So I’ve been reading through the articles on the Oklahoma University SAE frat, mostly for confirmation that they were not in fact truly racist after all. It was quite the relief, and I hope the day never comes in which an actual racist is caught being racist, complete with honest quotes from close friends and family:

“He’s totally fucking racist.” Said Trevor Hutchinson III, who went to the same Jesuit high school as the spirited fraternity member seen chanting on the bus. “Racist as in he believes black people are inferior, like the textbook definition of racist. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m racist myself, but he just totally takes the fun out of it.”

Parker Rice and Levi Pettit, the fist pumper and composer in the bus video, were defended for making a “horrible mistake”, and people close to them assured everyone that neither kid is a racist at heart. Other defenses cited the role that conformity played in the incident. If you’re bothered by conformity being used as a defense, it might be on account of your understanding that conformity, as it relates specifically to bigotry and ethnic or racial hatred, is historically responsible for the most horrendous and unspeakable acts of violence.

We all know this Edmund Burke quote, right: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing – or worse yet if people join in, or worse still if they take a leading, fist pumping role, then they’re total assholes.” Okay, maybe the second part wasn’t him, but the point should stand that conformity is the absolutely worst excuse for bigotry. One of them decided that they would impress the ladies on their date night by serenading them with ‘If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands – Jim Crow Remix’, and yet the it should be understood that the conductors of the the grinning congregation joined in under duress of peer pressure. Unfortunately for them, at least two people judging by the camera angles, decided not to conform and instead record the incident and share it. We all know what happened after that.

But then another video came out, of SAE house Mom, Beauton Gilbow saying nigga repeatedly in a vine. I first saw this in a Huffington Post article, in which the context isn’t completely ignored: they acknowledge that there is a rap song in the background that says nigga repeatedly, however pointing out in the article that Trinidad says it three times repeatedly instead of seven times like she sang it. Looking at the comments, it seemed people agreed that she is a horrid racist old hag that shed crocodile tears when she spoke of her initial shock in reaction to the bus SAE video.

On the other side of the spectrum, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brezinski– blamed rap music’s lyrics for the SAE bus chant. The Huffington Post and Morning Joe each acted as if they were blind to any distinction between the videos, each for exact opposite reasons. They’re like the tragedy and comedy masks of bullshit between the two of them.

Huffington Post SAE Mom article

Can anyone in popular media please stop pretending to be oblivious to the distinction between the words “nigga” and “nigger”? People on the left: when people that aren’t black say nigga, in the context of a rap song or in any of the ways that many black people use it, to pretend that it is an example of racism akin to a klan meeting is disingenuous and patronizing. It is not the same thing, and the people that object to it most fervently seem to be white people making a show of how not racist they are by being so stringent in their declarations of racism. Methinks thou nauseatingly protest too much. It’s suspect. I may be unduly influenced, but the black people I know are smart enough to understand context.

Now, going from disingenuous to dishonest – people on the right: you cannot excuse a video of Oklahoman frat boys chanting about “no niggers…hang them from a tree” by carping about how often rappers use the word nigga – and equating the two.

Morning Joe blames rappers for racist SAE chant

It’s apples and nooses. Staying true to context, it’s worse yet coming from Mika Brezinski, the cartoonishly uptight blonde that speaks of anyone that isn’t as refined and puritan as herself as if she is picking up a shitty diaper with two fingers while plugging her nose.

Yes, I know that there are black people that object to the word in any form, and that’s a discussion that can take place, but if we’re going to have that “honest and frank discussion about race in this country”, can we please, as a society, acknowledge the effects it may have on some people to be around black people that use the word nigga as punctuation – that also address absolutely everyone as nigga, and that white kids chanting about “niggers hanging from trees” are not the result of it. There is no comparison between the two. I know it’s context be damned when people in the media are trying to say something weighty, but doing so in regards to this issue either unfairly labels people as racists when we all know damn well they are not or it excuses the actions of people that are so racist that they provided an animated definition of racism for us to put in a time capsule for future generations of anthropologists. Seriously though, last week I heard someone address his mom as nigga.