common: "i like to have sex with white chicks, i just dont like to date them"

I think anybody who says he (or she, for that matter) will fuck somebody of this or that race but not have a relationship with him/her is, social icon or no, a total pig. So, yes, oops: the sacred cow you raise was full of shit on this question. No: nothing wrong with having a preference; not saying that, before anybody gets they panties all knotted. Urges are urges! But "Not dated, no" (giggles)? Fuck that shit.

I haven't given this serious thought, but on the face of it any political position that gives us a license to treat large segments of the population as objects AND TAKE PRIDE IN IT BECAUSE IT PROVES HOW DOWN AND CONSCIOUS AND SOULFUL WE ARE = dud

and thank god for that. If I was I would have to kill myself to atone for the horrible "Compared to What" Coke commercial atrocity.

When the "someone you don't intend to have a relationship with" isn't in on the joke, then yes, it is. Not saying it doesn't happen, just that we shouldn't get to pat ourselves on the back when we do it.

When all parties are singing from the same hymnal, it is what it is. Totally agree re: sex sans relationship != de facto assholery.

I have no knowledge of Common's private life or dealings, and he may well be a super up-front, stand-up guy with whom everyone always knows what they're getting.

Nah, not dated (giggles) rings a little macho/creepy to my ear.

-- oops

I really hate when people take shit outta context.

Having sex with someone you don't intend to have a relationship with is always treating that person like an object?

No, Dan (though I think the question as to whether casual sex relationships are emotionally healthy is at the very least one worth asking), but there's something about saying "persons of this race are not good for relationships" that gives me the creeps. Because of American racial power dynamics, it doesn't work 100% for me to try and flip the script here, but wouldn't it strike you as yucky for, say, Clay Aiken to say: "I'll sleep with black girls, I love them and they're God's children, but I wouldn't have a relationship with one." Maybe that wouldn't make you say to yourself: "That Clay Aiken is one asshole cracker bastard," but it would me.

Perhaps I'll seem less strident if I said: I personally wouldn't sleep with a person if I already knew that I would not, under any circumstances, have a relationship with a person of their particular race. I can see how a justification for doing so might not necessarily be racist ("we're obviously the same species, the parts fit and we can have fun, but culturally we'd be too different to take it any futher than that") but even then I'd find it creepy.

yeah as if it's not TRANSPARENTLY OBVIOUS the "rasta" in common's first paragraph is obviously a POORLY-VEILED SUBSTITUTE FOR COMMON HIMSELF.

seriously

he didn't say that.

so basically y'all are just jealous of the pussy common and dead prez get! (this thread is pretty contentious, so i feel the need to point out that that was a joke)

you don't think he implied that? he: 1) will sleep with white women 2) will not have relationships with them 3) thinks a dread with a white woman in relationship is a "sellout"

seems a fair enough conclusion oops unless you're hellbent on saying "nope! you have to stick to his exact words and not reach any conclusions based on them!"

Considering I thought he was gay, it would strike me more as surprising than yucky, first and foremost.

oh god forbid people don't try to read something more into what he said that they have no real evidence supporting! no we must twist it to put him in the worst possible light. that's what celebrities are for, after all!

Which is clearly what he tried to do, only a couple follow-up questions made him realize he'd opened up a trap he didn't quite have the rhetoric ready to claw his way out of. He tied his own tongue up trying to push the same line about neglected black women and intra-black self-loathing that plenty of people have been pushing for a long, long time.

(I'm kinda torn on this because I've been in situations where I've been the experiment/behind the scenes girl while/since guys were looking for their parents/friends approved girl -- and that sucked. Just about every time.)

Beyond that, I have a problem with anyone who has "gotta stick with yr own" as a central tenet of their personal philosophy, for a number of reasons.

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He himself says "its almost a stereotype that if you’ve got dreadlocks you go out with a white girl" -- as if this condition by itself, without knowing the people at all, should make us feel uncomfortable. Paradoxically, he prefaces that statement with an anti-racist statement ("I don’t think there's anything the matter with somebody loving somebody from another race"). Funny, then why mention the "dreadlocks --> white girl" thing at all? It's like he wants it both ways; it seems he's saying there IS something wrong with it, but won't come out and say it (beyond the usual sloganeering of "representing").

Obviously, this is just some dumb interview, and sometimes people have a hard time articulating their thoughts in a comprehensible way, so I'm not necessarily saying that the guy's a racist or a dimwit... But on the other hand, I'm having incredible difficulty in seeing anything rational in what he's saying. It seems like a perspective based on a vague sense of fear and paranoia about what might happen to one's "credibility" and "realness" when he deviates from the socially-mandated behavior of a "conscious and self-aware black man." Whatever that means.

Good lord: surely you guys are familiar with this discussion that he's taking part of? This discussion that's like pretty much central in the lives of newly-educated and newly middle-class blacks or many sorts? And surely you can read well enough to see that he at no point said that he won't date people of other races -- just that he hasn't? Half of his wording is based around the "only" -- i.e., let's not make a practice of "aspiring" to white-dating at the expense of our own.

Which is a problematic thing to say, and doesn't effectively take into account the experience and situations of blacks who find themselves in positions where white people are their peers; you can accuse a lot of people of "only" dating white people when it's really just circumstance, not programmatic. But the strawman he's aiming at here isn't in the least an uncommon or unreasonable one; just a strawman.

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I dont see whats wrong with the AIDS campaigns. He wants to do something good, good for him. Its not like he's pulling a Bono or something (note: I dont even like the new album)