pedantic about it, but it is abundantly clear that this whole thread has been rife with huge misunderstandings between people based on little more than that we don’t all share the same definition of the words “racist” and “racism”. Earlier, I posted a dictionary definition of the word “racist”, and the entry states there is only one definition of the word:
This standard definition isn’t identical with your sociological one in that it doesn’t specifically mention genetics, but they’re more or less equivalent. Unfortunately for the discussion here, too many people seem to think the word means something like “a person who dislikes people of another race”. But that is just not what the word means! That’s why I’ve been fairly careful about using the word “racist” with the dictionary definition and Li’l Pluck’s felicitous phrase “racial animus” to refer to the “dislike” pseudo-definition apparently used by so many here.
A lot of empty, merely verbal disputes have arisen all through human history because of the asymmetric definitions, and this is most clearly seen ihere n those posters who have (entirely unfairly, in my view) characterized those of us who can only claim agnosticism about Richards’ “racism” (dictionary def) as defending or apologizing for the cretinous bastard. These posters (and there have been a lot of them) obviously believe that we’re either defending racism (dict def) or denying Richards’ patently clear “racial animus” (dislike pseudo-def). But they’re flat-out wrong. And they’re wrong because they aren’t using the actual definitions of the words in question (or at least we’re not using the same definitions).
Now, let’s take a look at the rest of your post…
I would have said “depending upon your definition”, rather than “perspective”.
I’m afraid I don’t understand what you’re getting at, since I do not understand what you mean by “racist” in that context, but it’s plain you don’t mean the dictionary definition. Would the term “racial animus” be the right one in this circumstance, or do you mean something else?
I’m afraid I’m not clear on what exactly you mean. Could you elaborate? Is this “dislike” again, or do you mean something else?
I’m afraid I don’t understand what else black racism could mean other than an ideology of superiority, the same as in white racism. What am I not grasping?
Let me get this straight: You’re being ignorant, unthinking, and evasive, but I’m the one who has to slap myself?
Well, it seems the victims of the racial epithets are not above cashing in on the disgusting incident:
I just hope the money can assuage the terrible injury they suffered. And buy Gloria Allred a another red dress.
The judge should decree that he become their butler.
Awesome. 
Hey, you with the face, you obviously have severe reading comprehension problems. You also lack intellectual honesty. You just keep making shit up and/or maliciously and/or misleadingly taking words out of context just so you can vent while at the same time evade the actual points people are making! You should have at least stopped pushing when you got your head halfway up your ass instead of going for the gold like that.
For just one example, let’s look at the following exchange. You had asked:
To which I responded:
And out of all that, you disingenuously selected and quoted only the following snippet that misleadingly suggests I don’t believe anyone, anywhere is defending Richards: “No one is defending Richards, and how you have kept from realizing that by now is beyond me.”
In any event, you then responded as follows:
BULLSHIT! What some people are saying here, including myself, is that we can’t know, in the epistemological sense, that Richards holds the belief that blacks as a race are inferior, which is the only definition of the word “racist”! We can say that he very much appears to dislike or even hate African-Americans, which, if true (and I think it’s true), is a horrible blight on his character. But without additional evidence (the kind I listed previously) we have no choice but to remain agnostic about the contents of Richards’ mind. But since you implicitly claim genuine epistemological knowledge of such, please present your mind-reading certificate for our review, or rescind your character attacks against us and STFU.
You stupidly continue:
Anyone who claims to know that Richards is not a racist is as stupid and indefensible as you, who claims to know that Richards holds the belief that some races are superior/inferior to others. I don’t believe anyone here has asserted that they know that Richards is not a racist, but there’s plenty of people here just like you who claim to know – supernaturally or paranormally or something – that he is! In any case, I certainly don’t claim to know either way. All I know is that he issued extremely ugly and offensive racial insults, for which there is no defense. I do not know if he has a habit of doing so, or that he’s expressed the belief that blacks are inferior to whites or anyone else, which would make him a racist.
