[Show] Weapon of Choice - 7:00 PM EDT - Page 59

On May 30 2011 09:26 PanzerKing wrote:
Destiny absolutely humiliated himself today, in my opinion. I was absolutely appalled by so much of what he said that I have to vent that frustration publicly.

I've interviewed rape victims immediately after they've been assaulted. When you've seen that kind of pain, and you realize that it's going to emotionally impact them for the rest of their life, you can't listen to the kind of ridiculous, fatuous statements he was making today without getting incensed. "A lot of women who've been raped are able to make jokes about it?" Really? Are you fucking kidding me? Who are these women, because I've never met them. The ones I've met (at least, the ones that are old enough to be considered 'women' and not 'girls') aren't joking about it. They're grappling with the enormity of an experience that quite often precludes them from ever pursuing another successful relationship.

And you know what? Rape is a reality that all women deal with. It's a reality that can strike any of them at any time, whether they're a single mother or a teenage girl or a college student. So, no, it's not just something that affects only a tiny portion of women - it's a reality that's in the back of a woman's mind when she's walking down an empty street alone, or when she's being stared at on the subway by a creepy guy, late at night.

On the subject of race - I know a lawyer, a black lawyer, who went into criminal court one time in casual clothing, only to be told by a court officer "have a seat, your attorney will be with you in a moment." This guy has been a respected prosecutor for thirty years, in and out of that same court for most of his career and a court officer takes one look at his denim slacks and sneakers and automatically makes him for a criminal because of his skin color. He doesn't think "he's probably a paralegal", he thinks "he's a defendant."

I know another lawyer, a white lawyer, whom I was sitting next to in an upstate courtroom. He pointed at a paralegal who had walked into the courtroom and said, under his breath, "that's something you don't see often." I didn't know what he meant. He clarified "One of 'those people' wearing a suit."

THAT is the kind of racism that still exists today, Destiny. It's not the Jim Crow, lynch mob, cross-burning racism of the 1950's - it's the unconscious prejudice, it's institutional racism like higher interest rates on home loans for blacks, it's the long glances you get from a clerk when you're alone in the back of a convenience store late at night, it's the nervous looks people give you when you sit next to them at 2:00 am on the subway, it's the subtle and unthinking insinuation that you've only gotten where you have in life because of a white man's pity.

THAT is part of why people are hurt by the N-word. Do you know the other part? It's the idea that, no matter how far we've come from that time, no matter how far we've removed ourselves from that part of history, it's the idea that a single word like that can be used to define a person of color. It's the idea that it doesn't matter who or what you are - you can be called a 'nigger', and that word sums you up, defines the entirety of your existence, strips you of your individuality and makes you just a faceless member of an underclass. And that idea, whether you want to recognize it's existence or not, has NOT gone away in the last fifty years, and it might never go away - it's something everyone keeps in the back of their head because it's the kind of realization that can't be unthought.

But to be on-topic - if people are serious about making e-sports a successful venue, they need to step outside of themselves and realize that their audience is not just young heterosexual white males. Some people don't fall into that category, and some of those people take their racial, ethnic or religious background, or their sexual orientation, or their prior life experiences quite seriously. The inability to demonstrate even a modicum of respect for those people's feelings strikes me as so incredibly callous and arrogant that, quite frankly, I was appalled during today's show. Your hypothetical desire to 'freely express' yourself with vulgar and hurtful language matters more than respecting your audience and exercising a basic level of decency for their feelings? How much more self-important can a person be?

That said, I strongly respect Incontrol for admitting that he isn't perfect. Nobody is. The point is that you should try to accept your role as a representative of something larger than yourself, and you should try to comport yourself in a manner that respects other people's perspectives even if you can't bring yourself to respect them in reality. Even if someone doesn't always succeed, it matters most of all that they tried - that they placed the well-being of their organizational affiliations (i.e. e-sports or a team affiliation) and the emotional well-being of other people who are receiving said message, over their own base wants. If you can do that, then you'd start to build some credibility in my eyes, but today I saw a confident, responsible adult in Incontrol, and a petulant, crude boy in Destiny.