3/12/15

The n-word and tolerance theater

Punishing a bunch of drunk Okie teenagers or a senile old rich dude for using the n-word makes us feel good but it's really just a form of tolerance theater unless we examine the deeper, more insidious forms of racism in our country (i.e. the unequal enforcement of the war on drugs and the for-profit prison system).

We watch that SAE bus video over and over and we gloat about how much better we are than those idiots but none of that does anything to address the real problems outlined in "The New Jim Crow" book or "The House I Live In" documentary. The high-horse response to this stuff reeks of "I'm one of the good ones because I cried during that John Legend song at the Oscars!" It's just a distraction, not a solution.

Anyway, what I'd really like to see is a video of drunk black teenagers on a bus singing songs from Oklahoma. "The Surrey with the Fringe on Top" please!

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