Richards' outburst reveals 'pathetic moral state' of nation

WorldNetDaily.com ^ | 11/25/06 | Star Parker

[JohnHuang2]

Let's take a closer look at so-called comedian Michael Richards' racist outburst that is capturing so much press and airtime. The incident, and what has ensued, tells me more about the overall pathetic moral state of our country than it does about racism.

Richards claims he's not a racist, despite attacking a black heckler at a comedy club where he was performing with a string of the most inflammatory, demeaning, and vulgar racial slurs.

Is it possible that he's not? Maybe. It's possible that he's just a moron.

But check out the deep soul searching that this inane incident has provoked across the nation.

The general sentiment is pretty much captured in a column by The Washington Post's Eugene Robinson who sees in what happened here sad proof that "racism is not dead" in America.

I am in complete agreement with Mr. Robinson that racial animosity lives. But I certainly didn't need Michael Richards' imbecility as proof of this.

If we should be thinking about anything, it should be to try and understand why, after all these years, racial consciousness persists.

As satisfying as it might be for some to watch, Mr. Richards groveling around on television apologizing isn't going to help much. Nor are any sums that left wing legal entrepreneur Gloria Allred might extract from him. Nor are apologies to Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton (the knee-jerk assumption that these two black ministers speak for 40 million black Americans I think is equally racist).

Allow me to suggest that racism and racial consciousness persist and loom large because we choose it to be this way.

Eugene Robinson says that Michael Richards did not see a heckler. Instead, says Robinson, he saw a black heckler. But we live in a country that insists on placing all its citizens in racial categories and using measures of how these categories stack up as measures of national decency.

Every major institution _ business, government, educational _ one way or another keeps track of how many blacks it has on board. Every major corporation has a diversity officer to make sure the colors of the beans are in order. Every corporation gets surveys from the NAACP asking them how many blacks they've got.

When I get a loan from the bank, the loan officer sheepishly asks if it's OK to report that I'm black.

We have institutionalized race consciousness to the very core of our society, so it should be evident why it persists. It's the law.

These laws, by transforming human beings into racial categories, dehumanize blacks and whites. Blacks feel less personally responsible for their own lives and whites are forced to relate to blacks as beans to count rather than human beings. One result is animosity of blacks toward whites and whites toward blacks.

Which leads to the second, and related, point. Racism is no longer understood as a moral problem. It is a political problem.

The success of the civil rights movement of the 1960's was its moral power. The few prevailed over the many because they had moral conviction _ truth _ on their side.

Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech was not a speech. It was a sermon. He talked about character and exhorted Americans to strive for liberty because we are "God's children."

King was not an impractical man. He knew that laws needed to be passed to deal with segregation and the absence of equality under the law. But he also knew that law "cannot change the heart" and that for us to become a greater nation, we needed to be a more moral nation.

This said, consider the circumstances of the Richards incident. It took place in a comedy club in Los Angeles. These places are cesspools of profanity and degrading sexual and scatological humor, delivered in a haze of alcohol.

The black heckler yelled out, "It's not funny. That's why you're a reject. Never had no shows, never had no movies. 'Seinfeld' _ that's it."

This tastelessness doesn't justify Richards' racist diatribe. But on the other side of the coin, blacks who want a better world ought to get out of the gutter.

For me it is commentary on our overall sorry moral state that as news shows obsessed over this mindless incident, they totally ignored an Associated Press story this same week reporting that out-of-wedlock births in the U.S. reached 37.5 percent in 2005, a record high. The figure for blacks is almost double this.

Perhaps this holiday season it is worth considering that racism will be with us as long as evil remains within us. The answer will not come from politicians and lawyers.

It will come only when we raise ourselves up. Only then, in the words of Dr. King, will we be able to say "thank God Almighty, we are free at last."

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[wodinoneeye]

Richards' outburst reveals 'pathetic moral state' of LIBTARDS in nation....

[SkyPilot]

These laws, by transforming human beings into racial categories, dehumanize blacks and whites.

Well said by Miss Parker.

She knows of what she speaks. She was a single welfare mother living in LA. She became a Christian and starter her own business, which was burned to the ground by the riots of 1992. From the ashes, she formed CURE, (Coalition on Urban Renewal & Education) a non-profit organization that provides a national voice of reason on issues of race and poverty in the media, inner city neighborhoods, and public policy.

The reason affirmative action and racial "diversity" are immoral is precisely because of what she said: they are an assault on the dignity of human beings, both black and white.

Anything that assaults the dignity of humanity is sinful. We are all made in the image of God, and an assault on dignity is an assault on His image.

Ravi Zacharias, a brilliant Christian who hails from India, was once asked why he said that homosexuality "diversity" could not be compared to the civil rights movement.

