Your favorite blogger has just returned from a whirlwind trip to Los Angeles, during which I had multiple, illuminating conversations with people from many distinct walks of life. Different upbringings, races, orientations, perspectives: it was the type of diversity one just doesn’t see in a place like Eau Claire, Wisconsin. I enjoyed it thoroughly; I love talking to people, and I love to hear reasonable minds articulate opposing arguments from divergent life paths. It further enforced to me the need for us as a society to be talking across racial, religious, lifestyle, and socio-economic divides. We as human beings are not as different as we think we are, but if we don’t talk across the boundaries that traditionally separate us, we will not realize the tremendous common ground we share.
The world is not black and white. For the most part our society is composed of shades of gray. But a vital tool in bringing clarity to the issues we collectively struggle with is having conversations that alert the national consciousness to subjects like economic disparity, racial tensions, gay marriage, usage of the “N” word, or the “F” word that Kobe Bryant recently hollered at an NBA ref.
I bring this up, of course, in the context of Joakim Noah’s usage of a gay slur—presumably the same slur Bryant used in early April—in Sunday Night’s playoff loss to the Heat. The irony of it all is that Noah is an African American man, a person surely familiar with the inequities mainstream society can impose on someone that is not, say, a privileged white male like myself.
Most troubling is that both Bryant and Noah blurted their crass remarks in the heat of the moment, when their mental filters fell behind the impulsive rage they felt at the time. Both said the thing they thought would most offend the recipient of their trashy language, a word that happened to be a repulsive substitute for the proper term, “homosexual.”
The point is, that the “F” word was used by both Noah and Bryant to demean the person they screamed it at, to call into question their manhood, and insinuate that to be gay is to be one of the worst possible things a man could be.
Those that argue that this word doesn’t mean gay—that it means uncool or stupid or that someone is a jerk—are missing the point entirely. It doesn’t matter if Noah or Kobe intended that word to mean something other than gay. What matters, and what is sad, is that a word which stands for homosexuality connotes a laundry list of other negative things. Both players used the word as an insult, and it was the most powerful insult they could conjure. In a fit of rage people say the things they know will offend or hurt others the most, and in both Noah and Bryant’s case, that word was a gay slur.
Imagine the uproar if Kyle Korver, a white Bulls player, had shouted the “N” word at a black fan. He would likely be suspended multiple games and may have even incited a riot at the game. So why aren’t we more outraged when someone hurls an equally insulting word at another oppressed population of people?
It’s because the conversation about racial equality started much longer ago, as early as the Emancipation Proclamation, through the civil rights movement, and has continued to progress since then. In no way is racial bias, inequality, or ignorance absent from our world today, but the standards of what is acceptable or of what will be tolerated are far more entrenched.
The public discourse on being a homosexual, and what the parameters of that conversation should be, began much more recently, starting perhaps only in the early 1980’s with the HIV/AIDS crisis and the assassination of Harvey Milk. Additionally, gay people were never enslaved in this country, never so physically mistreated and collectively tortured as the African American population, but homosexuals have suffered the same judgment, ignorance, lack of rights, and general abuse that any non-white straight male has suffered through.
We’ve seen this story throughout our country’s history with women, African Americans, Japanese Americans, and now more recently with Middle Eastern Americans and the Gay Community. Being “different” has always taken this nation’s dominant majority (white men) a few generations to get used to, to eventually accept the inherent truth that we all are created equal and accordingly deserve equal treatment, respect, and rights.
What Noah and Bryant both did was detestable and disgusting but not uncommon. I have heard that “F” word used countless times in my life. I have used that word myself, and I hate that truth, but my point would be disingenuous if I didn’t admit that. But, if any good comes from these recent incidents, it’s that it starts a national conversation. It gets the ball rolling on a topic we all need to think about and work on. When a high-profile athlete makes a mistake we jump on him or her like we’ve never done the same thing, though most times, we’ve probably made the exact same misstep.
In this case celebrity is a fantastic way for an ostensibly negative and horrific moment to be used as a catalyst for change. We’ve come so far in equal rights for women, civil rights for different races, and toleration for religious differences. It would be nice if we could simply stroll through our own history and realize that our intolerance and abuse of the Gay Community will be no less of a black eye on our collective record than our mistreatment of black people or our oppression of women.
I believe that we will reach a point where using the “F” word is just as taboo as using the “N” word, but we aren’t there yet. Here’s to hoping the mistakes of Noah and Bryant can accelerate that process as much as possible.
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