TYT: Cenk On Hasselbeck Crying, Whoopi And The N-Word On The View

[ihavenobias]

Run time: 05:52 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paruOqHn2SY   Posted on YouTube: July 18, 2008 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: July 21, 2008 By DU Member: ihavenobias Views on DU: 3318

 
Also, Don't miss the new show which premiered Friday. You can watch a repeat at http://meetthebloggers.org /. It's hosted by Cenk of TYT and there will be many guests this summer, including Rachel Maddow, Arianna Huffington, John Cusack and many more!

Finally, Bill Scher (Liberal Oasis/CFA) W/ Cenk On & Much More

Keep in mind that you can download the first hour of The Young Turks free every day through Itunes. Also, the show loops 24 hours a day at www.theyoungturks.com and runs live M-F from 9-11pm EST, with a post game show (politics with entertainment and current events) starting at 11pm. Finally, there is great news for XM radio subscribers: The Young Turks are now on XM 167 Monday-Friday, 8am-10am EST!

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. I grew up in the '50s

My mom taught in black schools, and I went to kindergarten in a black school. Mom was active in the Urban League and was for equal rights. I was taught to have and to show respect to all my elders, including African American ones. My observation at the time was that the N word was used in a different way by blacks than by whites. Whites using it were portraying the entire black population in a negative way--blacks, on the other hand, used it to refer to specific individuals exhibiting certain traits that they felt reflected negatively upon blacks in general. I understood it at the time to be a word not bandied about lightly, and that the use by whites was very different than the use by blacks. And it somehow made sense to me at the time that it was all right for blacks to use it while not all right for whites to do so. I think in the ensuing years this distinction has become blurred, hence Hasselbeck's comments.

[ingac70]

3. ......

The problem here isn't that its ok for an African American to use it and not a white person. It's that a few months ago Jackson and Sharpton staged an actual fake funeral for the "N word" trying to persuade their own race not to use it. And now he's caught off camera using it.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

5. Ah

I've not been in touch with the news lately, due to a change in jobs. I hadn't heard of the fake funeral. Interesting that Rev. Jackson would do that and then turn around and use the word.

[gateley]

4. Interesting observation. nt

[Enthusiast]

8. Hasselbeck doesn't have a clue.

What an airhead.

[sui generis]

27. I grew up overseas in a military community

15 years abroad, where purely "white" kids were the minority. I didn't have a clue that America ("the states") was nothing even remotely like that very real melting pot of black, samoan, asian, chinese, indian and every possible combination of cultures.

I can't convey the deep shock I had finally moving to the states, to find "the blacks" (funny how the "the" article helps disconnect) living on "the other side of the tracks", and unheard of for students to date "interracially", in our land of freeeeeeedoms.

I still haven't quite gotten over being homesick for my youth. Of hanging out with Celeste (a Navajo chick)getting bombed on juvenile delinquent sangria in flamenco clubs and rapping in Catalan with the putas on Las Ramblas in Barcelona, of my best friend Phillip, a half chinese half hawaiian "cool dude" who showed me how to skate board better (think crappy wheels, gravel, skinned knees and elbows, try try again), of any number of goofball groups of friends I get nostalgic for.

How strange that here we all work so hard to keep the walls of our differences alive and well rather than celebrating the path we can take together of the things we have in common.

[gateley]

2. K&R -- nt

[Heather MC]

6. Do white people want to be able to use the n-word?

Every time this argument comes up. I hear the "complaint" How come blacks can say it, but "we" can't?

I am black, I don't understand why anyone needs to say it ever.

My mother taught me that using that word shows your intelligence level. I don't struggle with the word, I am not one, I have been called one and I laughed. No one defines my identity but God and myself. So people can say whatever they want to me. Using that word shows their stupidity not mine.

[rebel with a cause]

10. Personally, I do not. but I know places where white people do still use it

I have two explanations for why they would use it, although I do not agree with its use ever just as you don't.

On one hand, I was living in NYC when I came home to the midwest in the seventies and was shocked that white kids had began using the term to each other and their parents thought it was okay because they were using it like the rappers. Now this was in a very small mid-western town where my relatives lived and all the kids (people) were white. One day a high school class went on a field trip to a city (unnamed) and one of those kids (trying to be cool) used the "N" word to a Black kid his age that the group had met. The city kid left, came back with his friends and they killed the ignorant white boy. People in the small town could not understand why they had killed him, after all he was just being friendly and talking like a rapper. When I found out, I just shook my head and rolled my eyes at them.

On the other hand some years later when we moved back to the mid-west; my daughter, son, and then husband were called that word by people who were not emulating rappers. I was upset one day and asked one of my African American professors how to handle the situation. She told me that the word meant that someone was uncouthed and I should teach my children this and that the person using it was really the "N" and not the person being called. I'll never forget how much sense that made.

As the years passed, you heard the word more and more coming out of white people mouths. Racism was not as covert as it had been, perhaps because the towns were no longer all white. My children and I moved out of that area when they were teen-agers and now live in a more diverse area. Recently my son had to go back to the town where we use to live for his job. He was verbally abused by passer-bys when he walked down the street. I have to say that my son looks Middle-Eastern (although he is Latino) so I am not sure if the insults were because of that or what.

[bigmonkey]

12. It's an entitlement thing.

Some entitled people think that any restriction on their action is just wrong. Everyone should get the same deal, no matter what. Maybe like McCain collecting his social security checks even though he doesn't need them at all.

Me, I figure that it's a good reminder that I have structural advantages because of my skin color, something that it's otherwise easy to forget. 400 years of slavery vs. one word that I can't say - where's the problem?

