If you visit the iTunes Web site right now and preview the first five tracks from The Game’s new CD, “Doctor’s Advocate,” you will hear the n-word about 15 times in a 2½ minute span. I bring this up because “Doctor’s Advocate” was the top-selling CD in the country last week. The same week Michael Richards was blasted for his “I’m not a racist” racist rant.
Now, I’m not trying to call out The Game. In fact, I’m sure I used the word a couple of times last week myself. And I’m certainly not cutting Kramer any slack either. But I do find it’s getting more and more difficult to intelligently celebrate a black man who repeatedly calls himself “n—–” and then chastise a white guy for saying “He’s a n—–.” It just seems like there’s a disconnect there.
It does seem a little strange that this is the one self-labeling that everyone is supposed to ignore. Normally, it’s considered polite to refer to another individual in the manner which he refers to himself, but apparently not in this case. I neither know nor care if Michael Richards is racist, but I do think the media hogpile is somewhat hypocritical considering the way in which it has studiously ignored Michael Irvin’s hypothesis regarding Tony Romo’s geneology.
The truth is that most of the media regards blacks, like women, as quasi-children, thus they can never be held entirely responsible for their words or deeds.