Saturday, December 11, 2010

On the subject of whether or not a recent video of mine was racist, I'm going to keep this as brief as I can. I wasn't even planning on responding and I'm certainly not going to name anyone who leveled these accusations at me. My gut tells me that due to the size of this channel, people have a tendency to call me out in some sort of attempt to incite a response from me and thereby gain a little publicity.

It's a bummer that it's really taken me this long to figure that out, but that's just how it happened. Believe it or not, I am still "new" to the internet and I've got a long, long way to go before I can say that I'm totally comfortable being the subject of so much scrutiny from time to time.

This issue is impossible not to address due to the sheer magnitude of what it implies. To say that I am a racist is a big, big accusation and those who make such accusations should know better than to do so lightly. Such an accusation can have a serious and tangible effect on someone, so a lot of thought should go into it before stating so.

It's my belief that this wasn't the case for me and I'll explain right now.

There were three exchanges in that video that stood out to me as being inherently prejudice, one of them display outright racism. At one point, one of the men exclaims that he will blow the other's house up "Arab style." The implication here is that the word Arab carries with it a connotation of death and destruction and it also illustrates just how casually Americans tend to demean this particular segment of our community. It's pretty atrocious just how poorly anyone who even looked remotely Arab were treated in the aftermath of 911, and it's redundant to even talk about it.

The second thing I noticed in the video is the use of the word "pussy" as an insult. Here, the implication is that pussy is referring to a vagina, a vagina is a female trait, females are weak, and therefore this individual was weak. It's often overlooked, but using this word maliciously is overtly sexist.

The third thing that stood out to me was the phrase "I ain't down for that faggot shit!" I don't even have to explain how demeaning the word "fag" is to those that identify as gay to any degree. Again, when used maliciously it's a pretty terrible word.

What strikes me as odd after making these observations is that nearly no one commented on them. Nope. To them, the issue was that I was portraying a particular race in a bad light and therefore I was a racist. First of all, my simple response to that is that stupidity doesn't discriminate on the basis of race, and that no one gets immunity from it being pointed out to them. I don't care if you're from El Salvador, Africa, Thailand, Malaysia, or Texas. Stupid is stupid.

The second thing I want to say is that it is impossible for me as a rational, logical, thinking human being who (contrary to what many think as a result of humorous skits I participate in) knows how to think to take these accusations seriously when the only true demonstrations of prejudice weren't even pointed out. In fact, one person that I know was extremely upset with me has the phrase "3d intros are gay, son" in his intro.

What's particularly funny to me is that many, if not all of the people who made a video accusing me of racism quickly changed tunes once I showed up and demonstrated a very basic level of logic. Now they were saying that I was harboring racism by allowing comments. Okay, I'm not racist but I encourage racism by allowing comments?

My response to this is simple as well. I do not control what people say on my channel and I do not disable comments...ever. I just don't. When I posted a video of my family and received threats of raping my 8 year old niece, I didn't disable comments. When I posted videos with a girlfriend and people would insult her, I didn't disable comments. Know why? Because YouTube and stupidity are intertwined and there's no getting around it. If I were to spend my time policing my comments, I wouldn't have time for anything else in my life, including sleep. I could post a video about toasters and someone would find a way to drop the N bomb in the comments. Like my title says, stupid people are stupid.

Furthermore, on these particular men's channels, I see no policing of comments when I'm being called a "racist faggot." That phrase in itself is so blatantly contradictory that I'm not going to insult you by explaining why. With such levels of hypocrisy being demonstrated here, it's impossible to dignify any of their accusations with any degree of serious thought. I can only consider them to be insincere with the smallest amount of investigation, and I refuse to buy into their feeble attempts at a guilt trip.

You guys will not get famous off of me, I'm just going to walk away from this knowing in my heart I have nothing but love and respect for anyone who's experienced humiliation and disrespect throughout their lives. Racism and all forms of hate and prejudice are a poison, a social disease that I am totally powerless to stop.

In the end, those 2 idiots provided me with one of the most entertaining arguments I've ever heard on XBL and it was my joy to share that entertainment with hundreds of thousands of people. Okay, bye.