White musicians and "artistic" use of the N-word: A Discussion and Social History

ALSO HE WAS 19

so glad no one was interested in publishing my opinions when I was 19, it would have been a very compelling article about how turntablism is the future of music and believing in a christian god is for mindless cretins

so glad i never published my opinions when i was 19

i'm saddened that jocks have been the most successful group at reclaiming their word.

guys i don't disagree at all but he was 19 and had a public forum and said some dumb bullshit (which is utterly non-shocking except i guess the content of the bullshit)--not sure why a pile-on is needed.

The pile-on is happening because this guy is a successful, well-known pillar of the punk scene and he never should have been (imo) because of bullshit like this.

I think the dumbest opinion I held when I was 19 was "I would like to abolish equal opportunity because I would like to take an argument away from white racists who don't actually understand that yes, I am that much smarter than them, I always have been, and I always will be"; personalized bravado arrogance > being a racist dick.

I'm just not clear where a person of any age, at any point, would get the idea that a racial slur only refers to people of that race who are jerks. The fact that it was in the early 80s just makes it sound worse to me, because you can't pretend it was some kind of post-racial world where he got confused by that one Chris Rock routine. (OMG THIS IS AN XPOST) Surely anyone with any glimmer of any kind of awareness about what racial slurs are would be aware that they do not work that way. ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE WHINING ABOUT BEING PIGEONHOLED AS "WHITE."

(I said stupid shit when I was young, too, some of it preserved on this very message board, but if someone brought it up I would offer much stronger apologies than McKaye ever does about this stuff; I've seen him do a lot of explaining about why he might have thought stupid things, but not much acknowledging that his stupidity might have been important for reasons beyond just himself.)

I've seen him do a lot of explaining about why he might have thought stupid things, but not much acknowledging that his stupidity might have been important for reasons beyond just himself.

see this makes mackaye much more of a dick than having the opinion in the first place.

I agree.

finding eiiis post super awesome atm

also speaks to the insularity of many scenes and that scene in particular--i can't fuckin stand people with no appreciation for history and wider context and maybe this is why i don't really like "punk" as a concept and blah blah blah

I'm just not clear where a person of any age, at any point, would get the idea that a racial slur only refers to people of that race who are jerks.

In my experience with white racists (the kind who get angry when you call them out for being racists, not the kind who are proud of it), claiming that they call everybody who meets a certain set of vaguely defined characteristics n----r, regardless of their race, is a pretty common justification for calling black people n----r. The fact that these people never seem to find a reason to call anybody white a n----r just means that to them, white people rarely embody these vague characteristics, which in and of itself is pretty racist.

I mean, one of the central points of racial/ethnic (and gender) slurs is how they are used to tell people that no matter what they do, how they behave, or what they accomplish, they will always be Less Than someone else, less than an equal participant in humanity.

(Even the idea that it's just part of a spectrum of identity insults is a huge part of how you have a society where a certain ideal of straight/white/male/etc. is always dominant. You have broad racial and gender slurs, you have things about class or religion, you have things about people's appearance or weight or ability or age, on and on and on. So when someone cuts you off in traffic you say "fuck you, you $IDENTITY INSULT." And some people seem to imagine this is somehow equal opportunity, but there is always some ideal for whom there is no major identity insult with any cultural force behind it. The fact that very few people 100% fit this ideal is totally meaningless; the point is it exists and has force.)

the loveliest thing about the Ian MacKaye quote is that his bands attracted that jockiest fanbase in the punk/hc scene.

pretty sure ian would smh at himself right now

shh

("I HATE JOCKS" patches were very popular with punk rock kids when I was in high school. Big athletic dudes were also pretty happy to refer to themselves as "jocks", mind you.)

It's probably a reflection of how outdated the term is now that I can't even find one of those patches with a GIS.

And where does this fit in?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upvZdVK913I&feature=player_embedded

Seems to fit a certain "hip" '70s attempted defanging of the word. But I guess comedy is different. Or maybe not. The only way the word's use seems close to being excused is in satirical context, a la Newman.

and that movie was co-written by Richard Pryor iirc

the loveliest thing about the Ian MacKaye quote is that his bands attracted that jockiest fanbase in the punk/hc scene.

