Joe Morgan

[919191]

Anyone can have a say, you know.

[WMR]

Well the Rutgers women's bball coach announced her book deal... hopefully it's not too soon for such an announcement as these poor Rutger's girl ballplayers try to get back on their feet after having their world rocked so heavily.

[Gainesville Red]

Hubba, just so I can make sure I understand what you're saying, there's more black on white racism than vice versa?

[Puffy]

This thread is a perfect example of victim syndrome - whatever group you belong to is the group that is persecuted against teh most. Conservative christians, blacks, whites, Italians, the irish, south koreans, etc.

We are a country built on persecution of one kind or another. But honestly, if you don't realize the blacks have had it worse than anyone else I don't know what to tell you.

[Redsland]

Originally Posted by Puffy

But honestly, if you don't realize the blacks have had it worse than anyone else I don't know what to tell you.

Worse than Royals fans?

[westofyou]

Originally Posted by Redsland

Worse than Royals fans?

Worse then Arizona Cardinal fans.

[Hubba]

Originally Posted by Puffy

This thread is a perfect example of victim syndrome - whatever group you belong to is the group that is persecuted against teh most. Conservative christians, blacks, whites, Italians, the irish, south koreans, etc.

We are a country built on persecution of one kind or another. But honestly, if you don't realize the blacks have had it worse than anyone else I don't know what to tell you.

Puffy I am talking about the resent not the past.How many black people lose theirjobfor saying cracker or fag?

[Hubba]

Originally Posted by Gainesville Red

Hubba, just so I can make sure I understand what you're saying, there's more black on white racism than vice versa?

You are correct in your assumption.

[westofyou]

Originally Posted by Hubba

Puffy I am talking about the resent not the past.How many black people lose theirjobfor saying cracker or fag?

Four?

[registerthis]

Originally Posted by Hubba

what I have seen is more black on white racism than vice versa. Wouldn't you agree?

No, actually I wouldn't.

[Puffy]

Originally Posted by Hubba

Puffy I am talking about the resent not the past.How many black people lose theirjobfor saying cracker or fag?

I wasn't specifically talking to you Hubba, more that in our society today all groups feel the most victimized.

But to answer your question - there is more to racism than losing on's job over words. But Imus has been spouting racist crap for years now. From calling secretaries at WNBC the "n" word to calling someone who worked there a "fat, f'n jew" When you continually say this stuff it catches up to you.

About losing the jobs, well, they lose respect. Farrakhan lost a ton of his audience with his crap, Spike Lee could be a mega-Spielberg type if he weren't so racist, Sharpton doesn't even have the majority of blacks support as his falied attempts to run any political office have shown, etc.

[registerthis]

Originally Posted by Hubba

How many black people lose theirjobfor saying cracker or fag?

Racism extends far deeper than merely spouting some words.

[Hubba]

Originally Posted by Puffy

I wasn't specifically talking to you Hubba, more that in our society today all groups feel the most victimized.

But to answer your question - there is more to racism than losing on's job over words. But Imus has been spouting racist crap for years now. From calling secretaries at WNBC the "n" word to calling someone who worked there a "fat, f'n jew" When you continually say this stuff it catches up to you.

About losing the jobs, well, they lose respect. Farrakhan lost a ton of his audience with his crap, Spike Lee could be a mega-Spielberg type if he weren't so racist, Sharpton doesn't even have the majority of blacks support as his falied attempts to run any political office have shown, etc.

Please dont get me wrong I am not condoning what Imus said. I dont even like the guy but trying to compare that to thirty-one killings is silly.

[WMR]

This article from Whitlock from about a week or so ago had some great points about Stringer's "crusade,' IMO.

Time for Jackson, Sharpton to Step Down
Pair See Potential for Profit, Attention in Imus Incident
By JASON WHITLOCK
Sports Commentary

I’m calling for Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, the president and vice president of Black America, to step down.

Their leadership is stale. Their ideas are outdated. And they don’t give a damn about us.

We need to take a cue from White America and re-elect our leadership every four years. White folks realize that power corrupts. That’s why they placed term limits on the presidency. They know if you leave a man in power too long he quits looking out for the interest of his constituency and starts looking out for his own best interest.

We’ve turned Jesse and Al into Supreme Court justices. They get to speak for us for a lifetime.

Why?

If judged by the results they’ve produced the last 20 years, you’d have to regard their administration as a total failure. Seriously, compared to Martin and Malcolm and the freedoms and progress their leadership produced, Jesse and Al are an embarrassment.

Their job the last two decades was to show black people how to take advantage of the opportunities Martin and Malcolm won.

Have we at the level we should have? No.

Rather than inspire us to seize hard-earned opportunities, Jesse and Al have specialized in blackmailing white folks for profit and attention. They were at it again last week, helping to turn radio shock jock Don Imus’ stupidity into a world-wide crisis that reached its crescendo Tuesday afternoon when Rutgers women’s basketball coach Vivian Stringer led a massive pity party/recruiting rally.


