I know I'm a few days late and so I've now passed into the realm of "are people still talking about this?" but this is still on my mind, so I'm going to talk about it anyway. Apparently Dog the Bounty Hunter is a racist meathead. I really could not care less about that. However, I do care about his crucifixion. That part is fascinating.
Do you know the story? I've only skimmed articles, because it's really not that interesting, so I only think I know what's going on. As I understand it, Dog's son has/had a girlfriend who just so happens to be black. This displeases Dog. In a telephone conversation (tape recorded and released to the public by Dog's son), Dog told his boy he had to break up with the young woman because she's black.
And Dog dropped the N-bomb.
Gasp!
Before going farther, let's clarify. Dog is a racist meathead. That much I do not dispute. But who cares what the hell he thinks? The guy has a hair cut that screams "I own every Great White album ever made, even the Japanese imports." I'm not going to hang a whole lot on his opinion. Besides… he's allowed to be racist. It's distasteful, but everyone is allowed their own opinions.
It doesn't bother me that A&E yanked his show over the incident. They're protecting their brand image. It's their right to yank any show at any time for any reason.
What gets under my skin is the attention paid to The N Word. Playing a frantic game of CYA, Dog himself said:
My sincerest, heartfelt apologies go out to every person I have offended for my regrettable use of very inappropriate language. I am deeply disappointed in myself for speaking out of anger to my son and using such a hateful term in a private phone conversation. It was completely taken out of context. I was disappointed in his choice of a friend, not due to her race, but her character. However, I should have never used that term.
I am so sick of this convoluted set of rules we're all trying to follow. Who can say nigger? When can they say it? In what context? To hell with it all.
Why is it ok when Ludacris says it, but not ok when Dog says it? And don't think it's because Ludacris is black and Dog is white. If Ludacris called Dog a honky or a blue-eyed devil or "The Man," no one would care. No one would care if Dog said those things either. It's all about The N Word, but only when a person who is not black says it.
Think about the movies you've seen, the books you've read and the songs you've heard. It's not unusual to find The N Word thrown around quite a bit by black people. It's socially unacceptable for any non-black person to ever say nigger, in any context. And yet it's ok for every black person to say it, in every context? That makes no damn sense at all.
If we have two sets of rules, one for black people and one for everyone else… isn't that the opposite of racial equality? Why does no one lose their mind when Luda says " 'cuz these niggas all up in my shit?" If it's ok for Luda to say it, it should be ok for Dog to say it too. If it's not ok for Dog, it shouldn't be ok for Luda either. Anything less than one single set of rules that applies to everyone is an impediment to true social justice.
Perhaps the most important element of this is one I've not yet mentioned. It's. Just. A. Word. Words like "nigger" continue to have power because we all choose to give them power.
During my lifetime, the word "bitch" has slowly evolved from a hateful term to one used as an all-purpose exclamation and even a term of endearment. If Archie Bunker had said bitch in 1973, there would have been an uproar. 30 years later no one cared how, or how many times, Matt LeBlanc said it on Friends.
We took all the power away from the word "bitch." The word has been completely emasculated, simply because we've all decided it doesn't hurt us anymore. Isn't it about time we do the same thing to "nigger?"