Im not an Dani Alves fan or a Snoop Dogg fan but they both responded to racism yesterday in their own unique ways, delighting many. I just fear though that through box-office responses like these, we focus on the wrong thing, and lose real focus on finding and punishing the racist scum behind it. Im not sure these responses solve the problem better than conventional methods. What do you think? Should we: (a) ridicule and humiliate the racists by showing them up through comedy or class responses like Alves below, attempting to prove were not bothered and that theyre just stupid? Like the famous black American comedians or even folks like Russell Peters have been doing for years, turning racism on its head, turning it into a joke, reclaiming words like the n-word etc etc. Has that even worked? OR (b) adopt a more conventional method, outlawing all usage and references to race or colour without exception, throwing the book hardcore at offenders, creating a truly colour blind society where people will eventually be forced to even describe others in purely generic terms minus race or ethnicity or cultural background OR (c) what I think that I personally prefer which is a combination of both (a) and (b), with education as the bedrock - teaching that childhood quality which naturally finds it impossible to discriminate based on a difference in skin colour - yet normalising the use of descriptive terms, or comedic value when playing on cultural and well-defined racial quirks, but drawing an absolute red line when using race in a (sincerely, non-satirical obviously) pejorative and abusing manner. My only doubt here is that this doesnt solve the problem at its root, but just normalises words and calms tensions. I just wonder whether thats good enough frankly. What are your thoughts?
Posted on: Mon, 28 Apr 2014 10:22:29 +0000
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