Paula Deen and Racism

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Me use racial slurs? n****r please...



FBC actually got the point I was making, that it's hardly surprising that someone of Paula Deen's age and background would have used racial slurs in at some point in her life and the real scandal is people overreacting, I'm only really responding to you in order to illustrate the dangers of going off half cocked.

I'm going to guess that you didn't realize that you were talking to perhaps the most vocal opponent of censoring racial slurs and other potentially offensive language here on WP when you assumed I was being judgmental about the South?

This is what I dare to say to the mods on the subject:

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postp5339681.html#5339681

I also fight stereotypes of Southerners, but I don't have such a good example of me doing it at my fingertips.

You might think about doing something about that chip on your shoulder, one of these days it might make you look like a real ass.

When this dies down, she'll be back on some other cooking show (maybe Fox will even start one, tailored made just for her) - spreading death by clogged arteries to millions.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

From my understanding it's some kind of racial grudge rearing it's ugly head, not about what Paula said some MANY years back. I dunno...maybe she HAS treated blacks working for her disproportionately different from whites.

I spent my childhood in the 80's, and back then in the environment I grew up in racial epithets were a ubiquitous feature of our language. Many of us simply weren't taught any differently. I heard my grandparents and my father speak like that every day. I even heard stuff like that from my classmates at school. We'd go around singing "Jingle bells, shotgun shells, granny had a gun/Pulled the trigger, shot a ..." (figure the rest out) and it wasn't a big deal.

It was my mom who'd make a big deal about it if she heard me say that word. So eventually the n-word vanished from my vocabulary. And I still avoid that the same way I avoid most other expletives: It's just low class. And I figure most adults as far back as the 70's should have known better. If Paula was using that kind of language back in the 90's in mixed company, I'm going to find it difficult to sympathize with her.

One thing that bothers me, though, is the inclination of certain groups of people to go litigious on their employers when things don't go their way. Mississippi is a "right to hire" state. A friend of mine works for a company that hires people on a 90-day probationary period. A recent hire has often been insubordinate, displays poor attitude towards co-workers and customers, takes days off when she feels like it without clearing it with her immediate supervisor, gossips about co-workers and the company... She's obviously unhappy and doesn't seem to really want to be there. The thing is, though, because she's black her manager is scared to fire her even though her misbehavior at work is well-documented. They're afraid of discrimination lawsuits.

I say grow a backbone. If you hire crazy after those 90 days, you'll have a tougher time getting rid of crazy and crazy will end up running the company and make everyone's lives miserable, not to mention run the company into the ground because management and HR will be too busy cleaning up crazy's mess.

I don't know the situation with Paula Deen, but I do know that people are scared to fire employees if they belong to a racial minority. You end up hiring Crazy, but you're scared to fire Crazy because Crazy wants to turn it into a racial issue. So you let Crazy hang on longer than Crazy deserves to be there. Crazy doesn't want to work...Crazy just wants a J-O-B and a paycheck. Firing Crazy would be doing Crazy a favor, except now Crazy has to WORK to find another job, which Crazy doesn't want to do. Instead, Crazy would rather pretend to want to work for that company even if it makes Crazy miserable and then blame the company for an "oppressive" environment when all anyone is trying to do is subtly tell Crazy that he or she is simply no longer wanted and probably shouldn't have been hired in the first place. And because this particular Crazy happens to be black, Crazy gets to play the race card, even though it has nothing to do with race.

I don't KNOW that this is the situation with Paula Deen, but it wouldn't surprise me.

I can't blame the network for letting Paula Deen go because an unfortunate reality of being on TV is talent must at all times be above reproach. Whether Paula used racial epithets, purposefully made blacks in her employ feel they were in an oppressive work environment, or just critical mistakes in hiring the wrong people (race not an issue--she just hired too many Crazies), she is clearly not above reproach. That makes Paula a liability and I doubt we'll see her back on TV any time soon.

Perhaps it's for the best, though. Paula is known for making poor health choices in her cooking, both on and off the air. It's one thing if you're cooking for a private party once or twice a year or entertaining for the holidays. But I can tell you that for all the good-tasting food we southerners are known for, you can't live life on butter/margarine and Crisco alone. Sooner or later it will catch up with you. The only way I lost 70 lb. was through a long period of fasting, and the only way I've managed to keep my weight between 153 and 160 is through carefully measuring how much I eat, which with few exceptions is a vegetarian diet (I usually eat fish once a week and only eat out once a month and on special occasions). I fast at least once a week, and I try to exercise every day if I can. A lot of cooking shows at least TRY to promote healthier food than typical southern fare. I used to love Rachel Ray 30-minute meals, and I'm also a big fan of Giada. Maybe it's partly because of my personal experience, but I find Paula Deen deeply disturbing. It's like trying to give a drunk a drink. So I tend to think that whether it was racial slurs, racially oppressive work environment, or poor hiring choices that did her in, I think those things are more the symptom rather than the disease. If Paula's choices are killing Food Network viewers, keeping her on the air isn't doing them any favors. She was already on the way out. It was only a matter of time.

