Sunday, August 8, 2010

Race & America

Caution:
Some folks might be offended by the point I am trying to present concerning race,
those few are the ones that I am speaking out about.

Race is not an issue in America, this is the "melting pot"!
My generation (unlike most countries) grew up surrounded by every race imaginable.
The media wants to focus on all the celebs who haphazardly make racial statements:
-Mel Gibson
(domestic)
-Don Imus
(cultural)
-Oliver Stone
(political)
-Michael Richards
Kramer on Seinfeld
(pointing out social taboos)
They all over stepped their boundaries,
and obviously said vulgar statements that should not have been said
but to the extent of being demonized for months on end in the media is overkill.

Recently I watched the celebrity roast of the late Richard Pryor:
part 1
part 2
it was absolutely hilarious, I didn't find it funny because I'm a bigot,
but rather because I understood that it was all done in good fun.
It was filled with comedians of all walks of life shitting all over Pryor, mostly racially.
If white comedians today were to make the same jokes, they'd be fired and hung up to dry.
Yet comedians like Chris Rock & Katt Willliams freely exchange racial commentary depicting whites as nerds and what have you, yet get away with it scott-free.
(Don't get me wrong, I love it & so does everyone else I know)

Its proven that 70% of hip-hop consumers are white.
Hip-hop obviously exchanges the "N word" every other line in terms of lyrics.
You hear words often enough and eventually they're gonna slip out haphazardly.
Do we deserve to be demonized in the event that such a thing happens?

The television is riddled with racially bias programming.
Awards shows in particular:
-the NAACP Image Awards
-the American Latino Awards
and tons more with emphasis on one single race.
But to the best of my knowledge there's no Caucasian-only awards shows?

The TV Channels as well:
-BET
-Univision
and tons more.
It's a requirement that immigrants learn the English language to obtain citizenship
(this way there's no confusion in speech between citizens)
yet there's over 50 channels which strictly speak Espanol in my cable package.
Relevant to the topic is the fact that nearly everything you see nowadays written in English
is followed by a translation in Espanol.

Do not fall for racial trickery come election time,
the subject of race should have been completely abolished the day Obama took office!
But as we know, one of the 1st issues Obama dealt with was the infamous Beer Summit
which immediately brought race to the forefront.

I grew up under the notion that my grandmother was a "white slave"
from what family members have divulged.
She lived in much of the conditions African American slaves lived under minus the melanin.
I'm sure this is what made all the difference.
Due to her past she held a world of animosity towards the upper class & authority figures.
But in the end a stroke took her eyes and none of it really mattered.
So in terms of race, does the blind woman truly see most?

Forgive me, this brings to mind the Dave Chapelle skit
where he plays a blind African American who mistakes himself for a caucasian

Long story short:

Race was a highly debatable topic of the past,
keeping in mind the civil rights movement, slavery, and the many struggles African-Americans have endured for the last century,
but needs to remain a thing of the past for the sake of peace & progress.
We do not need to carry the brunt of our forefathers mistakes!

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