You stupidly continue:
It’s a little thing, but what the reaming fuck does Cosmo Kramer have to do with any of this? You stupidly continue:
Implicit in that comment is the wholly unjustified assumption that if anyone does release such remarks – even in the heat of rage – they must hold the belief that one race is inferior/superior to another. And that’s just crap.
Now, I am not talking specifically about Richards! As I asked a previous poster, HOW MANY FUCKING TIMES DO I HAVE TO SAY THAT? These are general comments. It’s pointless and counter-productive to the discussion to focus exclusively on him, which has evolved beyond that one person.
You stupidly continue:
You’re blithering out of your ass again. You had written the following, which in no way can be construed as being solely about Richards!
To which I replied:
You stupidly continue:
And there shines your stupidity for all the world to see! Take my previous advice and re-read the thread from the beginning, but this time, do it carefully.
Sheesh!
I agree with you totally. Defining the topic of discussion is very important. Therefore, based upon that, I agree that a racist, independent of their own background (ethnicity/race) must accept an ideology of racial inferiority to embrace that notion.
When I referred to social identity, I was referring more to racial discord. Many people mistake someone insulting, or not liking a person of another race, or even the group as a whole, as racism.
Just because it is not racism, for the record, does not mean it avoids having deleterious consequences. Thus, it does not have to be racist before we seek to bridge that growing racial divide, because it could quickly spawn into full-blown racism.
Many times, it is a result of social identity. Simply put, in the process of contructing our self, we as human actors living in a social construct, seek to assemble and validate various attitudes and beliefs. We consolidate those attitudes, behaviors, roles etc…, into our “generalized other” and then use that generalized other to reflect back upon our self and understand our position in the greater social structure. In other words, the self cannot exist without the collective and we base how the collective perceives us, typically, on the attitudes and beliefs of our primary agents of socialization.
Inherent in this process is the desire to have self-esteem, or feel good about who we are and the position we hold in the social structure. Therefore, social identity theory stipulates that human beings have a tendency to highlight the strengths of their social groups, and denigrate other groups. In other words, lift yourself up by putting others down. You see it in early childhood when kids start forming various social groups that have differential status and then proceed to denigrate anyone who is not in that same group.
This process is more poignant when the charcteristics that separate the groups are very distinct. For example, race. You really can’t hide race, if you are referring to skin pigmentation. Thus, whites, black, hispanics have a tendency, since their primary agents of socialization also tend to be of the same race, to highlight the strengths of their group and denigrate others. Now, this does not always approach the level of creating an “ideology of racial inferiority”.
For example, a black man, when upset, as in this case, calls another a "cracker ass ". He is obviously referring to a racial difference. The question comes up, is he saying “Because you are a cracker (white), you are inherently inferior to me”, or is he saying, “You are a member of a group that is different than my own and in my fit of anger, I am trying to raise my self-esteem (after being called a nigger) by insulting your group”. The first would be an example of an ideology of racial inferiority, the other is an example of social identity.
Now, in the United States, we have a LONG history of an established ideology of racial inferiority that asserts blacks are inferior to whites, genetically. There are a thousand examples, but some that may come to mind include: Jim Crowism, Black-face entertainers, the Mammie Stereotype, the Black Buck and/or the repetitive depictions of blacks as criminal, stupid or childlike.
Thus, what I was saying earlier is that a lot of the racial discontent today, in regards to blacks against whites, likely stems from social identity issues. It is not on the same level of the ideology of racial inferiority that has been used to oppress blacks throughout U.S. history. Now, this does not mean that an ideology may exist amongst the black population in the U.S. and will continue to fester and grow. Rather, it simply points out the difference between the two types of hate, or discord.
In regards to Mr. Richards. When he referred to violence against blacks (the picthfork), a reference to times past when this was accepted (Jim Crowism) and then followed it up with the word “nigger”; he was definitely referring to the ideology of racial inferiority. Why he did it is only a question he can answer.