O'Reilly claims that Media Matters has somehow distorted and/or edited his comments but that unfortunately for him, that simply isn't true.
There are a ton of misconceptions in O'Reilly's arguments.
O"REILLY: Now, how do we get to this point? Black people in this country understand that they've had a very, very tough go of it, and some of them can get past that, and some of them cannot. I don't think there's a black American who hasn't had a personal insult that they've had to deal with because of the color of their skin. I don't think there's one in the country. So you've got to accept that as being the truth. People deal with that stuff in a variety of ways. Some get bitter. Some say,Ok, the point here is his argument against blacks having a so-called "Race-Based" culture as if the problems that black's face in America are the result of their being not White enough. Of course he wouldn't say that - he'd say it's not "American enough" as if Black culture in America isn't already completely and totally "American culture" to start with. Blacks who were brought to this country against their will had their native language and native cultures forcibly stripped from them, while at the same time they were denied access into the mainstream culture - so they've made their own thing. From the way they worship, to music, food, slang - in every shape and way they had to remake themselves. Now people like O'Reilly apparently would like us to simply toss all (or most) of that away - because it's not the fact that you're black that might hold you back, it's the fact that you might ACT TOO Black that will."You call me that, I'm gonna be more successful." OK, it depends on the personality. So it's there. It's there, and I think it's getting better. I think black Americans are starting to think more and more for themselves. They're getting away from the Sharptons and the Jacksons and the people trying to lead them into a race-based culture. They're just trying to figure it out: "Look, I can make it. If I work hard and get educated, I can make it."
You know, I was up in Harlem a few weeks ago, and I actually had dinner with Al Sharpton, who is a very, very interesting guy. And he comes on The Factor a lot, and then I treated him to dinner, because he's made himself available to us, and I felt that I wanted to take him up there. And we went to Sylvia's, a very famous restaurant in Harlem. I had a great time, and all the people up there are tremendously respectful. They all watch The Factor. You know, when Sharpton and I walked in, it was like a big commotion and everything, but everybody was very nice.
"They all watch The Factor" is the part I'm having difficulty believing.
And I couldn't get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia's restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it's run by blacks, primarily black patronship. It was the same, and that's really what this society's all about now here in the U.S.A. There's no difference. There's no difference. There may be a cultural entertainment -- people may gravitate toward different cultural entertainment, but you go down to Little Italy, and you're gonna have that. It has nothing to do with the color of anybody's skin.So yeah, they may have been black, but he was really surprised they didn't "Act Black".
This is where Juan Williams jumps in and validates O'Reilly's view.
WILLIAMS: Well, let me just tell you, the one thing I would say is this. And we're talking about the kids who still like this gangsta rap, this vile poison that I think is absolutely, you know, literally a corruption of culture. I think that what you've got to take into account that it's still a majority white audience -- young, white people who think they're into rebelling against their parents who buy this stuff and think it's just a kick. You know, it's just a way of expressing their anti-authoritarianism.Ok, for white kids gangsta rap is about being anti-authoritarian - which Williams opposes so I guess that makes him an authoritarian doesn't it? Well, he is a frequent guest on Fox News so I guess that question answers itself doesn't it?
O'REILLY: But it's a different -- it's a different dynamic, though.
WILLIAMS: Exactly right --
O'REILLY: Because the young, white kids don't have to struggle out of the ghetto.
WILLIAMS: Right, and also, I think they can have that as one phase of their lives.
O'REILLY: Yeah.
WILLIAMS: I think too many of the black kids take it as, "Oh, that's what it means to be authentically black. That's how you make money. That's how you become rich and famous and get on TV and get music videos." And you either get the boys or the girls. The girls think they have to, you know, be half-naked and spinning around like they're on meth in order to get any attention. It really corrupts people, and I think it adds, Bill, to some serious sociological problems, like the high out-of-wedlock birth rate because of this hypersexual imagery that then the kids adapt to some kind of reality. I mean, it's inauthentic.
Frankly to this argument I would also add the myth of becoming successful as a sports athlete, just as much as I would argue about becoming a rap superstar. Yes. some people can get lucky enough to hit the freaking lottery and become a major star, but that's literally one in a hundred million chances against it. But again, just because it's difficult doesn't mean people shouldn't even try - right?
Everyone has a right to their dreams.
