Media Matters Misses the Point on Racism and Black Culture

[liveonearth]

http://mediamatters.org/action/drlaura/
(you can listen to what she said here, it's 7 minutes long)

Media Matters wants to chastise Dr Laura Schleissinger who spoke about racism on the radio, calling her comments racist and "breathtaking". She is a bit feisty and sometimes

Comments

[bodylove]

I think the point you may be missing is that it's not about how comfortable You feel w/ the word.

"Some blacks become unable to see that not every remark that mentions blacks or contains the word nigger is inherently racist."

....I think that was an inherently racist statement...why didn't you write "some people"....of course I don't know your history, but it seems like you haven't experienced much prejudice

Call me hypersensitive, but if someone used the term "kike" I would be offended b/c it's a derogatory term and would be putting me down.

[liveonearth]

Words only have the power that we give them. Nigger or kike or any other derogatory term can only hurt if you permit it to. And talking ABOUT such a term is not the same as directly applying it to someone. YOU brought up the term "kike" and I don't even know what it means----but now if I say it you will be offended? Isn't that a waste of time?

[bodylove]

kike is a derogatory term for a jewish person. similar to the "n word." yes of course there is most definitely a difference in talking about a term vs applying it directly to someone, but in the context dr laura was replying to, she wasn't simply talking about the term...the caller jade had said her husband's friends were using the term and it upset her, and dr laura went on her rant about how using the term should be acceptable. the point is that it's a racial slur and offensive to many people.

saying racial slurs only have the power that we give them is like saying a gunshot wound only has the power we give it ..... a wound is a wound and hurt is hurt.....you can take all the power away from the gun and the bullet but you're probably still gonna feel a sting when you get shot. people can heal and not let the wound bring them down, but it's still gonna hurt

[liveonearth]

As long as you give others the power to hurt you with words you are going to be suffering. A word is not the same as a bullet. Of course words have immense power. They have substantially more when people allow their conditioned responses to govern their reactions to them.

[liveonearth]

I don't agree that Dr Laura was arguing that the use of "nigger" should be acceptable. She was pointing out that when black men use the word with each other, it can be a term of endearment, and that the negative interpretation of the word seems to have a lot to do with the color of the lips it passes through. In other words, the offensiveness of the term is dependent on the race of the utterer.

[bodylove]

I understand the point but where I disagree is that I heard Dr Laura using it in a derogatory sense in that she had labeled the caller as hypersensitive to something that obviously offended her and then continued to use the word over and over in her face

[liveonearth]

Have you ever taken the Myers-Briggs personality inventory? You're sounding like an SF (the middle two letters). I'm an NT. We value different things, and will likely never come to agreement on this question. To me truth is more important than someone's feelings. To you someone's feelings are more important than truth. Both perspectives are legitimate and valuable. And people who are as different as you and I are rarely close in a personal way.

[bodylove]

I see it as......what could be more true than someone's feelings?

I've come up before as INFJ, but other times it's different. It's not a very reliable test, so for someone who values truth, why use the MBTI? I don't think the MBTI says much as people tend to change, act differently, and answer questions differently under different circumstances etc.

[liveonearth]

I understand your valuation of feelings as being of utmost importance and truth. And I see feelings as emotional states that arise, and pass, and have little bearing on what IS.

As for the MTBI, I have found it to be very useful, and reliable enough for my purposes. It is also true that we humans change over time, and many of us (myself included) score near the midline on some continuums, making a representation based on one extreme vs the other less useful.

I'm sort of relieved that you are an N. Did you know that only approximately 25% are N's? We're notably different from S's and are likely to form social circles amongst ourselves. =-]