Just a question regarding the situation...does this show lack of importance in Americans right to free speech? I'm not justifying her use of the word "nigger", but she had a shitload taken away from her for saying it. Just seems like a bit much...everything that was done to her from food network was perfectly legal but it just seems excessive to me.
Paula Deen
- Thread starter AtomBomb
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It's the nature of the beast-- she, like Don Imus, Rush Limbaugh, and plenty of other public figures, makes ridiculous amounts of money in exchange for thrusting herself into the public eye. It may or may not be fair that they lose gigs and sponsors hand-over-fist for not watching what they say, but on the flip side, it doesn't make all that much sense that some people can increase their net worth to thousands or millions of times that of the average man-on-the-street simply by catching a ball or cooking a ridiculous meal in front of a camera. When you make your fortune as a public name, it's public perception that makes or breaks you. I can't blame Food Network or her sponsors for being cognizant of that fact and wanting to create some distance, as much as I personally find many aspects of the media meat grinder to be absolutely loathsome.
I've read the deposition that got her in so much hot water and, honestly, it's not far removed from what you'd expect from any Ol' Southern Miss, but for some, that's the problem. For others... well, you've got to keep in mind that the deposition was obtained as part of a lawsuit currently being pressed against Deen and her brother for racial and sexual discrimination and misconduct, and that the case against them is looking stronger every day as accusations and incidental evidence pile up. Admittedly, the lion's share of (confirmed) facepalms go to her brother, but she has defended him, his practices, and his mindset whenever it came up.
Also, she's still going to die richer than any person I know. She's still got her fortune tucked away earning interest for her, and sales of her cookbooks and tickets to her annual Paula Deen cruise have skyrocketed thanks to most of her fans and pretty much every market in the old Confederacy rising up in counter-outrage. Conservative talking heads are springing to her defense, and the whole affair has kept her prominently in the public eye, where she continues to find plenty of people willing to sympathize with her via their wallets. A part of me feels bad for her, but I doubt she's going to have to lose her mansion or her restaurants over this, or stop writing cookbooks, or even have to pawn her butter churn.
I've read the deposition that got her in so much hot water and, honestly, it's not far removed from what you'd expect from any Ol' Southern Miss, but for some, that's the problem. For others... well, you've got to keep in mind that the deposition was obtained as part of a lawsuit currently being pressed against Deen and her brother for racial and sexual discrimination and misconduct, and that the case against them is looking stronger every day as accusations and incidental evidence pile up. Admittedly, the lion's share of (confirmed) facepalms go to her brother, but she has defended him, his practices, and his mindset whenever it came up.
Also, she's still going to die richer than any person I know. She's still got her fortune tucked away earning interest for her, and sales of her cookbooks and tickets to her annual Paula Deen cruise have skyrocketed thanks to most of her fans and pretty much every market in the old Confederacy rising up in counter-outrage. Conservative talking heads are springing to her defense, and the whole affair has kept her prominently in the public eye, where she continues to find plenty of people willing to sympathize with her via their wallets. A part of me feels bad for her, but I doubt she's going to have to lose her mansion or her restaurants over this, or stop writing cookbooks, or even have to pawn her butter churn.
Phil the Nuka-Cola Dude
Sonny, I Watched the Vault Bein' Built!
She should have known that only blacks get a free pass to use cracker/nigger.
The colloquial use of nigga among blacks is criticized plenty, by both blacks and whites.Phil the Nuka-Cola Dude said:
More importantly, though, when a black man uses the word there's no hint of power relations. There's a clear difference when it's used by a white man, someone belonging to a group that has historically oppressed black people, something that is still going on in some parts of the country. The effects of that oppression are still felt today. So whenever a white person, especially one from the south, uses the word "nigger", a word used to demean and oppress to this day, that history comes with it. You can't ignore that. That produces a very different dynamic. Context matters, and so does the identity of the speaker.
By the way: anyone should be smart enough not to use the word, and I don't get indignant responses trying to defend people who do. It's not hard to just drop it from your vocabulary, and it doesn't affect you negatively if you do.
As for the original question, freedom of speech does not mean that people have to like what you say, or associate with you in any way if you don't. This isn't a freedom of speech case, it's an "oh my she now has a public image of a racist" case. People don't like racists.
