Don’t use black Americans to cancel Joe Rogan. By Adam Coleman (who is black).
Have you noticed how, in most recent outrages about race, black Americans are not the ones leading or even energising the conversation? The current outrage over Joe Rogan’s past use of the N-word is no different.
On February 5th, the podcaster was forced to issue an apology because of a viral video montage showing clips of him saying the N-word. He stated that these clips were taken out of context but also that he regrets using the word. “I never used it to be racist because I’m not a racist” he said. Personally, I believe him.
But it feels like I’m supposed to be angry. The N-word is supposed to throw a black person like myself back to a time period when I wasn’t alive and force me to relive humiliation that wasn’t mine. I’m supposed to hear Rogan saying that word, regardless of context, and cast him in the role of the abusive master or racist good ‘ol boy.
Frankly it’s insulting. These kinds of campaigns imply that we, black Americans, are incapable of objectivity and ignorant of context; it implicitly accuses us of hyper-emotionality and a lack of rationality.
The outrage over Rogan isn’t coming from black people. It’s coming from members of the political and media establishment who have been trying to de-platform him for over a month. When warnings about “misinformation” didn’t do the trick, they pivoted to racism. But this isn’t about racism or even morality; it’s about control of information.
If elites really believed that using the N-word should be a career-ending offence for white people, plenty of other celebrities would need to be cancelled. Take the president’s son, Hunter Biden, who jokingly used the slur with his white lawyer — a story the media mostly ignored.
Howard Stern, the former shock jock and present-day bastion of moral virtue, gets a free pass for years of what would be considered racially insensitive material. I remember when he sang DMX’s “My Niggas” live on air. …
But when all other attempts to silence Rogan have failed, black people find themselves once again used to gain leverage.
Yep. Everyone’s catching on. Time’s nearly up on this scam.
