Jamie Foxx's comments about Michael Jackson...

[max_tranmere]

Jamie Foxx is a black American actor. I saw him on TV, speaking at a black music awards thing, and he said "we gave him [Jackson] to the world, he came from us..." and he carried on in this vein for a minute or two. For those around the world who (like me) regard colour as being nothing more than an external, superifcial thing, which does not define a person but is just cosmetic - the same as having ginger hair, being tall, or having a pointy chin - I regarded what Foxx said as ridiculous, divisive, and embarassingly stupid. Just like how I regarded the existence of the whole event.

Imagine if there was a white music awards show, and imagine if Jon Bon Jovi felt a closeness to some actor who had just died, and the only reason Jon Bon Jovi felt that was because they were the same colour. It would be absurd - aswell as racist. If someone is up in Court on a racism charge for not employing someone of colour, solely because they were of colour, the attacking counsel would probably say something like: "you didn't give this man a job because his skin is darker than yours..." - implying colour is just skin deep, an external superficial thing, and (like I said earlier) as minor a detail as any of the other external visual things that I mentioned above. That is a universally held view - that colour is just a visual thing and nothing else - and it's the view I hold too. I don't, for instance, see myself as white as such - just a person.

Then someone like Jamie Foxx makes his comments, or the existance of the very award show he was at, or The Voice newsaper in Britain, or black radio stations in the USA, and numerous other things - and those things convey the message that colour is NOT just skin-deep, external, etc, but is actually an identity. This takes the whole thing backwards and it contradicts the very position that has been attempted to be got across for so many years. What are other people's opinions on this? I have gone off Jamie Foxx - I'm thinking of throwing away my DVD of "Collateral" (starring him an Tom Cruise)!

[one eyed jack]

You have to remember Max, it was only 30- 30 years ago that black folk had to sit at the back of the bus, couldnt swim in the same pool as the white folk, couldnt drink in the same pub, were under attack by white racists then suddenly when the black power movement came in we were suddenly racists...Yay! Equality at last!

What I'm trying to say is, those things are still engraved in the black consciousness and will take some time for those scars to heal.

Try and look at it from the black perspective. Just for a moment. Whenn was the last ime the white man was a slave and was whipped and forced to bale hay and pick cotton?

Just try and put yourself in the shoes of the next man, be it black, asian or whatever and try to understand what makes people the way they are then answer your question..or at least try to.

People canot just forgive and forget within a generation.

It aint as bad as it used to be so some improvement is happening.

You know what? I can understand why some people are angry and want to join the BNP. Colour those same white folks black in your mind and you get somewhere at understanding what it means to be human fighting among humans of another colour.

[mrchapel]

It's been one or two generations since there was a black slave either.
It`s the hypocrisy I hate. For example a few months ago Jamie Foxx and his co hosts on his radio show making comments about Miley Cyrus and how she should just get the sex tape out and she was a white bitch. Imagine a white tv or radio personality used the term black bitch. They`d be shitcanned .
Meh racial hatred is fucking retarded.

[max_tranmere]

I agree that the wounds are still a bit raw, and the things the white man did to the black man over many centuries was, of couse, obscene. I've never really seen a distinction between colour though and I do wonder whether if there was another race of people in the USA who had been treated as badly whether the black community would feel a kinship with them and lobby on their behalf aswell as on their own behalf. I am basing that judgement on the fact that most ethnic minorities seem to 'hang with their own.' If, say, the Espanics in the US had been treated as badly as the black community over centuries I wonder if Jamie Foxx would be bigging-up an Expanic singer, or whether power oganistions would lobby on behlf of another race like they do on behalf of their own. I don't think they would somehow. The biggest danger in all of this is when members of the majority race see the hypocrisy, see what would be called 'racism' if it was being done the other way around - being done by certain people - and may themselves begin to consider seeing people in terms of colour rather than just seeing them as people. I can't see myself being 'turned', but some other people might.

[Sam Slater]

Another Max thread, another discussion over race. How many is that this year, Max?

You're right in that there's a lot of hypocrisy around racism and discrimination. For instance, I think that if some celeb was caught calling a gay man a 'bender' then that person would have his wrists slapped; if caught calling a black man a 'nigger' then their career is practically over. In the society we live in it seems a bigger offence to be racist than homophobic. In my world a gay man has just as much right to be protected against abuse and discrimination as the black man. Both have feelings that can be hurt, both can be held back by discrimination and both live in a society where they are the minority. You only have to look at how much comedians avoid racial jokes these days but feel perfectly comfortable in mocking gays, women and the disabled to see this hypocrisy in action.

However, though I admit to the hypocrisy I also try and understand it. Racism has been the biggest single cause of conflict and discrimination over the last 100 years or so, in Europe, and it will take time before we can all accept each other for what/who we are. Jamie Foxx's comments and views need to be understood, not condemned. More people have been killed because of their race than their sexuality and so people are more sensitive to it.

Does this help in your seemingly perpetual confusion and anger over the subject?

[Jonone]

Max, I think you have to be on the receiving end of inequality and discrimination to realise that its basis ie how it's justified by the powerful (whether this be race, class, gender, ethnicity etc) and how that power is exercised most definitely is an issue ... for us all.

[Jonone]

It's a highly contentious use of the word 'rescued'. Let's say the deal was 'We're going to 'rescue' you whether you like it or not'. If it was such a no-brainer of a deal why did the colonialists and slave traders need to use force ?

Evidently as an idea it did not sell itself to Africans as easily as you think it ought to have.