Family, this Riley Cooper story is typical and unsurprising in so many ways. Let’s review: a white athlete says a racially charged comment while drunk at a country music concert, all of Black America responds by condemning the man, the media run away with the racial elements of the story, and said white athlete makes a public apology.
For those who don’t know who Riley Cooper is a wide-receiver for the National Football League’s Philadelphia Eagles. During the summer, at a Kenny Chesney concert, someone recorded a confrontation a drunken Cooper had with a security guard. During the confrontation, Cooper said that he would “jump that fence and fight every nigger here.” You can see the twenty-second video yourself here.
In the latest development of this non-story, Cooper and the team have agreed to let him take some time away from football to seek counseling (i.e. come back when the heat and media pressure have died down a bit).
So you may be asking, what’s wrong with this picture? I certainly don’t agree with Cooper’s word choice, but what’s most infuriating is the righteous indignation with which members of the black community have responded. The Black Pimps (Sharpton, Jackson, et. al.) and Sharks are circling, looking for any way they can inject themselves into yet another race controversy. (Let’s be clear, Sharpton, Jackson, and crew ARE race-baiters, there’s no way around it, but that’s a story for another post). The bigger question is why do we have this double-standard when it comes to the N-word? Pookie, Uncle Ron, and I can use it, but we get upset when Peter says it? I don’t understand? We have members of our community who profit off of the use of the word, I couldn’t turn on the radio last year without hearing Kanye and Jay-Z talk about niggas in Paris. Where is the outrage when Kanye and Jay-Z say it? Why aren’t we responding with the same righteous indignation? The next time a member of the Black community who uses the N-word gets upset when a white person uses it in the same or similar context, ask them, why is it ok for you to use it and not me? This idea that Black folks have exclusive use over a word that is used to perpetuate hate is preposterous, and frankly the word should be removed from our lexicon. Since that isn’t likely to happen, let me redefine what a nigger is: a nigger is a lazy, low-life, good for nothing, good to no one, useless individual of ANY race. So under this definition how many niggers/as do you actually know?
The point of this blog is to stimulate discussion amongst my Black brothers and sisters about how we cling to a word that has a negative connotation attached to it. I have friends of different ethnic backgrounds that think its OK to use this word because they hear us saying it, they hear musicians profiting from it, and that leads many of them to believe that the word has become mainstream enough that its OK for everyone to use it. That’s wrong. Before we can criticize others for their word choice, we must clean ours first. I hope that one day we’ll see the end of the silly ass cycle of Riley Coopers and the resulting Black/Media outrage that accompanies it. Until then, pay close attention and observe the erosion of common sense, and the hypocrisy of it all.
I love you all, & there’s nothing you can do about it.
~JW
Thoughts From a Young Legal Mind... 