This week is my last working as an editor. I'll miss many things about the job, but while I think it fits me, it doesn't use up every passion I have inside of me, leaving much to be desired in my daily worktasks.
So off I go to grad school to get a degree with which I can "make a difference." Really though, so many children getting short-changed in their pursuit of a decent education. I want to help that.
So this week, I wrap up proofs, final lasers, bluelines, and author relations to read, read, read and study, study, study. Big city look out...
Seriously, if I stay here I'll stagnate not only vocationally but mentally and socially. I keep making a lot of the same mistakes and I need a space to be what I envision...
Monday, November 12, 2007
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Katt Williams and CNN
My take on the Katt Wms. situation. The link to the interview is
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0710/31/se.01.html
Now, I don’t watch this show. CNN primetime for the most part is a joke. And don’t get me started on signing on to do a show so a white guy can tell you what you “need to do as an African American…” (Can anybody say “Bill O’Reilly”?)
I do not think nooses are a joke. In the words of Dr. Seuss’s Sam-I-Am: “I do not like them in a house. / I do not like them with a mouse. / I do not like them here or there. / I do not like them anywhere.” People have been racist for years, saying the N-word against blacks for years, and it hasn’t stopped because any entertainer (or three white kids in Jena, La.) ever tried to take the sting out of the noose or the N-word. It has never stopped. And for the record, Katt William said he wasn’t joking when he paraded down the BET red carpet with a noose adorning his pink pimp suit.
The action? Katt Williams says he doesn’t “explain it”; he’s a comedian. I have to ask, then, why did he agree to appear on a (supposed) news station where pundits (supposedly) discuss and explain the issues?
On why he did it: “Because I thought that the races were lost because everywhere they put those nooses, it wasn't the black neighborhood.” What about the incident at Columbia? A noose was put on a highly acclaimed black professor’s office door. The black Boston high school principal who received a noose in the mail? And, of course, there’s Jena, where three nooses were hung on the school tree for all black students to see. Is sending the noose to one black person not enough? Note to noosehangers: To let Katt Williams know you are not “lost” and that you mean business, please hang your nooses in a “black neighborhood.” Don’t just target one black person. That’s weak.
“So the concern is that maybe I've offended myself?” Katt Williams seems to think just because you are black you cannot do anything to offend another African American (or the collective “Us”). Um--O.J. Simpson, Condoleezza Rice, Ray Nagin, the rapper Luke, Snoop Dogg, and on and on. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, I can say each of these has offended me in some way. And guess what? They’re all black? :-0
I digress.
“I am an "N" word. There are colored people. There are African-Americans. These people don't like the "N" word.” [And later] “I'm African-American already.” [He’s schitzoid? ‘Cause to me, an N-word and an African American (or black or American or whatever) are not the same thing.]
Sorry, y’all. I grew up in a household in which the N-word was not allowed—AT ALL. And it was never in my conscience to say it. So, admittedly, I cannot understand the term being used in an endearing way. Also admittedly, I have laughed at a Richard Pryor or Chris Rock joke mentioning the word. And I have relatives who use it. But I don’t let my friends refer to me that way. That ain’t me. And the people I know who use the word would not go on a white man’s show and call themselves that. You can call that Katt Williams’s courage and “being real”—I call it stupidity. So I cannot relate to Katt Williams breaking it down (the wearing of the noose) to say, “Oh, you’re looking for a n***** to hang. I’m over hear. I AM THE N*****. (Appropriate shucking and jiving inserted here.)”
I don’t think Katt Williams is the epitome of evil because he wore the noose. (I do think, however, that not all of “our people” need to be on CNN, especially in a media that doesn’t see black people as having a myriad of opinions—you’re either with Katt Williams or Al Sharpton in their eyes.) I do think it was stupid to do so, even though he has the right to do so. I can’t imagine the statement he was making, even if it was “if you’re looking for somebody to hang, look for me and I’ll whip your…” Because, really, even with that message, where does it take us? Where is the next step after that? There was a joke online that a guy walked down the BET red carpet with his johnson out to make a statement about wearing a condom.