To be fair, I think the case is being blown out of proportion. But when public opinion goes one way, companies do best to go the same way.
Walpknut
This ghoul has seen it all
Freedom of speech is not the same as freedom from consequences. And when you are a public figure anything you do or say has ten times the consequences.
Dude, its a little more complicated okay? I've lived in 5 different southern states, but both my parents and my wife's parents are northern, so I'm not an indoctrinated republican like everyone else round here.
SO LET ME START BY SAYING, PAULA DEEN IS JUST MAD SHE GOT CAUGHT! Most southern people wouldn't spring this kind of language on someone unless they were deserving of something extreme. Contrary to what people from the north or Europe for that matter say, this is not what the SOUTH represent. Theres not 1! (not one) KKK rally or some mob lynch running around. Their behaved. Their not so much black hating, so much just want to be left alone. They don't like other minorities because of their skin, they just hate change and different cultures. Thats their choice, their hardline isolationist by nature.
SO LET ME START BY SAYING, PAULA DEEN IS JUST MAD SHE GOT CAUGHT! Most southern people wouldn't spring this kind of language on someone unless they were deserving of something extreme. Contrary to what people from the north or Europe for that matter say, this is not what the SOUTH represent. Theres not 1! (not one) KKK rally or some mob lynch running around. Their behaved. Their not so much black hating, so much just want to be left alone. They don't like other minorities because of their skin, they just hate change and different cultures. Thats their choice, their hardline isolationist by nature.
No, I live in the south too and it's pretty obvious a bunch of people here just don't like black people.
Well yeah, but is it that they just dont want to be around them? White People who don't see them alot don't generally bitch about them. Its usually from tension because of whatever.
I'm not racist, alot of different minority in Fla., and different cultures don't bother me. Well except Muslims.
I'm not racist, alot of different minority in Fla., and different cultures don't bother me. Well except Muslims.
Phil the Nuka-Cola Dude said:
I'll concede, in fairness, that Wal-Mart are flaming hypocrites for not cancelling their popular line of Snoop Dogg brand cookware and Smithfield Hams should be taken to task for still sponsoring Chris Rock.
Courier said:
Texas isn't quite the south, but I was there for half of the last decade and that was my experience. At the same time, it seemed there was sort of a more easygoing mentality about race across the board out there, especially stretching from the middle-low to lower-middle classes. "Folks" was just "folks," and the local communities I experienced were tight-knit and multicolored. It wasn't uncommon to see whites, blacks, and latinos living together in the same neighborhoods and enjoying beers and small talk grinningly peppered with occasionally racial jabs as they watched their kids play in the yard. As long as everyone was straight, not-too-left-leaning, and Christian (and Rainbow-Robed Communist Allah help you if you weren't), it was just a big ol' southern love-in, apart from the heaping scattering of good ol' boys (and girls) making an occasionally jarring offhanded remark (But they don't mean nothin' by it, right y'all?).
The majority of the serious prejudice I ran into always came from one of two places: the abjectly poor and uneducated, and the well-to-do. The ugliness of the trailer park bigots was stomach-turning, but at least you knew where they stood, and they were easy enough to write off as long as you didn't find yourself in a situation where they had motive and opportunity to swing a broken bottle your way. The rich ones, the simpering churchy ones that would smile to a black cop's face and then call him a liver-lipped monkey bastard later when they were blowing off steam over cocktails with their friends or who'd invariably undertip the Mexican waitress because they "didn't like her attitude," those were the ones that got my hackles up the most. There might not have been any lynchings, but I witnessed on multiple occasions a man bringing home stories of turning down qualified job applicants for being "too ethnic."
I think the worst part was that so many otherwise level-headed people down there treated all but the most overt racism like it was understandable, like it was at worst some kind of unfortunate-but-incurable mass disease, like Uncle Jim's personal policy of not hiring thieving wetbacks wasn't any better or worse than grandpa telling off-color jokes, and that the whole thing was like some peculiar regional form of Tourette's-- not anyone's fault, out of anyone's control, and the polite thing to do is to just accept it and move on without comment, maybe even have a shrug and a chuckle about it.
Which, to bring things full circle after a bit too much rambling, is, for those not understanding what all the fuss is about... what all the fuss is about. Not just the fact that she might have said Nigger once or twice in her life, but her (and her fans') attitude towards the whole affair, and what people (right or wrong) assume underlies that attitude.
