One question: Why does the African-American still get so riled up over a simple name? In the video of Michael Richards you can hear people calling him a "white cracker" and other things like telling him "he is nothing" and all he did in his career was Seinfeld and he was washed up and didn't make it into the movies, ect. So, while he was getting his karma at the time of this terribly monstrous outburst that caused so much harm that he actually had to call Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, and actually go on National TV and apologize, now 2 people in the audience want a face to face apology and actually want to be paid money for hearing a simple word that everyone has already heard 800 million times. (Maybe these guys want to kill him)? So what is the big deal? He was being heckled and probably harassed at the time. Cause and effect maybe?... Call me a white cracker. Call me a white ghost. Call me a whitey. Call me a RupubliKKKan like someone mentioned in another thread here at ET (wasn't said to me btw). Call me a white "N" if you want. Call me anything. It will never hurt me. Names will never hurt me. Why are African Americans so frickin' riled up when they hear this word that they can call each other in THEIR comedy routines, but have a cow when a white man says it. I know. It was the way he said it. It made them scared as one person put it. Scared of what? You would think they could get past this stupid name thing by now. My god, isn't it about time? All it is, is a name. A name. That's all. Do they just like to feel sorry for themselves or what? Do they really think being called this name makes them inferior or ignorant or stupid or still a victim of prejudice or whatever they still attach to this name in this day and age? I say stand up and be proud and don't let names hurt you anymore. This is the 21st century we live in now. Be proud. Don't let a stupid name bring you down...
Oh, I don't know... maybe it has something to do with the fact that for 200 years, white men called them this name while raping their wives and children in front of them ( or more often in the woodshed behind the shack they allowed them to live in) or perhaps because black women heard their men being called this name as they were strung up and lynched for a fun afternoon on a Sunday after services, with their children looking on through a hole in the shack wall, watching Dad jerk at the end of a rope for the crime of being black, and then watching the men who did it pose down for a group trophy photo with the bloody corpse (beaten before the lynching, of course), before coming for the wife and 13 year old daughter for a little more fun. (Apologies to Pabst who might not be able to concentrate on trading this morning after reading this). What do you think? Since this all ended just a few years ago, do you think the word still has some extremely negative associations for people who can still remember these acts in their own lifetimes? Who may easily have been the victims of these acts? Maybe? Easy for you to say 'get over it'. Pretty easy for you to huff and puff about it. 'My God', indeed. I'm with Bill Cosby when it comes to blacks accepting responsibility for their problems today, but I don't have any problem understanding their outrage when a white man screams this word at them. Try back in a few hundred years.
because they can.....think about it...imagine a White leader going to the media and barking at them about a "whitey" reference made to 2 white kids by Chapelle... hahahahahahahha....they'd be shown the exit door....no one would care the least....but like trader nik said 200 years of somtething they never went thru somehow gives them the leverage to get someone to litsen...thats all that is Tradernik...Richards, you, me and pabst had nothing to do with that.....
LOL. Nik, you're history of America seems to come from Hollywood exploitation movies. Lynched for fun? Get real. An average of 24 Blacks a year were "lynched" from the mid 1800's to the mid 1900's. In other words roughly the same number as are executed each year today. Blacks fell victim to the noose then for the same reason they're executed today. As punishment for crimes like murder. Were some blacks (post slavery) murdered just for being black? Undoubtedly. Just as many blacks have murdered whites because of race only. Ugly stuff all around. It's really hard to believe that slavery was both lawful and acceptable. Along those lines I have no problem with honoring the exclusion of the word "nigger" from the American vocabulary. However this debate is ultimately a red herring. The immense social problems in urban America (as well as Africa and the Caribbean) have nothing to do with occurrences 200 years ago. The 10 or 12 black teenagers who somewhere in America today will commit murder are not acting in revenge over slavery. My guess is a fair amount of today's criminals don't even know Black history. Here's something interesting. Let's say the 2 blacks Richards offended were the only two blacks in the club. At the onset of the heckling how much do you want to bet that the white audience was pissed at the action of the hecklers but afraid to say anything. Blacks get away with murder (literally) through the use of physical intimidation. Once I gently chided some fat ghetto mama to please not discard her peanut shells on the floor of our subway car. No less than 4 other blacks came to her "defense" by calling me a racist cracker. Of course no one can explain why a "racist cracker" is riding on an all black subway in Chicago. Yesterday a report was issued that said 8% of blacks (women included) are either in prison presently or on probation. Powerful number. Break it down and roughly a QUARTER of black males 17-30 are in that subgroup. Yet a startling report like that will get 1/1000th the attention as Kramer. Libs can hide their heads in the sand but the problems of black America are predicated upon teen pregnancies, drug and alcohol abuse, low emotional I.Q.'s, a culture that regards violence as acceptable, lack of literacy ect. The list could go on and on. Even higher income blacks will commit crimes at a multiple of higher income whites. But why examine the REAL issues when one can pin it on Kramer or George Allen or Pabst and el cubano........
What I would like to know is why was Michael Richards saying the line that went something like this: "Fifty years ago you would of been hanging on the end of a rope with a fork up your butt". What could of inspired him to say this? What provoked him in the first place? Something did. I don't think he went off for no reason at all. But I guess we will never know what the "cause" of this incident was. And I still can not see why the "outrage" from this and it becoming a "National" matter with good ol' Jesse getting involved, ect... Name calling has been around since man has learned to speak. It doesn't break any bones... Someone is being too sensitive here... They need to get over it... Or it might just "haunt" them till the end of time... if they let it...
....strung up and lynched for a fun afternoon on a Sunday after services, with their children looking on through a hole in the shack wall, watching Dad jerk at the end of a rope for the crime of being black, and then watching.... What a fertile mind to come up with this crap, seems like you were either there or it just turns you on. To make it even better for you, imagine "Dad jerking at the end of the rope" (LOL,LOL) and getting a hard-on (you know this happens often when they hang the guy), imagine the excitement of white women seeing a foot-long black dick in all its glory. How about that? El Cubano is right, it is simple, they do it because they can and it serves them well
little tradernicole loves fantasy hollywood movies, yet she whines about conspiracies. isn't it ironic, dont cha think?
You give them a few hundred years to get over a word? Talk about the bigotry of low-expectations! You must be a stupid-ass, honky, white-boy, cracker, mother-fucker. How long did it take you to get over that? See, not too hard if you put your mind to it.