I also think that Hasselbeck is looking for a rule to follow, one that everybody has to follow. Typical of an authoritarian type. Goldberg is instead arguing that you have to constantly check the context, something that authoritarians find quite difficult to do. I'm not sure that giving Hasselbeck a hard-and-fast rule is very helpful in the long run, it just encourages that rule-bound thinking. I like to think that authoritarianism is curable, because I don't like to rate people through stereotyped filters.

[Jade Fox]

21. THANK YOU!!!!!

Your points about some white people's sense of entitlement, and authoritarian people's inability to understand shifting contexts are right on.


However, I don't think authoritarianism is curable, at least not that I've seen.

[izquierdista]

23. How is it curable?

The social studies I have seen on authoritarianism (i.e., Altemeyer) are just at the level of describing it, let alone knowing what to do with it. It seems to be an innate personality trait that probably gets reinforced with education. In that sense, I suppose you could use education to reverse the effects of it.

I think giving simpletons like Hasselbeck a hard and fast rule is good. You wouldn't want them to freeze up in a situation and not know which of a dozen rules to apply when their brain can only hold one at a time.

[Heather MC]

26. It's curable with Death! Just like everything else

[CherylK]

7. K & R! A good perspective!

[OhioChick]

9. K&R

:kick:

[IntravenousDemilo]

11. Hey, I have a peachy idea!

Why don't we just set up two completely separate dictionaries, one with words only black people can use, and one with words only white people can use? We'll all be able to communicate so much better then, once we've instituted linguistic apartheid. And then after that, we can completely ghettoize both sectors of the population, and maybe have equal but separate -- but EQUAL, mind you -- (but separate) drinking fountains, eating establishments, and sides of the bus we can ride on, say white folks on the right side, black folks on the left, or vice versa, with everyone else standing in the aisle or fitting in as best as they can on one side or the other.

[NattPang]

13. We are talking about one word,

and you are going overboard with this.

[liberalmuse]

14. Bill Maher is right.

Some people simply can't hold two opposing viewpoints in their heads at the same time. It IS alright for blacks to use the word. It's an ugly word, but the argument whites make that blacks shouldn't use it is fucking stupid. Whites in this country will never understand the black experience, ever, and have no right to feel righteous indignation because of blacks using the 'N' word in regards to each other. Better to use a hateful epitaph on yourself and numb yourself than to keep feeling the pain everytime some fucking racist spits it at you.

[stark6935]

15. ...

I am young, so I will chime in...lol I have had black friends tell me its ok for me to call them my niggers (I'm white), so what mixed signal does that send? I don't do it because I really don't feel comfortable doing it, and I don't want to offend others,(black, and white) but I do know other white people who do without repercussions, because people are making it seem mainstream. I'm not stating an opinion, just an objective observation of what I've seen, where I've lived (Iowa/Nebraska/Illinois/Missouri).

[Barb in Atl]

18. What mixed message does that send?

That NO group is monolithic and while your friends of color think you using that particular racial epithet is okay, I would have SERIOUS issues with any of my white friends using the word. Mind you, I don't use it either. But even if I did, there's enough history behind it to seriously make me rethink my "I'm too old to hand out beat downs" stance.

[SemperEadem]

28. they're not giving you permission to say the words

"my niggers "

they mean "my niggas".

That is what they are saying.

Ask them to spell it.

Don't be confused.

[Lifetimedem]

19. Exactly !

[BlueEyedSon]

16. Hasselbeck is incredibly stupid.NT

[Lifetimedem]

20. The word "nigger"

Was never allowed in my home growing up in the 50's. When I worked in a minority agency in the 90's I was the only white person there, and when I heard the term used among black people it made my skin crawl.

I never commented on it but quite frankly I do not believe that one race should be "punished" for saying something another race uses. That takes us back to an era I would rather not revisit.

[brindis_desala]

17. The "N" word has become something of a proxy for class.

There was a deliberate effort in the late 60's and early 70's by young African Americans to use the word themselves in order numb its sting and to sap its historical poison. Over time that intention grew to include a multi-ethnic hip-hop generation that identifies most closely with the lower and working class.
Class being the subject most Americans firmly refuse to discuss.

[aspergris]

22. "it's a civil war"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZtQUEY1IU8

[AlbertCat]

24. Owning the word

Patrick Kelly was an amazing black American fashion designer who broke into the French ready to wear scene....a very difficult thing t do. What does this have to do with this thread? In France he designed a whole line with what my Father would call "Pickininny Art", as its theme. Prints of big lipped Aunt Jemima types and pig-tailed black kids eating watermelon. That kind of thing. They ate it up in France, but you never saw it here in the US. (Could you imagine!)

What Kelly did was own the image. He took the negative stereotypes and redefined them on his terms. The shame was on those who believed the stereotypes, not the race falsely depicted by them.

It's kinda like that New Yorker cover.

Americans are clueless when it comes to race and sex. We're like children in this regard!

Blacks are "owning" the N-word....and, no, we white folks can't use it. It's black people's call.

I wonder if Elizabeth gets upset when gays call each other fag or homo...or change the gender of the person they're talking to or about?

[gateley]

25. I agree with Whoopi that we do not live in the same world.

It's like we assumed the Iraqis wanted to be just like us.

We "allow" the Black people to have "white" rights, and we think we're magically one coherent entity.

We have no idea what it's like to grow up other than how we did, and changing some rules and rights along the way doesn't negate the experience or who we are.

[happydreams]

29. I agree with Whoopi....

I do not live in the same world as a $10 million/year black athlete.

[happydreams]

30. or....

talk show hosts (black or otherwise) paid big money yapping their gums at a brain-dead audience .