TheWesDude
Sonny, I Watched the Vault Bein' Built!
it has been blown out of proportion.
yes, its not very appropriate to say it.
she said it in the mid 80s to a guy who had a gun to her head.
people generally are not at their best, and usually are trying to actively lash out at people under those circumstances.
yes, its not very appropriate to say it.
she said it in the mid 80s to a guy who had a gun to her head.
people generally are not at their best, and usually are trying to actively lash out at people under those circumstances.
The US needs the racistic South they can bitch about. Its like with us and Bavaria.
Without those places we would realize how bad the situation in the whole nation is if we didnt had someone to bitch about.
Thats ironical right?
Without those places we would realize how bad the situation in the whole nation is if we didnt had someone to bitch about.
Syphon said:
Thats ironical right?
donperkan
Sonny, I Watched the Vault Bein' Built!
Yamu said:
I assume that was a white guy.
Do hispanics, asians and blacks treat each other the same way or is it just a white thing?
How'd you guess? 
It's not just a white thing, though. Like I said, subjective experience isn't much of a barometer of anything, but, with that disclaimer tossed out there again, it seemed pretty much as I described it for everybody. Racism and ignorance, just like good-will and understanding, are scattered throughout every sub-grouping of humanity, but there were far greater concentrations among the undereducated and the upper-middle-class on upwards of every race and creed I personally dealt with who just flat-out didn't like anyone they didn't identify with. Some of the ugliest (and loudest, most public) things I heard said about Indians, Asians, and latinos while I was down there came out of black and hispanic twentysomethings in Dallas-Ft. Worth. (I lump those in with the aforementioned trailer park bigots even though they were technically cement stoop bigots and minimart parking lot bigots.)
Even then, though, it wasn't a clear-cut picture. Among the rich folk, most seemed to identify with "Upper-crust Texan" more than any given ethnic background, which sounds laudably colorblind but in reality amounts to everyone ending up with the same pretensions and cultural prejudices regardless of their own skin color or religion. Among the poorer, there were a not-insignificant minority of people who, growing up in the sort of dire straits that produce the kind of people so many negative stereotypes were born from in the first place, grew to hate their own race. I met a black guy in South Texas once who probably could have qualified for Klan membership. A lot of the younger Indians and Vietnamese I met in Dallas were at least mildly embarrassed by their parents' cultures and preferred more of a homogenous Texan identity. There tended to be resentment between the "white-washed" and the "true" (definitely not my words) members of any given culture, too. On the whole, it was a patchwork of rivalries, arbitrary rules and hazy affiliations comparable to the worst professional wrestling or British Parliament have to offer.
Of course, that's if you decided to play along. The vast majority didn't, and just wanted to go our own way, make a living, and get along with as many people as we could, even if many tended to stick more often than not to their own identity-groups. It's just that we had to put up with the other sort, and since a lot of them held clout in the houses of politics, business, and learning, there were some fucked-up cultural norms and assumptions that a lot of the natives never really thought to question and a gravity towards a homogenous Texan identity that was more Modern White Southerner than anything else.
It all goes to show that race is a complicated issue anywhere, but especially in America, and maybe nowhere in America more than the South. That's why, to keep things mildly on topic, I won't pre-judge Ms. Deen. Given that the accusations against her amount to far more than using a racial epithet now and again, though, I wouldn't say that things have been "blown out of proportion"-- if even a quarter of the allegations stick, she'll rightfully be exiled to Mel Gibson territory. What I would say is that people have rushed to judgement, especially given the your-word-vs.-mine nature of the evidence. The way Deen has handled this whole fiasco has cast her in a dubious light, though, and in and of itself has done enough damage to invalidate the Paula Deen image that had been so carefully crafted before this all started. Coming on the heels of what could easily be interpreted as disingenuous conduct regarding her diabetes announcement and subsequent endorsement deal, I don't think it's so hard to understand why so many find themselves questioning her character at the moment.
