The Chris Moeller Archives

Mac & Charlie solve the racial problem

You might have heard this week that the National Football League is considering a rule in which a 15-yard penalty would be assessed for use of the word "nigger" on the field. This is a brilliant idea. It creates a real-world, concrete solution for bigotry.

Of course I'm being facetious. It's stupid. 15 yards. Let's see... that makes it worse than holding, not as bad as intentional grounding, equally as bad as roughing the kicker. The NFL believes it has the whole problem figured out-- racism as bad manners. There's no room for context with a very literal-minded NFL, presumably no difference between a racist white player spitting the epithet at a black man, and a black man congratulating a teammate with the phrase "my nigga." It's confusing the symptoms for the disease, attempting to suppress the shit we don't have the guts to deal with openly.

The NFL should ditch the entire initiative. The recent events they're responding to with this public action didn't happen on the field anyway. Philadelphia Eagles' receiver Riley Cooper, a white man, used the word at a country music concert. The video of such was uploaded onto YouTube. The Miami Dolphins' Richie Incognito used it as a frequent slur when he was bullying his teammate Jonathan Martin, but that behavior happened on the practice field and in the locker room and on Martin's voicemail, not on the field of competition on Sunday. My guess is that even in the heat of the most bitter gridiron battle, NFL players are not routinely throwing this word at each other. My proposed alternative is to keep things simple. Biracial teams, of which all 32 fit the category: Police yourselves. White guys: Never use the word. Black guys: Do what Whoopi Goldberg and Chris Rock do when they want to use the word. Go to Paul Mooney and get his permission.

Now it seems to me that the word the league really has a problem with is "fag." It will be interesting to see how that one plays out later this year, and whether or not an edict against it ever makes it onto the formal agenda of the Rules Committee.

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I am a partner in a biracial marriage, but I prefer the word "hetero-racial." Most of the rest of you are in what we call a "homo-racial" marriage.

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Conventional wisdom now is that “nerds” are cool. And I'm sure I agree. But they always give the credit for this to Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, a pair of nerds that became extremely rich in the field of technology. I don’t think it’s that. The link between “cool” and having money is historically-tenuous at best. “Nerds,” that is, your science and technology types, have become cool because a certain separate segment of the American population has become anti-science in recent years. They know who they are. Being a nerd tends to cast one towards the enlightened side of issues as widely-varied as gay rights, organic farming, climate change, and the young Earth debate. I hated science in school, and I'm a technophobe, but still I dig the fact that the experts always seem to be on the progressive side.

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Speaking of race relations, Clarence Thomas sure is a putz, isn't he? He made the preposterous claim in West Palm Beach, Florida earlier this month that, when he was growing up in Savannah, Georgia during the 1950s and '60s, attending an all-white school, "rarely did the issue of race come up." Being the only black kid must also have been the reason there was never a line in front of him at the hallway drinking fountain.

Yes, indeed, everything you read about the South during that period in history backs up Clarence Thomas' contention that nobody there noticed your race. That's why he was able to date white women. Oops, I guess not without being hung by his neck before a picnicking gathering of white folks. Thomas' wife, a white woman, didn't become his wife until the '80s. By that time, his hustle was becoming that unique black man that even a white reactionary could love. You have to give the man credit for professional acumen. He embraced the reality that there's always an opening for a black man that's willing to tell white men exactly what they want to hear, and to make them feel enlightened as they listen.

The man who may very well go down in history as America's Uncle Tom played the most powerful and cynical right-wing extremists into planting him onto the bench of the nation’s highest court, and there he still is a quarter-century later, judge for life, and for all of them, I'm sure, never a regret.

But this past Saturday, we passed the auspicious eight-year anniversary of the last time Thomas asked a question during an oral argument before the court. Two colleagues, Sonia Sotomayor, sworn in in 2009, and Elena Kagan, sworn in in 2010, have never heard him ask a question. This fact is absolutely extraordinary, possibly the most ignored Washington scandal of our generation. He just sits on the bench during these untelevised proceedings (which is another scandal), sometimes apparently almost nodding off, doing the political bidding of plutocrats and disgracing the chair of his predecessor Thurgood Marshall, a man whose legacy he was handpicked to destroy because of his race and his willingness to do it. It was the same dishonest manipulation they used when Ronald Reagan, a one-time New Dealer, was tabbed to destroy the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt. Thomas is a total disgrace and an incompetent.

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Now when hear a football fan say that a college player is “coming out junior year,” they need to better clarify the statement.

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Does it really matter if I continue using my mouthwash after its expiration date? What’s the worst that could happen? Is it going to become more poisonous?

posted by CM @ 8:15 PM