Coder Girl...

[Darryl Moore]

Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 23, 2009 at 09:58:45AM -0400, Madison Kelly wrote:
>> Actually, it's entirely relevant.
>>
>> Did you read the links that Darryl posted? They give a lot better  
>> insight into why it is relevant than I can. Let me try to give it to you  
>> in a nutshell though;
>>
>> Rap and Hip Hop originally came from the black community and are still  
>> probably the largest consumer of this style of music. So you can say  
>> that, to an extent, Rap and Hip Hop are "black music".
> 
> Seems rather popular with lots of white people too, and there are white
> musicians that do rap as well.  If you want racism to go away, then stop
> considering black people as a distinct group of people, and stop looking
> for racism everywhere where it might not have been intended.  I thought
> the post about rap and monkeys was somewhat rude perhaps, but I never
> saw anything racist in it at all.  The idea that it could have refered
> to black people never crossed my mind.  I read it as a post by someone
> that doesn't like rap and happens to think monkeys are stupid animals.
> That's just someone's opinion.
> 

Truthfully, it didn't cross come across my mind that way either when I
first read it. But then, I'm just an old white guy. However when the
first response pointed this out, I was certainly able to see how others
might be offended by it. If it had been my post, at that point I would
have apologized for my unintentional slight.

On a related note. I was listening to an interview on Radio 1 a couple
of weeks ago with a person who wrote a book about the First Nations
residential schools mess. One of the things I learned then is that a lot
of First Nations people are offended by the term Indian when applied to
them. I was not aware of this until then. As a result when speaking to
people, especially ones who self identify as First Nations, I will in
the future be very careful how I use that word. Nothing to do with
racism, per se, simply respect for other peoples feelings.

/darryl
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