Imus’ words did no real damage. Let me tell you what damaged us this week: the sports cover of Tuesday’s USA Today. This country’s newspaper of record published a story about the NFL and crime and ran a picture of 41 NFL players who were arrested in 2006. By my count, 39 of those players were black.

You want to talk about a damaging, powerful image, an image that went out across the globe?

We’re holding news conferences about Imus when the behavior of NFL players is painting us as lawless and immoral. Come on. We can do better than that. Jesse and Al are smarter than that.

Had Imus’ predictably poor attempt at humor not been turned into an international incident by the deluge of media coverage, 97 percent of America would’ve never known what Imus said. His platform isn’t that large and it has zero penetration into the sports world.

Imus certainly doesn’t resonate in the world frequented by college women. The insistence by these young women that they have been emotionally scarred by an old white man with no currency in their world is laughably dishonest.

The Rutgers players are nothing more than pawns in a game being played by Jackson, Sharpton and Stringer.

Jesse and Al are flexing their muscle and setting up their next sting. Bringing down Imus, despite his sincere attempts at apologizing, would serve notice to their next potential victim that it is far better to pay up than stand up to Jesse and Al James.

Stringer just wanted her 15 minutes to make the case that she’s every bit as important as Pat Summitt and Geno Auriemma. By the time Stringer’s rambling, rapping and rhyming 30-minute speech was over, you’d forgotten that Tennessee won the national championship and just assumed a racist plot had been hatched to deny the Scarlet Knights credit for winning it all.
Maybe that’s the real crime. Imus’ ignorance has taken attention away from Candace Parker’s and Summitt’s incredible accomplishment. Or maybe it was Sharpton’s, Stringer’s and Jackson’s grandstanding that moved the spotlight from Tennessee to New Jersey?
None of this over-the-top grandstanding does Black America any good.


We can’t win the war over verbal disrespect and racism when we have so obviously and blatantly surrendered the moral high ground on the issue. Jesse and Al might win the battle with Imus and get him fired or severely neutered. But the war? We don’t stand a chance in the war. Not when everybody knows “nappy-headed ho’s” is a compliment compared to what we allow black rap artists to say about black women on a daily basis.

We look foolish and cruel for kicking a man who went on Sharpton’s radio show and apologized. Imus didn’t pull a Michael Richards and schedule an interview on Letterman. Imus went to the Black vice president’s house, acknowledged his mistake and asked for forgiveness.

Let it go and let God.

We have more important issues to deal with than Imus. If we are unwilling to clean up the filth and disrespect we heap on each other, nothing will change with our condition. You can fire every Don Imus in the country, and our incarceration rate, fatherless-child rate, illiteracy rate and murder rate will still continue to skyrocket.

A man who doesn’t respect himself wastes his breath demanding that others respect him.

We don’t respect ourselves right now. If we did, we wouldn’t call each other the N-word. If we did, we wouldn’t let people with prison values define who we are in music and videos. If we did, we wouldn’t call black women *****es and hos and abandon them when they have our babies.

If we had the proper level of self-respect, we wouldn’t act like it’s only a crime when a white man disrespects us. We hold Imus to a higher standard than we hold ourselves. That’s a (freaking) shame.

We need leadership that is interested in fixing the culture we’ve adopted. We need leadership that makes all of us take tremendous pride in educating ourselves. We need leadership that can reach professional athletes and entertainers and get them to understand that they’re ambassadors and play an important role in defining who we are and what values our culture will embrace.

It’s time for Jesse and Al to step down. They’ve had 25 years to lead us. Other than their accountants, I’d be hard pressed to find someone who has benefited from their administration.

[Mutaman]

Annother view:

Whitlock Provides Diversion From Imus Issue
Media Laps Up Attack on Black Leadership, Hip Hop
By KEITH T. CLINKSCALES
Sports Commentary

Editor's note: Keith T. Clinkscales is the general manager of ESPN The Magazine and a member of the Founding Team of Vibe Magazine.


The mainstream media thanks you, Jason Whitlock. You have provided them with a black-sponsored excuse for the entire Don Imus situation. Thanks to the beautiful diversionary tactic you provided, even Meredith Viera is stepping to Al Sharpton.

Instead of taking this watershed moment in media and culture and honing in on the true cause of the Imus situation, we are now discussing 50 Cent, Snoop Dogg and Young Jeezy.

Despite your admonition of Jesse Jackson and Sharpton, the Imus situation has little to do with the African-American fight for true economic and social equality. Imus was and should be a moment to hold a mirror to thousands of media outlets in this country where black America does not have a single voice that decides what gets on, and more importantly, stays on the air.