He said that all races were sacred - "yours and mine." God's hand made humans this way. God also made our sexuality as men and woman, and that is sacred.

Homosexual sin is an assault on something God made sacred.

In the same way as Miss Star has pointed out, pitting the races against each other through "diversity", "affirmative-action", and "racial quotas" is also an assault on the dignity of humanity.

[Miss Marple]

Robinson's column got picked up in our local county paper. I was absolutely horrified at it, because in essence he refuses to look at all of the good in the progress of the last 50 years, and as much as says that Richards (and Gibson) prove that racism is still rampant, only buried in our subconcious. He goes on to say that until this "buried" racism, which isin't visible, is eradicated, all of us whites are still suspect.

No matter how fair one is, no matter what advantages blacks get, no matter how high they climb, even to the presidency, we will all still be thought of as racists by Robinson.

Pretty depressing column, and one which I do not accept.

[angkor]

I'm gonna' go with Kenny Kramer on this ("The Real Kramer"), mainly because he offered the most thoughtful explanation about what happened and because he's known Richards for almost two decades.

Basically, Richards is not a standup comic, he's more of a performance comic. So when he started with the hecklers he was already above his head, out of his league. He may have thought he was using "tools" appropriate to a comic versus hecklers in an LA comedy club, buy he crossed the line somewhere.

Given the material and language that's regularly used on late-night Comedy Central and HBO's comedy channel (including use of the "n word" by both black and white comics), I'd have to give Kramer's explanation some credence.

[FDNYRHEROES]

Richards' outburst reveals 'pathetic moral state' of nation

Enough with the dumping on Denise Richards, already...

[Raycpa]

Who is Richards and why should I care.

[seppel]

I'm talking about cultural homogeneity.

[Prodigal Son]

The Civil Rights movement succeeded precisely because, and perhaps only because, the majority of Americans agreed with the idea of racial equality (under the law).

I grew up in the South- Georgia. The majority of people I knew did not want racial equality. End of story. In fact, I can't recall having met any white human being that wanted racial equality until I was going on 18 years old. I was born in the mid-60s. I went to school in some of the first integrated schools (for a time reference).

You can say most Americans wanted racial equality but this was not the state of affairs in the South. Racism was not just the status quo it was institutionalized and that's the bottom line. Every white person I knew referred to blacks as 'niggers' at some point or another. That was the status quo. Not knowing any better back then I can remember calling a grown man 'nigger' to his face in a Hardees restaurant when I was about 8 years old and he said nothing about it- his face took on an expression I will never forget though. It was a look that said he would put up with that today, as he had his whole life, but that day was going to change soon. And it did eventually.

By the time I was grown, you rarely heard a white person say 'nigger' if a black person was nearby. Many whites would talk friendly to a black person to his face and then call him a nigger to his back. My father did that. He hated blacks, plain and simple but that type of cowardice disturbed me greatly and I eventually ended my relationship with him because of it. Haven't spoken to him in over 16 years and it only disturbs me a little. Got no use for racists and got even less use for a man who should have taught me right from wrong but instead used a position of ultimate trust to fill my mind and heart with hateful ideas.

Perhaps in other parts of America the majority of Americans wanted racial equality. But in the South, racism was the reality that I lived in and it was against that reality the Civil Rights Movement was directed and rightly so.

I don't know why people like to remember it differently nowadays even though the footage of events from back then is out there for any and all to view. And not just from the 60s. Cumming/Forsyth County, Georgia versus Hosea Williams and crew, remember that? That happened. That was the 1980s. Those whites did not exist in a cultural vaccuum.

[Prodigal Son]

What the media and talking heads always ignore, was before his racist outburst, these two "gentleman" were also attempting to publicly humiliate, belittle, and ridicule Richards who was trying to do his act.

Heckling is normal. Every comedian knows this. It is normal. If a comedian can't handle a heckler, he shouldn't be a comedian. If he can't handle a heckler without resorting to racial taunts, he shouldn't be up on the stage.

I disagree with you. When we get angry, we lose control, this is true. When we lose control- think about the meaning of that phrase 'lose control'- the things we normally keep repressed (and controlled) within us come out.

I liked his character Kramer. But for me, he lost it and the ugly truth slipped out of him for all to see. The man is a racist and it doesn't disturb me at all to say that.

[robertpaulsen]

"These laws, by transforming human beings into racial categories, dehumanize blacks and whites."

True.

As does the NAACP, the Congressional Black Caucus, Black Entertainment Television, Miss Black America, the National Urban League, The United Negro College Fund, anything uttered by Louis Farrakhan, separate black graduations, black fraternities, Black History Month, Black Studies, etc.

