I am pretty livid about this story.
Have you heard of this white football player who lost a scholarship because he said the N-word on camera? Well, the story may not be what you think, but it does bring up a much-needed conversation around that word.
There is a young student named Marcus Stokes who had an offer to come play Division 1 football at the University of Florida. That scholarship has now been rescinded, even after he apologized.
Why did he lose out on this opportunity? Because he said the N-word.
Now, you might be thinking, ‘Candace, that’s really bad. They caught him in a video on social media saying the N-word. That’s really, really wrong.’
Except, the context you’re missing here is that he was actually just rapping along to one of his favorite songs — a song that says the N-word repeatedly. So because he’s the wrong color — Stokes is white — and was singing that song, he now gets his scholarship rescinded.
Now, why is that problematic?
Because I’m getting sick and tired of these double standards. It drives me crazy that we are allowed to put this word in music.
Then we turn around and say to society, depending on what color you are, you may or may not be allowed to say it.
Could you imagine that?
Imagine if there was a word that only white people could say and black people couldn’t say it. And not only could white people say it, but white people were saying it perpetually — saying it every other word, putting it in every other sentence, putting it in their music, saying whatever word it was.
Then suddenly a black person came around and said it, and white people responded by saying, “Oh, you are going to have your life ruined. You can’t go to university because this is some special word we’ve decided only white people are allowed to say.”
You might call that — I don’t know — racism in and of itself.
You might even go so far as to describe it as segregation.
The same people who are demanding we put an end to the past and put an end to racist policies are also saying there is some special category that allows black people to partake in a word that nobody should say.
If it’s a bad word, then it needs to be bad all around. Nobody should be saying it.
It can’t only be bad when some people say it.
It is such peak stupidity to suggest that a word that is derogatory can somehow be ‘reclaimed’ and ‘powerful.’
The only people who believe that are those who believe black people are stupid. Why? Because everything that they tell us is “ours” is dysfunctional.
‘Oh, that’s yours. You degrade yourself. Yeah. You guys, you’ve got it covered. Why should we even call black people the N-word, when they’re so proud to call themselves the N-word? In fact, we’re going to make them think that they have such a stake and a claim on that dirty word, that they’re going to start yelling i f White people say it, because white people are too good to say that word.’
Is that the idea that we’re basically saying? Because that’s what it suggests to me.
It suggests that white people own a better part of the language. They don’t use derogatory terms like this.
Yet black people need to feel that it’s proprietary to us.
I think that the University of Florida should be ashamed of itself.
In fact, if this was my child, I’d be suing them. I would go through the social media channels of every single player on that team — every single student that I could find who went to the University of Florida — and if I found even one student that was black and was saying that word, who did not have their scholarship rescinded or their place at the university taken away, I would say this is discriminatory and take them to court.
The truth is we already have in place policies that prevent racial discrimination.
What this is on its face is racial discrimination. And it makes me upset that this person issued an apology.
He said, “My intent was never to hurt anybody. And I recognize that even going along with the song, my words still carry a lot of weight.”
That is ridiculous. And his parents should never have made him issue that apology.
It makes somebody a weaker individual to do something that makes entirely no sense.
And you want to know one of the great ironies in all of this? Typically the white kids who are rapping along to black music and dropping the N-word — are the least racist white people in society. They are partaking in black culture.
Call me crazy, but I thought when Martin Luther King had a dream, that was it — for people to engage in one another’s cultures or people to come together and to celebrate one another. It might have been for people like Marcus Stokes to say, “I like this rap artist so much and I want to learn all of the lyrics to his song”
Only to be told “Nope, nope, nope, nope. That’s not for you. Maybe just listen to white people’s music. That would be less discriminatory — somehow.”
Again, this story infuriates me.
Candace’s full reaction to the story can be watched here.