Jason, your misdirection has given the mainstream media a pair of dancing shoes. For one of the first times in history, black people mattered. Not to the media, but to the advertisers - the true invisible hand of the media marketplace - who spoke loudly and clearly. Procter and Gamble said "no." Then Staples said "no." Then several others followed their lead. They were not hassled by Revs. Sharpton or Jackson. They knew this situation was going to be a no-win for themselves and their shareholders. Eventually, the reverends may have picketed them, but their conscience spoke to them long before picket lines had to.

Jason, for you to question the validity of Vivian Stringer's press conference and to complain about its length does not consider the extraordinary circumstances that she was thrust into as the leader of those young women. To suggest this press conference was some type of recruiting ploy, is as cowardly as the attack that Imus perpetrated in the first place.



The mainstream media also thanks you, Jason because by attacking Sharpton and Jackson you are doing the dirty work that no white person can credibly do. It is such an annoying chore to find enough black journalists around to credibly disseminate the type of disinformation that helps people look away from the real problems and focus on the irrelevant. In the soundbite and headline environment that we live in, it is so easy to reduce the incredibly complex problem of race relations in America to Rev. Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and the dreaded influence of Hip Hop. As you watch the talk shows and the internet discussions too much discourse is addressed with this whining phrase ... "what about what the rappers say?"

Advantage: Bigots.

You say that Jesse, Al and Vivian don’t have the heart to mount a legitimate campaign against the "real black folk killas?" While Jesse and Al are not perfect, they have put it on the line year after year for black people. Both have served jail time for their beliefs. Their use of the microphones and the media has been to provide a voice to the voiceless among us. While you may not want them to speak for you, there are many black people who are happy that somebody - anybody - will speak powerfully about their concerns. For every Tawana Brawley reference, you can cite ten Amadou Diallos, Rodney Kings, and Sean Bells. Coach Stringer exists in a world where less than eight percent of college basketball coaches are black women. And often to the detriment of her progress, she has been a consistent supporter of women’s athletics while stridently maintaining a pro-black voice.

An individual with elementary knowledge of the Civil Rights Movement would know that in their day, Martin, and certainly Malcolm were not universally loved by their black peers. There were many critics who from the comfort of their critical perches, would high-mindedly discuss their "relevance" and just "who they spoke for." What Martin and Malcolm provided more than anything else was the courage to agitate the system. In the process of agitation, the cleansing forces of righteousness helped America to get to a better place. The agitation is not always pleasant, nor is it rarely universally loved.

You are not agitation. You are flowing with the currents. Black men have an uneasy relationship with the media, from Pacman to Pac, some of it is from their own behavior ... other times they simply "fit the description." You are breaking no new journalistic ground by speaking your version of truth about black men. Your apocalyptic notion of young black men as the "new KKK" again fuels fear, confusion and hatred.

I would agree with you Jason that all is not right with Hip Hop. The fantasy gangsta culture that has been created in the modern hip-hop era is an incredible perversion of the transformative power of Hip Hop culture. You will also get no argument from me that the music and much of the culture has moved into an advanced state of misogyny, and no amount of "I'm just keepin’ it real" street excuses can diminish that fact. However, the success of Hip hop music has developed a substantial economy and a unique power that much of the worlds media utilizes for both good and evil.


To be fair and balanced, you cannot decry the music and the culture without acknowledging that it has created phenomenal opportunities for many young black men and women in entertainment and media, some have become millionaires, many have provided inspiration and leadership to young people. Countless jobs have been created, and the spirit of entrepreneurship has been promulgated by urban lore of companies like Bad Boy, FUBU, Phat Farm and many others. It is fine, and necessary to be critical of hip hop, but since it has provided so much to people like us, I would humbly ask you to utilize your power to transform the game.

As the discussion rages about Imus and the fallout extends into death threats and other equally disconcerting reactions, let's not wrap up the problem in the neat package of hip-hop’s culture. Yes, hip-hop has issues, but so does much of our entertainment and media. The body count on the Sopranos continues to climb, yet I hear no one blaming James Gandolfini for the true gangster policy that the United States has in conducting the war in the Middle East. Why not? Tony Soprano is a character, not unlike the Snoop character played by Calvin Broadus or the Jay-Z character played by Shawn Carter. Dragging Dave Chappelle or any other comedian who utilizes words from the magic bag of racial controversy is merely another diversion to the core issue. Could you imagine the New York Times declaring that Bush’s war policy is influenced by the Sopranos? ... fuhgedaboutit.

Jason, the fundamental problem that created the Imus situation is a lack of people of color, journalists with your intellect, courage and voice sitting in a seat of power. If there was someone like you in the Imus control rooms or in the executive management of CBS Radio, the response and the consequences would occur internally instead of having to wait for Reverend Sharpton or Jackson to get on the phone. When the American media questions the business need for a diverse staff, this Imus situation is the clear unmitigated answer.


2007-04-17 12:16:23