Seems to me that blacks are equally to blame when it comes to "transforming human beings into racial categories". Oh, and if the "N" word is so horrible, maybe blacks should stop using it. Using it sends a mixed message, don't you know.

[LibLieSlayer]

The largest racists in America call themselves the dim Black Caucus!

LLS

[DainBramage]

I assumed he mistakenly believed he was on Def Comedy Jam where its okay to hurl insults at every race and the word nigger is everybody's name.

[Prodigal Son]

We are talking human nature here.

Human nature. What is human nature? To bleed? To fight like animals? Or to think and use one's brain to discard bad ideas and replace them with rational ones? Is it human nature to accept fate or to change it? To fight and die for faulty truths or to adapt and overcome?

But it is a fact that in just about every culture and society in the world, people who are perceived as outsiders tend to be discriminated against and not trusted.

That's a fact. But this wasn't the case with blacks in the South. I grew up with blacks. Almost everybody in the South did even if it wasn't that way in other parts of America. Been that way for hundreds of years. It is only through willfull misperception that blacks in the South could've ever been seen as 'outsiders' even if the rest of America might have viewed them as being so.

And it wasn't that blacks 'tended to be discriminated against'. They were discriminated against. 24/7.

And what to say about the word 'trust' that you used? So a man works beside you all day long, sweats just like you, has hopes and dreams just like you, has kids just like you, speaks the same language as you, fights and dies in wars for his country just like you but isn't worthy of trust because he's got a different colour skin? Human nature? That's bullsh!t. That was the way it was in the South- I grew up there and know that- and that is still the way it is in too many people's hearts and minds. Richards demonstrated that.

Believe what you want. People usually do.

[Muzzle_em]

Agreed.

I wonder, do all racists use racial slurs?
What constitutes a racial slur? Is ANYONE who uses a slur a racist?
Is anyone who calls a black person nigger considered a racist, or is it racists only when a white person does it?
If a black person calls a white person honky or cracker, is the black person a racist? Are those considered slurs?
If blacks comment on the lack of ability by whites to dance or play basketball, are THEY considered racist for making those statements?

One of my best experience in "racial relations" was working with a group of black women a few years back (I'm white) and having a daily discussion of our cultural differences and simply asking WHY? Example-none of those black women knew how to swim and the common reason was that their mothers would NOT allow them to get their hair wet when they were kids (they all said it was a major ordeal getting their hair combed and fixed), so that meant very limited activity in the pool. Since they didn't learn to swim as kids, they just never pursued learning how to as adults.

We shared our views on interracial dating- none of them liked seeing a successful black man with a white woman, but none of them had a problem with a black woman dating a white man.
Oh, there was a Korean woman in the office with us, so that added an interesting twist to the discussions as well.
We were all respectful of each other in our discussions and shared a lot of hilarity.

[staytrue]

I don't know why people like to remember it differently nowadays even though

I find that people have a remarkable ability for self delusion. As a rational person, it really drives me crazy too. A lot of people will be 100% convinced that they did not do something even if you have the video showing that they did. I know a bush hater who says she does not hate bush but says "I'm against war, I knew this war was stupid and so on" but I remember for a fact, that in 1991, she was mad at GH Bush for not invading Iraq.

[Muzzle_em]

and those same people, when confronted with evidence of their past statements or behavior, will lash out at and insult YOU!

[RaceBannon]

The black heckler yelled out, "It's not funny. That's why you're a reject. Never had no shows, never had no movies. 'Seinfeld' _ that's it."

This tastelessness doesn't justify Richards' racist diatribe. But on the other side of the coin, blacks who want a better world ought to get out of the gutter.

While I dont agree with the heckling, that was a valid point, all Richards ever had was Seinfeld that I ever heard.

[chatham]

We were walking from the church uptown to a Bar/Restaurant on Broadway about 14 years ago to celebrate my grandson's christening.

I walked with a group of men including my Son in Law who is black and about 5 other black men.

Quite out of the blue My son in law said aloud " We don't belong here we should be at the Hotel Theresa", which is in Harlem.

Go figger.

Ms. Parker should review the Movie, "Jackie Brown", chock full of The "N" word, Go figger again.

I also grew up in N.Y.C. where marauding Gangs of blacks came to our neighborhood and threatened our lives on a regular basis.

Go figger!!

Kramer is an idiot and deserves scorn.

There are differences between all ethnic groups and will be for decades to come.

There is no place for nasty insults.

[NordP]

VERY well said.

[ncphinsfan]

"Richards claims he's not a racist, despite attacking a black heckler at a comedy club where he was performing with a string of the most inflammatory, demeaning, and vulgar racial slurs.
Is it possible that he's not? Maybe. It's possible that he's just a moron."

Not all morons are racists but all racists are morons.