It's not just a white thing, though. Like I said, subjective experience isn't much of a barometer of anything, but, with that disclaimer tossed out there again, it seemed pretty much as I described it for everybody. Racism and ignorance, just like good-will and understanding, are scattered throughout every sub-grouping of humanity, but there were far greater concentrations among the undereducated and the upper-middle-class on upwards of every race and creed I personally dealt with who just flat-out didn't like anyone they didn't identify with. Some of the ugliest (and loudest, most public) things I heard said about Indians, Asians, and latinos while I was down there came out of black and hispanic twentysomethings in Dallas-Ft. Worth. (I lump those in with the aforementioned trailer park bigots even though they were technically cement stoop bigots and minimart parking lot bigots.)
Even then, though, it wasn't a clear-cut picture. Among the rich folk, most seemed to identify with "Upper-crust Texan" more than any given ethnic background, which sounds laudably colorblind but in reality amounts to everyone ending up with the same pretensions and cultural prejudices regardless of their own skin color or religion. Among the poorer, there were a not-insignificant minority of people who, growing up in the sort of dire straits that produce the kind of people so many negative stereotypes were born from in the first place, grew to hate their own race. I met a black guy in South Texas once who probably could have qualified for Klan membership. A lot of the younger Indians and Vietnamese I met in Dallas were at least mildly embarrassed by their parents' cultures and preferred more of a homogenous Texan identity. There tended to be resentment between the "white-washed" and the "true" (definitely not my words) members of any given culture, too. On the whole, it was a patchwork of rivalries, arbitrary rules and hazy affiliations comparable to the worst professional wrestling or British Parliament have to offer.
Of course, that's if you decided to play along. The vast majority didn't, and just wanted to go our own way, make a living, and get along with as many people as we could, even if many tended to stick more often than not to their own identity-groups. It's just that we had to put up with the other sort, and since a lot of them held clout in the houses of politics, business, and learning, there were some fucked-up cultural norms and assumptions that a lot of the natives never really thought to question and a gravity towards a homogenous Texan identity that was more Modern White Southerner than anything else.
It all goes to show that race is a complicated issue anywhere, but especially in America, and maybe nowhere in America more than the South. That's why, to keep things mildly on topic, I won't pre-judge Ms. Deen. Given that the accusations against her amount to far more than using a racial epithet now and again, though, I wouldn't say that things have been "blown out of proportion"-- if even a quarter of the allegations stick, she'll rightfully be exiled to Mel Gibson territory. What I would say is that people have rushed to judgement, especially given the your-word-vs.-mine nature of the evidence. The way Deen has handled this whole fiasco has cast her in a dubious light, though, and in and of itself has done enough damage to invalidate the Paula Deen image that had been so carefully crafted before this all started. Coming on the heels of what could easily be interpreted as disingenuous conduct regarding her diabetes announcement and subsequent endorsement deal, I don't think it's so hard to understand why so many find themselves questioning her character at the moment.
donperkan said:
Gaijin
Gringo
Racism is pretty liberal and not very picky about its host, it doesnt really make a difference and likes to side with all humans.
Also as a matter of fact, I know that there are in Germany enough Germans which would throw away applications if the name had a to "strange" sound, like if it is polish or turkish.
Mad Max RW
Mildly Dipped
If race was still a big issue in America then Obama never would have been elected president twice. I've lived all over the country and the only groups that are consistently racist are poor blacks and super liberal rich white college kids. Yalies especially are the most intolerant people I ever met in my life.
The country's view on race has done a complete 180 in the last 50 years. People living inside a bubble or who need racism to define their lives keep crying about something that no longer exists in the way in which they describe. For example, Alec Baldwin has been on a homophobic rant for days and nobody is calling him out for it. He's still doing his tv show and commercials. MSNBC's Chris Matthews and Touré Neblett are openly racist but are still on blabbering away every afternoon. Touré even ran an anti-white newspaper in college. Where's the outrage? Today's culture is all about bashing whites, Jews, Christians, and not-so-veiled attacks on hispanics. And the stupid people eat it right up. Luckily these assholes are a minority compared to the majority of Americans who don't care about such things as skin color, religious views, sexual orientation, whatever.
If you want to see what racism is really like in America come up here to New England. Nowhere else is the country more split by intolerance and hypocrisy. And everyone is leaving to the south.
