"I had no right to say that." "Yes, you did."
I was flabbergasted when I heard the two audiotapes of ESPN's Paul Finebaum having to publicly apologize after saying that "this country does not oppress black people". This, of course, was part of the discussion on Colin Kaepernick.
http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/culture/dylan-gwinn/2016/09/01/espn-host-made-apologize-saying-blacks-arent-oppressed
I have said many times that America was, indeed, a racist country when I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s. I do not consider it a racist country today, rather a country with racial issues and divisions that need to be overcome. I stand by that. I will also stand by this:
America today does not oppress black people-or anybody else. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, ESPN.
Empirically Finebaum is correct. The flat statement needs to be modified by recognition that as a kind of backwash of the periods (multiple, and different) when America was officially, ostentatiously, deliberately, institutionally, racist, there are a lot of residual disabilities to being darker than your fellow citizens. Of course he had a right to say it. That could have started a productive conversation.
ReplyDeleteSiarlys,
ReplyDelete"America is officially, ostensibly, deliberately, institutionally, racist". Did you compose this after reading Amendments 13, 14 and 15 of the U.S. Constitution?
Squid
No, it had something to do with a decision titled Plessy v. Ferguson which interpreted those amendments as meaning the exact opposite of what the plain language says. It took sixty years to straighten that out. Please note that I spoke in the past tense, and that the United States of America existed as a political entity for some decades PRIOR to the amendments you mention being ratified. (That's why they're called "amendments."
ReplyDeleteIf you don't understand tenses, Gary can explain it too you. He's an instructor in English.