Clemson University Probes Racist Party - AP
Students Apologize for Gang-Theme Party - AP
Black-face get ups are offensive - period. They are not questionable mimics of behavior, but rather a direct put down of another race. With this said, let us move on.
Gangsta' parties are not inherently racist. When I see White and Asian kids walking down the street with their waist bans around their thighs, sideways baseball caps and white tee shirts sized for a Detroit lineman, I shake my head, but not because they are racists. They simply look silly to me, the same as the Blacks they are copying. But people assimilate behaviors for a myriad of reasons, all valid and incomprehensible.
If Black people, or anyone else, assume personas that cause others to react, they should look in large part at their behavior, as the catalyst, rather than the responses of others. Dressing like a thug is designed to elicit fear. Blacks should not cry racism when that fear is converted to a more pleasant emotion in safe confines. This is normal. It is also not profiling to be more suspicious of people who dress like prison inmates in free society.
What is frustrating to advancement is for a group to carry a hypersensitivity about how they are viewed while sabotaging that view in the name of free expression. And when 'being dangerous' is the expression, a host of negative reactions are sure to follow.
James C. Collier
Update: As long as Black people immortalize men like Tupac, on sites like www.thuglifearmy.com, 'Bullets and Bubbly' parties should come as no surprise, or offense. When Blacks seed the world with such images of themselves, collegiate reactions 'pale' in comparison to the real damage inflicted.
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Technorati Tags: Clemson University Probes Racist Party, Gansta, Blackface, Crime, Responsibility, Racism, acting white
2 comments:
Interesting point of view. I think that we do have a responsibility for the image we portray to the world. I'm pretty fed up with gangsta rappers. I know that many of them have had a hard life, but they make the rest of us look bad. Are these the most educated, productive folks that we can find to represent us? Of course not, but they are the ones who the world knows. Everyone will think that all black people grew up and act like gangsta rappers. People of other races don't understand. Its the same reason why they don't understand why the N-word is offensive. If we act in a certain way, they will copy us, and we are responsible for what they copy.
“White students at Tarleton State University in Texas hold a party in which they dress in gang gear and drink malt liquor from paper bags. A white Clemson University student attends a bash in blackface over the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend. A fraternity at Johns Hopkins University invites partygoers to wear "bling bling" grills, or shiny metal caps on their teeth.”
The only one of these things I find offensive if the “Black Face” thing. Everything else, oh well, that crap is offensive when blacks do it in my opinion. Why expect these things, this “gangsta” b/s to not be mocked and mimicked when the stupid gangsta image is being pumped to the masses via media?
Further to the fact, white teen boys are the largest demographic for the sales of this stupid “gangsta” music.
I said it before, I'll say it again, Oh well.
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