The country's view on race has done a complete 180 in the last 50 years. People living inside a bubble or who need racism to define their lives keep crying about something that no longer exists in the way in which they describe. For example, Alec Baldwin has been on a homophobic rant for days and nobody is calling him out for it. He's still doing his tv show and commercials. MSNBC's Chris Matthews and Touré Neblett are openly racist but are still on blabbering away every afternoon. Touré even ran an anti-white newspaper in college. Where's the outrage? Today's culture is all about bashing whites, Jews, Christians, and not-so-veiled attacks on hispanics. And the stupid people eat it right up. Luckily these assholes are a minority compared to the majority of Americans who don't care about such things as skin color, religious views, sexual orientation, whatever.
If you want to see what racism is really like in America come up here to New England. Nowhere else is the country more split by intolerance and hypocrisy. And everyone is leaving to the south.
heh funny how people always mention Obama. Ok his "skin" isnt white. So what gives?
I still consider him a part of the society that is actually the problem. Call me crazy. But if he would not be the guy they wanted, then he would not be on top. With saying that, looking at his life, its not like was some kind of Ghetto kid or something like that. I would be surprised if there was even one day in his life where he had to starve.
I still consider him a part of the society that is actually the problem. Call me crazy. But if he would not be the guy they wanted, then he would not be on top. With saying that, looking at his life, its not like was some kind of Ghetto kid or something like that. I would be surprised if there was even one day in his life where he had to starve.
Mad Max RW
Mildly Dipped
Crni Vuk said:
It's a curious thing, right? Do you think Obama would have been elected if he had white skin? He got nearly 100% of the black vote. So tell me where is the racism? Not even dictators like Saddam Hussein got that level of support from his own people in rigged elections.
-edited once for content, once for spelling, and then removed altogether for wholly unnecessary, un-constructive sarcasm. All apologies-
(Sander's got it covered, anyway.)
(Sander's got it covered, anyway.)
That's the idea of post-racial America, right? It's a neat ideal, but it unfortunately doesn't hold up under much scrutiny. And not just in quaint, old-people-dislike-blacks ways. In very real, and very unfortunate ways. The evidence is plentiful: incarceration rates, college admissions, access to education, access to wealth, arrest rates, being stopped by police, employment rates, hiring policies and even voting laws that primarily affect blacks -- a practice that America had supposedly rid itself of in the 1960s.Mad Max RW said:
Now, is America as a whole a lot less tolerant of racism than it was in the past? Absolutely. It is now unacceptable to say racist things in public settings. The majority of the country (and probably the vast majority) will not support a racist statement, and the majority is indeed not racist. Those are all part of why Obama is now president. But that doesn't mean that prejudice, racism and discrimination are no longer issues and that they don't exist in significant subsets of society.
I don't see how this is relevant in any way, but it's also not actually true. He went on one seven-minute homophobix rant (not a "homophobic rant for days") and then apologized for it pretty swiftly after it got a bunch of publicity.Mad Max RW said:
Chris Matthews is a racist?Mad Max RW said:
As for Toure, black power movements have always had some troubling racial ideas associated with them, and Toure's college newspaper was no exception, but Toure's modern-day writings have none of that.
More importantly, though, racism isn't just about discrimination, it is also about power relations. No, people don't react as aggressively against black anti-white racism, and a large part of the reason for that is that blacks don't have a lengthy history of oppressing white people, and also aren't in position as a group to do anything like that.
I find the victim complex you see on the right endlessly fascinating. You live in a society that is majority Christian, majority white and probably the most positive place for Jewish people to live in the entire world with the exception of (probably) Israel. Those groups aren't the ones being oppressed.Max Max RW said:
A small majority of Americans indeed would vote for a muslim or atheist, but a rather sizable portion of the population would not. Similarly, a small majority is now in favor of gay marriage, but a rather sizable portion is not. You can't pretend that because the majority is now cool, we can just ignore the rest of the nation.Max Max RW said:
Actually, 93% of the black vote in the last election. But that's perfectly in line with historical trends, where Democrats have received very large portions of the black vote ever since the '60s, when the Republicans started actively appealing to racism as the Democrats turned away from their racist past. In 2004, Kerry got 88% of the black vote. That's not because blacks are all racists, it's because they understand which party advocates their interests and those interests are relatively homogeneous.Max Max RW said:
Now, was there a racial aspect to Obama's elections? Absolutely there was. You're talking about a group that has been historically oppressed and is still feeling the very real effects of that oppression. You find it strange that they were excited about one of their ethnic group rising to the most powerful position in the world?
But we're not talking about a huge group suddenly voting in very different ways than they had before.