Probably a joke, but the point I’m trying to make is Where is the line? You got to have a line. And if you blur the line (yes, sometimes rules are meant to be broken), then everything becomes relative. Yes, nine times out of ten it’s a futile effort to educate someone who is using their energy to hang nooses, but when you hang one yourself—around your own neck (literally and figuratively)—and really don’t have a goal in mind for what you want to achieve by doing so (and I can’t imagine what that goal would be), you just become the clichéd part of the problem.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0710/31/se.01.html
Now, I don’t watch this show. CNN primetime for the most part is a joke. And don’t get me started on signing on to do a show so a white guy can tell you what you “need to do as an African American…” (Can anybody say “Bill O’Reilly”?)
I do not think nooses are a joke. In the words of Dr. Seuss’s Sam-I-Am: “I do not like them in a house. / I do not like them with a mouse. / I do not like them here or there. / I do not like them anywhere.” People have been racist for years, saying the N-word against blacks for years, and it hasn’t stopped because any entertainer (or three white kids in Jena, La.) ever tried to take the sting out of the noose or the N-word. It has never stopped. And for the record, Katt William said he wasn’t joking when he paraded down the BET red carpet with a noose adorning his pink pimp suit.
The action? Katt Williams says he doesn’t “explain it”; he’s a comedian. I have to ask, then, why did he agree to appear on a (supposed) news station where pundits (supposedly) discuss and explain the issues?
On why he did it: “Because I thought that the races were lost because everywhere they put those nooses, it wasn't the black neighborhood.” What about the incident at Columbia? A noose was put on a highly acclaimed black professor’s office door. The black Boston high school principal who received a noose in the mail? And, of course, there’s Jena, where three nooses were hung on the school tree for all black students to see. Is sending the noose to one black person not enough? Note to noosehangers: To let Katt Williams know you are not “lost” and that you mean business, please hang your nooses in a “black neighborhood.” Don’t just target one black person. That’s weak.
“So the concern is that maybe I've offended myself?” Katt Williams seems to think just because you are black you cannot do anything to offend another African American (or the collective “Us”). Um--O.J. Simpson, Condoleezza Rice, Ray Nagin, the rapper Luke, Snoop Dogg, and on and on. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, I can say each of these has offended me in some way. And guess what? They’re all black? :-0
I digress.
“I am an "N" word. There are colored people. There are African-Americans. These people don't like the "N" word.” [And later] “I'm African-American already.” [He’s schitzoid? ‘Cause to me, an N-word and an African American (or black or American or whatever) are not the same thing.]
Sorry, y’all. I grew up in a household in which the N-word was not allowed—AT ALL. And it was never in my conscience to say it. So, admittedly, I cannot understand the term being used in an endearing way. Also admittedly, I have laughed at a Richard Pryor or Chris Rock joke mentioning the word. And I have relatives who use it. But I don’t let my friends refer to me that way. That ain’t me. And the people I know who use the word would not go on a white man’s show and call themselves that. You can call that Katt Williams’s courage and “being real”—I call it stupidity. So I cannot relate to Katt Williams breaking it down (the wearing of the noose) to say, “Oh, you’re looking for a n***** to hang. I’m over hear. I AM THE N*****. (Appropriate shucking and jiving inserted here.)”
I don’t think Katt Williams is the epitome of evil because he wore the noose. (I do think, however, that not all of “our people” need to be on CNN, especially in a media that doesn’t see black people as having a myriad of opinions—you’re either with Katt Williams or Al Sharpton in their eyes.) I do think it was stupid to do so, even though he has the right to do so. I can’t imagine the statement he was making, even if it was “if you’re looking for somebody to hang, look for me and I’ll whip your…” Because, really, even with that message, where does it take us? Where is the next step after that? There was a joke online that a guy walked down the BET red carpet with his johnson out to make a statement about wearing a condom.
Probably a joke, but the point I’m trying to make is Where is the line? You got to have a line. And if you blur the line (yes, sometimes rules are meant to be broken), then everything becomes relative. Yes, nine times out of ten it’s a futile effort to educate someone who is using their energy to hang nooses, but when you hang one yourself—around your own neck (literally and figuratively)—and really don’t have a goal in mind for what you want to achieve by doing so (and I can’t imagine what that goal would be), you just become the clichéd part of the problem.
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