NAACP on Vick and African American celebs in general. Huh?

So…
It is perceived shocking but predictable that blacks would engage in dogfighting, think its ok, and consider it a sport. The violent behavior is acceptable to their culture.

No, you have it completely backward. The NAACP member was arguing for equal treatment under the law and the NFL policies. I pointed out that several other NFL players were convicted of felonies and came back to play again in the league. I pointed this out as a way of saying that those arguing for banning Vick were the ones who are advocating unequal treatment.

It sounds like he’s a sadistic fuckstick who got his kicks out of torturing animals. Why else would he do it? What was the point?

Reading this post I don’t know whether to vomit or cry.

Except they are not taking into account the new commisioner that is trying to clean up the league. Did they compare Vick’s punishment to Pacman Jones’?

I just want to jump in to say that I am entirely tired of seeing the NAACP get involved with celebrity issues. Surely there is much other work for them to do.

I loved watching Pacman play. He was amazing! After McNair left for Baltimore, he became my favorite Titans player. (I’m from Nashville.)

I think that Pacman should be banned from professional sports. He has been given way too many chances to clean up his act. He needs serious help, but he can’t be a hero here. He blew it. No one blew it for him.

I heard Whoopi Goldberg say today that people have to understand the culture that Vick comes from so that they can understand why he did the things he did. (This was on The View. Someone asked her where this culture was. She answered, “The South.”

I have lived in the South for sixty-four years and I’ve never heard of this dog fighting culture. I’m white, but for twenty years my work was within the Black neighborhoods. I knew about some other vices, but no one mentioned this one. Obviously, it exists, but it is certainly not common as Ms. Goldberg, a New Yorker by birth and Californian by choice, would have you believe.

In regards to the idea of animal cruelty being equated with a certain culture, I can only assume most people here haven’t heard British Parliament debate fox hunting. Though it was/is often undeniably cruel (to both the foxes and the hounds) and there are many rich, white Brit animal activists who fought to make it illegal, there are plenty more who consider it a cultural institution.

Oh God, is “dog-fighting is a black thing” going to be the common wisdom now? Can’t a bunch of black people do something without it completely becoming a “black thing”? Dog fighting was neither invented nor is it predominately practiced by blacks. That’s like calling trumpet playing a black thing because of the instrument’s importance in jazz music.

Don’t worry it’s not a black thing. It’s a southern black thing. Whoopi Goldberg said so! :wink:

Dog fighting - like “throwing down” over insults, defending one’s “honor” through violence, sexual irresponsibility, and a lot of other things that get attributed to “black culture” are really just inherited from Southern Scots-Irish culture in general. Thomas Sowell, the black scholar, writes that

are “actually a relic of a highly disfunctional white southern redneck culture.”

I don’t believe in labeling whole cultures as being “redneck” or “dysfunctional” myself, but there’s something to be said for this theory. Things that are percieved as lower-class transcend the boundaries of race, and black people who have dogfights today are doing the same activity that the English ancestors of their own ancestor’s poor-white-trash neighbors were doing hundreds of years ago. In other words, some things never change, and it doesn’t matter what color you are.