― _▂▅▇█▓▒░◕‿‿◕░▒▓█▇▅▂_ (Steve Shasta), Tuesday, June 22, 2010 5:56 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

nah what about those crazies that followed TSOL?

or like boston in general

I went through a mini "I HATE JOCKS" phase that lasted maybe a week; stepping back and looking at my family (which includes a great-uncle who played in the Negro Leagues, several uncles who played college football, my dad who still holds a college track record, my older brother who was a hair's-breadth away from being on the US Ski Team and got his picture on the cover of Powder magazine, and my oldest brother who was a bodybuilder, high school and college football player for the Air Force and still holds a high school track record) cured me of that pretty quickly; also it kind of didn't make sense for me to be all "I HATE JOCKS" when I was on the basketball, soccer and track teams, and consistently lettering in track.

not all sports are were jock sports though, like tennis and cross country

IF YOU CAN'T HACK IT
GRAB A RACKET

i was only on the practice squad in 7th grade tennis, none of my matches counted ;_;

one time i played a "7th grader" that had a moustache and looked about 17, he was wearing boat shoes and cut off jeans shorts

also no lie i swear to god i played a guy with one arm once, i almost blew it too, i was so scared of being the guy that lost to a guy with one arm i melted down early on, but rallied for a less than triumphant victory

wait, there was a MN school where cross-country wasn't a jock sport???? what happened, I am confused

cross-country sure wasn't a jock sport in my high school

i will be kind of sad on an abstract level if punks v. jocks has died out in our nation's high schools. teenage america needs its pointless divides.

at my school x-ctry was the sport for people who wanted a sport on their college apps

I was raised in very white-normative places until I left the country so it took me a while to figure out why n----r was taboo but saying shit about French people or Arabs even on TV was fine and I'm still not sure I approve. I like my insults to be as specific as possible even if it's only just in reference to odd but universally despised body parts or organs, though I do kind of agree w/Kate above wrt "jocks" since that's an elective community and the jocks at my high school were brutish, clannish, and conformist (though not all white) w/militantly policed heteronormative standards for everyone. Still to go to far in jock-hate would be to become too much like them whereas calling them out on their behavior specifically seems totally legit.

wait, there was a MN school where cross-country wasn't a jock sport???? what happened, I am confused

― HI DERE, Tuesday, June 22, 2010 6:10 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah it was kinda nerdy, not totally nerdy like every once in a while a real athlete would go out for it to keep in shape for b-ball

but it's a fall sport, running concurrently with football

is there a team aspect to cross-country? it feels like to be a proper jock you have to run in a raucous, disgusting bro-pack. though i have to admit the shaving head in solidarity for the teammate who gets cancer is pretty cool. i begrudgingly salute you for that, jocks.

I guess "jock sport" is overselling it but cross-country god mad respect in my high school because we were really fucking good at it, especially in my class; we had two dudes who were monsters all through high school, one of whom was also the state 2-mile champ in the track season and the other who won the state cross-country skiing race 4 years in a row.

My entire time in high school, our cross country team was WAAAAAY better than our football team.

was it? i thought it was a spring sport opposite tennis and track. these things being set in stone for all times and places, obv

wait, skiing race??

non-jock sports: track, swimming, tennis, golf (lol).

then again i went to a high school where FOOTBALL WAS ALL, so we could have a mixed martial arts team and they probably would have been seen as pussies.

yeah it's a team but it's like i dunno, more like golf or tennis where individual results are compiled to get the team score

a lot of my good friends in hs were "jocks" i guess
the whole thing is retarded to me, and i guess is dying out according to today's young people like j0rdan s.

our cross country was in the fall! cuz track was spring, so lots of the distance dudes wouldn't have been able to do cross country and track at the same time!

CROSS COUNTRY IN SPRING IS LUNACY

(also possible RACIST)

for our distance guys it was:

fall: cc running
winter: cc skiing
spring: track & field (distance)

we ran all of that shit

lol half, if not all, of our golf team was also the hockey team

the real crazy divide in my HS was the winter sports: all the shitkickers and country ass kids were wrestlers, all the more straight-up jocks and 'rich kids' played basketball -- weird racial subtext there too, even though everyone was white lol.

xp m@tt u may be right about that, huh

yeah we were so close to iowa that wrestling was actually probably more popular than basketball

wrestlers have the weirdest fucking subculture ever.

lol half, if not all, of our golf team was also the hockey team

Amazing. Also, yeah, cc was an acceptable athletic pursuit for the less overtly macho guys in my high school. Actually, even our water polo players weren't that bad but our baseball and football teams (when I was there) were dicks even though they sucked.

... you had water polo...?

lol we should probably stop this diversion, huh

"the whole thing is retarded to me, and i guess is dying out according to today's young people"
the idea of an athletic clique that goes around getting special privileges for being buffoons is dying, or the righteous ridicule of such a clique?

because the former dying out means WE'VE WON.

...you had hockey...?

I believe that 80's teen comedies started slowly killing off jock 'culture'.

jesus loves me/but not my coach/not my cross-country friends/or their cross-country lives

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkJ-ybvAgQs

never forget.

did you guys have fellowship of christian athletes? that shit is so bogus

"will be kind of sad on an abstract level if punks v. jocks has died out in our nation's high schools. teenage america needs its pointless divides"

I never experienced this divide. At all.

"it feels like to be a proper jock you have to run in a raucous, disgusting bro-pack"

Shut the fuck up.