After a month-old cell phone video of a white professional football player uttering a racial slur was released on YouTube last week, that man — Riley Cooper of the Philadelphia Eagles — has learned a valuable lesson: there are things that shouldn’t be said.
While we should be getting ready to celebrate the 50-year anniversary of an amazing speech by a true American hero, we’re again engaging in social commentary on the negative use of the “N” word.
In case you missed it, some background: Cooper, a 25-year-old Eagles wide receiver, attended a country music concert in June and was taped saying the epithet to an African-American security guard. However, he wasn’t saying it in a jovial or friendly way — it was the angry, vicious manner in which he used it that has stirred emotions throughout the country.
I don’t know whether Cooper is really a racist or not, but I know this much: the way he violently used the word could easily lead one to assume he is racist.
Some background on me: I’m a 44-year-old white man who grew up in an overwhelmingly white, rural, lower-class environment in Northwestern North Carolina. I don’t know what it’s like to be black, much in the same manner that I don’t know what it’s like to be a woman, or rich, or a homosexual.
The reason I bring this up is because — in the context of the Cooper or Paula Deen situations (among many others) — I have continuously heard white folks utter this statement, “Why is it all right for black people to use the ‘N’ word but it’s not OK for us to do it?”
To me, it’s the same as me talking about my own relatives and loved ones; if I want to speak ill of any of them, that’s fine — they’re my family and I have the right to do so. But let anyone else say a bad word about them and it’s on — I will fight to the death to defend their honor.
I feel it’s the same with black folks; they can describe themselves in any manner and use any words they want. But when someone from outside their racial makeup or environment calls them a certain name (and especially with the negative connotations Cooper used), that’s an entirely different situation — and I can understand their anger and disgust.
White folks don’t know the struggles African-Americans have experienced over the past few generations — and continue to go through on a daily basis. Most of us have never felt that fear of doing nothing wrong, looking up in my rear-view mirror and wondering if we’re going to be pulled over just because of our skin color.
It’s way past time for us to get past racism in our society. Almost 50 years ago, on Aug. 28, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
Every time a Riley Cooper is out there spewing racial epithets, though, we’re no closer to that day of which Dr. King dreamed.
And that should make us all sad.
Bryan C. Hanks is the editor of The Free Press; his column appears in this space every Sunday. You can reach him at 252-559-1074 or at Bryan.Hanks@Kinston.com. Follow him on Twitter at @BCHanks.