Second off, not everyone in rap is doing the gangsta rap. You could easily point to artists such as P-Diddy, Jay-Z and Kanye West as defying that stereotype right there. Sean Combs especially has shown that he's accomplished everything he's done with hard work and dedication - and he stayed "authentically black" the entire time without being a "gangsta".
William's argument that the music is to blame for the drugs and out-of-wedlock birth is just as ridiculous sounding as Elvis being censored on the Ed Sullivan show. Are you kidding me? This really is the "It's that damn Rap-n-Roll making the kids all crazy with the drugs and the sex" argument? Guys, the kids have always been crazy for the drugs and the sex - the music is an afterthought. They've having the drugs & sex anyway - the music is just a convenient soundtrack, it's not why there are drug problems and babies being born without fathers.
Williams seems to ignore the solid fact that a lot of young black men haven't prospered and built families in modern America because they are still a major target for law enforcement. According to Human Rights Watch:
· In twelve states, between 10 and 15 percent of adult black men are incarcerated.
· In ten states, between 5 and 10 percent of black adults are incarcerated.
· In twelve states, black men are incarcerated at rates between twelve and sixteen times greater than those of white men.
· In fifteen states, black women are incarcerated at rates between ten and thirty-five times greater than those of white women.
· In six states, black youth under age eighteen are incarcerated in adult facilities at rates between twelve and twenty-five times greater than those of white youth.
Because blacks constitute a large percentage among those arrested for violent crimes (45 percent-a proportion that has not changed significantly over the years), they are disproportionately affected by the longer sentences.6
Blacks have also been disproportionately affected by the national "war on drugs", carried out primarily through the arrest, prosecution and imprisonment of street level drug offenders from inner city communities. In 1996, for example, blacks constituted 62.6 percent of all drug offenders admitted to state prisons. In at least fifteen states, black men were sent to prison on drug charges at rates ranging from twenty to fifty-seven times those of white men.7 Blacks are prosecuted in federal courts more frequently than whites for crack cocaine offenses, and thus as a group have felt the effects of the longer sentences for crack versus powder cocaine mandated in federal law. Racial profiling and other forms of unequal treatment of minorities by the criminal justice system have further contributed to the overrepresentation of minorities in the incarcerated population. Minority youth are treated far more harshly compared to similarly situated white counterparts within the juvenile criminal justice system
The Recent Jena 6 case is a perfect example who what I'm describing.
But Williams like O'Reilly doesn't seem to acknowledge any of this as being a factor as to why young black men may have difficulty finding employment or keeping a family together. No to him, it's all that "devil music."
It's not in keeping with great black traditions of struggle and excellence, from Willie Mays to Aretha Franklin, but even in terms of academics, you know, going back to people like Charles Drew or Ben Carson here, the neurosurgeon atHopkins . That stuff, all of a sudden, is pushed aside. That's treated as, "You're a nerd, you're acting white," if you try to be excellent and black.
I grew up in South Central (Yeah, I'm black for the record) right during the middle and tail end of the Civil Rights movement and went to a elementary school that spent a significant portion of it's time and energy making sure everyone was well aware of Benjamin Franklin Carver and every black inventor there every was. How many different things can you make out of peanut? We practically knew them all by heart. We really did sing "We Shall Overcome, Someday" at our school assemblies.
But this didn't actually translate into the teachers really believing that their students had that capability and frankly it showed. Their entire "Rah Rah Kumbai-ya" act felt like a charade the entire time. I happened to be one of those students who "talked white" and yeah I was a nerd and got harassed all the time for it usually by the footballer and basketballers - y'know - the athletes (although I was an athlete too, I was a gymnast and I'll tell you a twisting double-back off high bar is way scarier, way more difficult and way more MACHO than a slam-dunk - anyday) and it really didn't make that much difference.
My point here is that there is an inkling of truth to Williams claims - yes the "nerds" will get picked on by the "jocks", it happens everywhere and it always will - but he's missing the larger point. What he's describing here is a generational argument between older blacks who have the perspective of having struggled through the civil rights movement, fought against what seemed like insurmountable odds and an impenetrable wall of ongoing racism and Jim Crow before them and those who've had to deal with the aftermath of that wall being torn down, but not all the pieces being removed.
