Reply to ABC cancels 'Roseanne' after racist Twitter rant

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[quote=jsteele][quote=Anonymous]I am not the previous posters in this above comments, but just the one that mentioned the Chris Rock. Not sure what was said before, but I am not defending Roseanne and already posted multiple times she is wrong and glad she was fired.  What I am asking from above is that I understand the difference in political comments vs racism comments, but is that the same as why can black comedians make fun of white people as a race?  Why can a black comedian wish more white kids could die with a crowd of laughter.  Why is that allowed?  You are saying because we were not once oppressed that he is allowed to say that?  That is your rationale that it is okay to wish harm on white kids?  That is your spin on it?  Would it be okay for a white comedian to wish ill on black kids?  My guess is you would be in an uproar.  
And how do you know what Chris Rock means?  He never made one comment about it after the fact.  And if he is raging on why more black kids die, than white (like you are meaning he is saying) they are mostly at the hands of other black people, not white people and it happens daily.  That is why it doesn't make the news.  Same if a white kid killed another white kid. That doesn't make the news either.  You are saying it makes 24/7 news?  That is total BS.  ALL school shootings make the news regardless of skin color and white killing a black person make the news.  So  I am not sure why you think there is news coverage 24/7 of a white person being shot.  I have never seen that.  I have seen many many news reports on the continued killings in Chicago.  Obama was in office for 8 years and is from Chicago.  Why wasn't anything done during those 8 years to improve things?  I guess he can't be held accountable because he is black too?  So it is now okay for Chris Rock to say he wants more white kids to die, because Trump or certain news outlets don't do enough for all the black on black killings in Chicago or that they are not put on the news every single night it happens?  If that is what he means as a comedian, I would be curious as to what he thinks the solution should be.  Or what you think the solution is Jeff, since that is your opinion of his disgusting comment.   Also, why isn't anything being done about school shootings which are predominantly white?  They keep happening without gun control changes, correct?  Nothing is really being done and they keep happening more and more.   Florida happens and a black comedian wishes more of them white kids would die and that is okay - because nothing is being done for black kid killings?  That is supposed to make sense to you because white people were never oppressed?

I just don't get how anyone that says they would like BOTH sides to stop with the hate, is met with "you must be a Trump supporter" or "you were never oppressed" as the retort.  It doesn't rationalize the hate and prejudice from one side over the other.  [/quote]

There is a lot to unpack here. First, you can be sure that Chris Rock doesn't really want more white kids to be killed. Being the father of two white kids, I would be appalled and offended by anyone who wanted such a thing. Comedy has long been a medium for social and political comedy. My wife grew up in the Soviet Union and tells me that comedians were the boldest political commentators because they could tell the truth as a joke and get away with it. In many ways, comedians such as Chris Rock and Michelle Wolf are similar.

So much today is only viewed through a political lens so that things are placed on a left/right spectrum even when they don't need to be. Witness this thread in which generally conservative people defend Roseanne while one poster points out that she ran for president as a Green Party member. For some reason there is a need to determine to which political tribe she belongs and then all tribal members line up in their respective corners. But, racism transcends political boundaries. It can be found across the political spectrum, indeed, even among Green Party presidential candidates.

Because of the current political tribalism everything is politicized. Surely you didn't pull Chicago out of the air because it is the best representative of gun violence today? Because it isn't and hasn't been for a long while. Moreover, gun deaths in Chicago have been decreasing. Yet, Chicago is the favorite of the right-wing. So either consciously or unconsciously, you have bought into the right-wing narrative. That narrative includes your allegation about Obama. Never mind that as President it is not his job to focus on a single city, he did take actions with regard to gun violence in Chicago. It is easy to suspect that you are more interested in "owning liberals" than reducing gun deaths.

Sadly, it seems that the only publicity the deaths of black people get comes from right-wingers trying to score political points. Like I said about racism, this transcends political affiliations. DC is extremely liberal as is the DCUM user base. Yet, DC suffered 13 shootings over Memorial Day weekend with four fatalities. Not a single thread was started on DCUM, though we have a thread about a terrorist attack in Belgium. Do you honestly believe that if 13 white people has been shot this past weekend it would be similarly ignored?  Getting back to Chris Rock, this is what he was addressing. It doesn't matter who is killing black people and your suggestion that because it is other black people it isn't newsworthy is a demonstration of the problem. Blacks killing blacks is simply not considered newsworthy in this country. For a while we talked about the "missing white girl" syndrome in which we would have 24/7 coverage of a missing white girl whereas missing black girls were ignored. We have a similar situation in which black gun deaths are simply not treated as seriously as white gun deaths. This is not a left-right issue and it should not be a back-white issue. Chris Rock is using comedy to draw attention to this discrepancy.

And, while I'm on my soapbox, I am glad that racism is being condemned and Roseanne has been punished. But, she is an outspoken Islamophobe who has made bigoted comments about Muslims for years with no repercussions. Similarly, Bill Maher. Nothing would please me more than to see him taken down as some sort of revenge for Roseanne. That would be ironically fitting. But, neither of them deserves a platform in the first place given their anti-Muslim positions. If someone has a right to complain about unfairness, it is not white people offended by Chris Rock, but Muslims for whom it is still open season for bigotry.
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