Kendrick Lamar kicks fan off stage for saying the N word

[RIP sleazyy]

Civil rights and lefts

 

[HankHill]

That old man strength ain't no joke

 

[tr1ll]

IN the blazer!

Didn’t even unbutton...lightwork.

 

[Deleted member 42060]

indian dude smart

 

[blastercombo]

So my dude went in their wanting to end the 7 game series in 2. Respect and gym motivation LOL. My dude did all the with Sunday gear still pristine. Teach me

 

[sugafree]

Well he pulled a corny *** Becky on stage...
Gotta keep them white surburb sales strong... since after all lets face it according to these lame *** rappers “white suburban kids are the majority of their sales and support”

 

[krazy88s]

Well he pulled a corny *** Becky on stage...
Gotta keep them white surburb sales strong... since after all lets face it according to these lame *** rappers “white suburban kids are the majority of their sales and support”

Pretty sure they really make up the large majority of rap sales and concert goers

 

[sugafree]

Pretty sure they really make up the large majority of rap sales and concert goers

Welp there you have it...

 

[hand2handking]

which is why if its so cool for everyone to say their own white artists would right?

 

[tr1ll]

Actually, with streaming services like Apple Music and Spotify ect, that probably aint even true anymore.

 

[VARNELL HILL]

Actually, with streaming services like Apple Music and Spotify ect, that probably aint even true anymore.

Why wouldn't it be?

 

[ahat]

You know what? This is the key. The next time I’m at a restaurant and a bunch of Asian kids are in a booth dropping N-bombs like they be putting Blue Magic in their hair, I’m just gonna start calling my people c***** and just see what happens.

Before you decide to wild out...I hope you do know theres a word in Chinese that sounds similar to the N word. I believe it means "umm" or to refer to something.

 

[tr1ll]

Before you decide to wild out...I hope you do know theres a word in Chinese that sounds similar to the N word. I believe it means "umm" or to refer to something.

Oh no fam...I know what I heard. They was without a doubt dropping N-bombs.

Houston brothas hand out passes like no ones business.

 

[ahat]

Oh no fam...I know what I heard. They was without a doubt dropping N-bombs.

Houston brothas hand out passes like no ones business.

Ahh gotcha. If it's the ones straight from the mainland or HK that's most likely what they saying. The first part of the word sounds like an accentuated way of saying "knee".

Comedian Russell Peters actually has a bit about it during one of his stand up shows

 

[tr1ll]

Why wouldn't it be?

I feel like streaming services have slowed the bootleg game down big time. That, and the fact that CDs are already being phased out. I know a lot of black people with streaming services. **** all my friends either have Apple Music, Spotify and/or Tidal. The convenience of having a new album the second it drops at the press of a button >>>> 3 for 10 bootlegs

 

[hand2handking]

In the N-word, A History of Racism

Photo: Amy Harris, Associated Press
Kendrick Lamar called up a white woman on stage at a concert recently and invited her to rap along to the song "m.A.A.d city." When she said the N-word, Lamar interrupted her. This incident is one of several swirling around of late, all of them begging one critical question: Can a white person use the N-word? Ever? In any context? Under any circumstances?

https://www.timesunion.com/living/article/In-the-N-word-a-history-of-racism-12976836.php

A couple weeks ago, fresh off his Pulitzer Prize win, Kendrick Lamar called up a white woman on stage at an Alabama concert and invited her to rap along to the song "m.A.A.d city." When she proceeded to say the N-word, Lamar interrupted her. She asked: "Am I not cool enough for you? What's up?"


About a day later, Josh Denny, a white comedian and Food Network host, dropped the bomb in a podcast interview with TMZ's Van Latham. Latham objected. Denny did it again, explaining the word was just part of a joke.


Then, last week, a bunch of white high school students in Pennsylvania laughingly deployed the N-word in a game of hangman. The video went viral. One of them claimed he was only trying to be funny.

And so on.

The incidents are among the several swirling around of late, all of them begging one critical question: Can a white person use the N-word? Ever? In any context? Under any circumstances?

Short answer: No. Not in public, not in private, not alone in the shower. Not if you're progressive, woke, saintly, just joking around, trying to be pointed and ironic, whatever. Nope. Never. Long answer follows.

First, language matters. Let's start there. Words have weight, carrying the twin burdens of history and expectation. But conversations about words are tricky and fraught with the risk of misunderstanding. Why? Because culture changes, bringing language along with it — a natural byproduct of successive generations and their changing viewpoints. Even terms that were okay a generation or two ago are not okay now: I won't mention them here, but you know what they are, and you know you can't use them.