My mother's generation focused on education like a laser-beam. They figured that what you needed to do was remove each and every possible excuse that someone might have for discriminating against you by being super-excellent. This is the tradition of where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a minister but also a PHD., comes from. This is why there are so many traditionally black colleges, such Brown University, Howard University and Tuskegee University, in America. It's partly because Jim Crow wouldn't let black people attend Harvard or Princeton - but also because there's value and pride in doing it on your own despite what anyone else thinks or does.
The thing is that Hip Hop is indeed part of the exact same "do it yourself" tradition that brought us Soulfood, Blues, Jazz, Dixie-land, and even Rock-N-Roll (Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Hendrix) and Tuskegee. The kids have to find their own way now just as they did then. We may not like every direction they go as we get older and look back, but that doesn't mean every choice they make which might be different from our traditions is necessarily wrong. The difficulty for young blacks growing up in the post-civil rights era is the fact that although walls of Jim Crow have been brought down - the bricks of bigotry are still there and can easily trip us up. Today you have to be far more agile than the previous generations, you have be far more perceptive and recognize that although not everything has racial overtones and not everyone is a hidden racist - neither is everything entirely free of all bias. We all have a responsibility both to point out potential bias, but also to make certain that we have legitimate cause before we make those accusations public as the failure of the Duke Rape case has shown.
It used to be you could see racists or a racist situation coming from miles away. Now it's hidden, because being openly racist will send you straight into court, do not pass go. Generally that's a good thing, but it has also made the continued progress forward in this nation far more difficult since you simply can't easily see where the problems are. People who may be or feel racist certainly aren't going to broadcast that fact now are they? Did person a) get arrested because they did a crime or because they fit a profile? Did person b) Loss their job because they didn't do it well or was their some hidden racial factor? We are all now in the midst of a permanent guessing game. Did Don Imus really mean what he said about "Ho's" or was he just emulating black culture?
Is Bill O'Reilly a racist or just a fucking dumb-ass?
What a pair of total squares. "Look black people in tuxedos - they should all dress like that." What? Are we living in the freaking 50's? These guys sound like they would have been bagging on Kurt Cobain for wearing a ratty sweater on stage. It's like praising Pat Boone for doing "Tootie Fruity" in suite while ignoring Little Richard and his crazy hair (Which isn't a hypothetical, it's what literally happened during the 60's) As I pointed out with over the attempted use of the Hip-Hop Hate Myth to justify Don Imus comments, what we have here is a very similar situation.O'REILLY: You know, and I went to the concert by Anita Baker at Radio City Music Hall, and the crowd was 50/50, black/white, and the blacks were well-dressed. And she came out -- Anita Baker came out on the stage and said, "Look, this is a show for the family. We're not gonna have any profanity here. We're not gonna do any rapping here." The band was excellent, but they were dressed in tuxedos, and this is what white America doesn't know, particularly people who don't have a lot of interaction with black Americans. They think that the culture is dominated by Twista, Ludacris, and Snoop Dogg.
WILLIAMS: Oh, and it's just so awful. It's just so awful because, I mean, it's literally the sewer come to the surface, and now people take it that the sewer is the whole story -
What Williams and O'Reilly are truly saying here is that Black people, particularly the young, don't have the right of cultural self-determination, unless that culture meets the approval of the mainstream/white culture as being legitimate and appropriate.
They are simply trying to shift blame and responsibility from White's for having created the situation that Black's have been in, and continue to be in, to Blacks themselves for the current state of Black culture .
For them it's...
"If blacks wouldn't simply stop, cussin' and fightin', listening to all that "devil rap music", pull up their pants, turn their hats around forward and wear shirts that were the correct size - everything would be fine."Except for y'know that lack of jobs, the crime, the drugs, the despair and the desperation - y'know the stuff that the average "Gangsta Rap" Song is reporting to us all since CNN Won't.
And just for the record, yes, that is Racism (in the New Post-Jim Crow you must CONFIRM to be accepted Style) on both Williams and O'Reilly's part - and my response to both of them is - "Mutha-Fuck both you Punk-asses!"
I plan to have both my Marvin Gaye and my Tupac (And I do, plus a bunch of that "evil" Marilyn Manson, NIN and Rage Against the Machine on my Live365 Radio Station broadcasting in Live in rotation right now) Suck on that.
Vyan
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