The woman who filed the lawsuit is white.

Though Paula Deen apparently admitted she wanted to have a Southern Plantation themed wedding for her brother, with all black waitstaff, etc. She also said she decided against that because of how the media would react, indicating that she knew it would be poorly received, I can't imagine she has no idea that her views are problematic.

She also condoned her brother viewing pornography/showing the staff pornography and brushed it off as "off color humor" Sexual harassment charges seemed to be the main issue from what I understand.

There were numerous other problematic things that came up, but I don't think her use of a racial slur, years ago, was the real problem. I doubt that's the reason she was let go, she basically said lots of racist things in the deposition without ever using a racial slur.

I don't have any thoughts on Paula Dean specifically, I think it is pretty sad that she is losing her job because of something she said years ago. I don't really care what her personal beliefs are, she's a television cook. I am not a fan of her or her cooking. Unleashing the lynch mob whenever it is found out that somebody has said something off-color anytime in their lifetime is disgusting, unsurprisingly it is actually uppity WHITE people leading the charge telling us what speech is acceptable and what isn't. If only we could be inside these people's heads when they're around people of 'color', I'm sure we'd find more than a few hypocrites. I guess they ran out of comedians to try to ruin for supporting 'rape culture'.

My guess is everybody has said something unkind toward other groups at one point or another, whether they will admit to it or not. My point is that it's nothing to be proud of. As with obscenities, using ethnic epithets says a lot more about the user than their target. Why not be polite and civil? Being so costs us nothing and tends to make those around us happier.

I also agree with you on not holding onto antipathy. Unless we act on that antipathy, which makes it a criminal matter, hating somebody is far harder on the hater than the hated. Hate is poison to the hater more than to the hated.

I would further say that we should categorically refuse to assume responsibility for the actions of others, including our own ancestors. We should only be held responsible for our own actions, and then only insofar as we are capable of changing.

Excellent points! I particularly agree with you that "uppity whites", or at least whites with pretensions to be uppity, are insufferable. This is a result of Political Correctness, which is the secular religion of liberalism. PC is the vehicle by which the crowd that preaches we're all equal shows their superiority with respect to the rest of us.

As far as blacks go, they use terms toward each other all the time that we're not supposed to use, and it hardly seems to hurt their self-esteem. To me, forgoing the use of epithets and obscenities is a matter of good manners and showing others the same respect I want in return.

As far as being inside the heads of the Politically Correct elites, for them PC is a form of morality which costs them nothing--only others. For example, just try and imagine the Great and Good from the Upper West Side of Manhattan Island selling their highrise apartments and moving to the ghetto--or forsaking fancy private prep schools for their children in favor of schools where English is no longer spoken. No, in their mating and migratory habits, this crowd is indistinguishable from members of the Ku Klux Klan.

Oh? Then why wasn't Deen sacked for sexual harassment?

Gosh, am I supposed to be impressed that somebody of your caliber deigned to lower himself to interact with me?

As far as "assuming" anything, all I did was ask questions.

BTW, do you have any idea at all as to the proper definition of a stereotype? A stereotype is something that is frequently true, but not always. Stereotypes concerning a group are either confirmed or dispelled upon getting to know that person.

As for racial slurs, I am all for keeping them out of respectable forums such as WP for the same reason as really obscene language should be kept out. But both are breaches of manners rather than some kind of grave moral offense.

I asked you the questions I did not knowing how you would respond, and to acknowledge the possibility that you may have something to say on the issue that I've not heard before. I'm not quite sure that equates to "having a chip on my shoulder". If you can lower yourself to talk to somebody as lowly as me again, perhaps you can explain why

She wasn't "sacked" from the restaurant because she owns it. She hasn't been sacked from Food Network, they made a statement saying they would not be renewing her contract when it expires in the near future, and they didn't comment as to the reason.

The woman who filed the lawsuit was a replacement for an assistant manager who had been sleeping with underage waitstaff, and Deen's comments on that were pretty disturbing as well.

I'm fully aware of where Deen was sacked from; it is hardly esoteric knowledge.

If Deen wasn't sacked for using racial epithets, then why is she on her knees groveling for forgiveness for this offense rather than for her other alleged transgressions?

I assume it's symptomatic of her Type 2 Racism. It's hardly esoteric knowledge, bro.

Do liberals really have a racism taxonomy? If so, that's just precious. If so, please be so good as to inform this simple old aspie what "Type 2 Racism" is.

Seems like a ginned up scandal. But racism or not, she's done far more damage to the cracker nation with those recipes than she ever did to blacks.