As a parent I am constantly struck by the way my children and their peers have already seized and altered the conversation around race, privilege and identity — and how often they challenge me on my own language and its underlying assumptions. Every generation does this (see: the 1960s). Each new wave enters the world, envisions a better one and then brings it to life through actions and words.

My offspring caught me, recently, when I used "ethnic off-brands" in describing the Latino and Asian foods I sometimes buy at the supermarket. Why "ethnic"? Why not simply say "Latino" or "Asian," or even better, "Mexican" or "Chinese"? This gave me pause: Was I using "ethnic" as a subtly racist catch-all? Would I use it to describe, say, Hannaford brand wheat bread the same way I use it to describe Jarritos pineapple soda? It popped up again in a newsroom discussion of the Armenian, Greek and Polish celebrations held at Capital Region churches last weekend: Should our coverage call them "ethnic" festivals? Was it offensive in its vagueness? Was "cultural" — which we wound up using — any better?

Maybe. Maybe not. But what struck me in the midst of this conversation was the fact that we were having it at all. Our grappling with the word: that's what mattered. That alone suggested a culture in transition. As a nation, we're sorting out how to speak, how to act, who to be — not just in the ongoing discourse on race, but in the #MeToo movement and the evolving talk on gender as well.

And so, the N-word. Omnipresent in hip-hop and heard on a regular basis by rap fans of every color, it's both familiar and verboten; non-black listeners might know it well, but they can't say it. For years, white rappers have been called out on their appropriation of it, though most shun the word — Eminem included. Other genres have not been immune. When Bob Dylan used it in "Hurricane," his epic 1975 protest song on the imprisonment of boxer Hurricane Carter, his intent was the opposite of racist, and so it was for the well-meaning hordes of white artists covering the song in the ensuing 43 years. Ani DiFranco is among the many who once mouthed it full-on. But if you take a look at more recent versions on YouTube, you'll find several that avoid the lyric entirely, ending the 11-verse song somewhere before that singular verbal minefield in Number 9.

These are only small moves in the right direction, but transformation is incremental. Social change has its sudden tectonic shifts, to be sure, whether it's a Supreme Court decision allowing gay marriage or news that the Miss America pageant has finally ditched the swimsuit competition, but those shifts don't occur without individual citizens making little personal decisions on a daily basis. Every parent who hugs a gay son's husband is a quiet agent for change. So is every white kid who raps along to a Kendrick Lamar song — at a concert, hanging with friends, in a car — and doesn't say the N-word.

Long ago, my parents used this argument against racist jokes. Never tell one, they said. Never laugh at one. Never allow someone else to tell one or laugh at one. Never be a part of it, because each instance contributes to the toxic pool of racist jokes that plague humanity. Racism can only be eradicated bit by bit, person by person, as mindful Americans opt out.

When someone from a historically oppressed, underprivileged viewpoint says "that's not funny," or "that word hurts," those of us from a historical vantage of privilege and oppression should take heed. We can object by saying "I didn't mean it that way," or "I'm not a racist," or "I was only telling a joke," but such objections don't push the conversation forward. They shut it down.

And history is filled with unheard voices: the poor, the enslaved, the marginalized. They've been silenced by fear and by death, and no two syllables have done more to stifle them than the N-word. Here we have a term that's been used by one segment of humanity to dehumanize and oppress another — a word that's stolen babies, chained their mothers, loaded slave ships, roused mobs, lifted crosses, set them ablaze, hung people from trees, bombed them in one church and shot them in another.

It's impossible not to shrink at its murderous power. So when I read about those teenagers playing hangman, or that Food Network comedian, or that woman at the rap concert, or any other clueless white brickheads who haven't yet jettisoned the ugly old slur from their vocabularies, I'm dumbfounded. Don't they realize how hateful and deadly it is? Don't they know it's still being used to dehumanize blacks by tiki-torch neo-Nazis across the land? If they do know, are they racist? Or don't they care?

Perhaps they don't care, and perhaps that's yet another mark of their privilege: they have the luxury of being stupid. Obliviousness to injury and injustice is an easy thing when you're not the target.

For far too long, white people have exercised that privilege. White people have controlled the conversation. White people have controlled the language itself, policing it, codifying it, editing it, classifying it and organizing it into dictionaries for century after century.

White people need to listen when we're told that a word causes harm. White people need to let someone other than white people steer the discussion. And when it comes to saying the N-word, white people need to shut up.

 

[sooperhooper]