Au contraire, mon ami; that particular set of headaches was not any new ‘discovery’ for me, personally.
I have those kinds of cyclical conversations with willfully obtuse enablers far more often than I care to.
I often end up feeling like this:
That’s why I took the liberty of quoting Jabbar’s questions; if someone wants to engage in serious conversations about racist attitudes, remarks and behavior, then at the very least, they need to ask themselves those 3 simple questions, and answer them honestly.
Even limiting my list to basketball, there are/were many “old school” athletes who did little to transcend their original profession (Wilt Chamberlain, Michael Jordan), and there are many current athletes at the top of the game (Steph Curry, LeBron James) who are willing to step into the culture and make bold statements.
Vert few people are as articulate as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t active in their communities and willing to make public statements about political issues.
I think there are cases like that. Like blackface was definitely not cool in the 90s (what the F was Trudeau thinking), but people didn’t think twice about dressing in Indian costumes then. People have completely turned around (including Obama) on gay marriage since the 90s. I listened to Rush Limbaugh in the early 90s and bought into a lot of his arguments before going to college and meeting more diverse people and understanding more about politics and the economy. Sometimes prejudice is such a part of the culture you (as someone’s not a victim of that prejudice) may not even see it. None of that is an excuse when you’re confronted on your prejudice or privilege and refuse to apologize, change, work against it etc.
Once Chapelle went on the ‘wealthy celebrities are the real victims’ kick, I was done. He’s extraordinarily skilled. and he’s choosing to use those skills for punching down rather than up.
A lot of times, those break down into versions of: Q: “Was this offensive to people at the time?” A: “It wasn’t considered offensive by white people.”
or
Q: “Was this considered by people to be a sexist thing to say?” A: “All the men we read on the subject agree it wasn’t heard with any significant offence.”
When it comes to deciding if “society” found something offensive, “society” is often quickly defined to exclude anyone who would have objected at the time.
K-AD is saying historical context can be a mitigating factor about the degree a person intended to be offensive. I don’t think he’s saying that just because white people didn’t generally find something offensive, that it was never actually offensive, in the past or now.
Plenty of people sincerely believe bigoted shit now, that doesn’t mean it’s not offending people, now. Same as in the past, in many (not all) cases.
I used to love Chappelle’s routines, but I couldn’t even finish watching the previous special that he put out, due to all the ugly transphobia it contained. I sat through it for 20 minutes, cringing instead of laughing before turning it off, and I was pretty much done at that point.
I haven’t even attempted to watch the latest one; because aside from all the bad buzz, if freakin’ Breitbart likes what you’re doing, you KNOW you done fucked up, son.
The story he had about misgendering a transperson during an emergency, and the reaction of that person’s friends to correct the misgendering even during a crisis, was extremely telling to me. He thinks it’s an overreaction to a minor error. They could tell him (if he’d bothered to ask) that it literally is that important to them.
That was the one; nothing was funny about that story, at all - it just made Chappelle sound like a mean, self-absorbed asshole who was excessively focused on the least important details of the woman’s identity, during a freakin’ emergency.
Getting back to Jabbar, I don’t want him to run for office or anything like that, but I’d love to see him with his own tv show, to spread and amplify his wisdom and sense of decency.
Absolutely agree. I guess I just mean it’s good to factor in people’s ability to grow and change without dismissing past prejudice. As much as it feels like people never change, sometimes they do. Not even forgiving necessarily. Don’t mean to keep bringing up the Trudeau thing but only to say that’s not a good example of what I mean. He was an adult, at a time when no one thought that was cool which makes me extremely suspect of contrition. I dunno.
Am I right in thinking Chapelle is deeply right wing?
He’s talented, but as a European I could never quite get into him. Lot’s of jaded cynicism on gender roles, and a sort of ‘everyone for themselves’ mentality on societal issues.
I think that we should keep in mind not just the time for the first question, but also who the person interacted with. If you grow up surrounded by racists it is going to be much more difficult to leave that racism behind. The second question speaks to how much we allow people to change. People DO change, although the don’t always do so because it can be difficult to confront one’s mistakes. But the third question is largely an indicator of the second one. Somebody that HAS changed has an easier time issuing a sincere apology rather than just mouthing the words.
I’m either dumb, or tired, or both, but I can’t understand your comment. Are you saying that there are people defending Trudeau’s behaviour as acceptable because it was 20 years ago?
I wouldn’t go that far. But becoming wealthy seems to have solidified his politics firmly in the got mine camp. I’ve also noticed his stage demeanor seems cut through with a nasty bitterness. He used to make a lot of carefree jokes about cheating, and since his family has fallen apart he doesn’t seem so carefree about it now that real life relationships turned out not to be a punchline. I’m not entirely without sympathy for the karma he garnered, though I doubt he’d want sympathy, but it’s made his comedy less transgressive and more reactionary, which I and a lot of other people don’t find so amusing. See also Louis C.K. who used to be brilliantly funny and made a sharp turn into being a bitter resentful jerk when it turned out a six month vacation didn’t make everyone forget what he did.
