Comedian
Chris Rock is no stranger to controversy, especially when it comes to
explorations of racism and stereotypes. He sparked a lot of conversation, sending
out this tweet to his followers: "Happy white peoples independence day the
slaves weren't free but I'm sure they enjoyed fireworks."
Some took the remarks as unpatriotic
and fired on Rock and some even went so far as to give the comedian a brief
history lesson. Some saw both the humor and relevance in Rock's joke.
I find this Chris Rock backlash absolutely ridiculous. Really? Someone tells the truth and you mad? I'm American. I never claim otherwise. I never give the "We didn't land on Plymouth rock" speech unless its in a really funny way. But part of being American, to me, is that I have to acknowledge all the bullshit that comes with it. Basically some folks came over, stole other people's land, killed them, then started a country on the backs of my people, while killing them, and then at some point they freed the slaves but then oppressed them and killed them some more. Do I have the ability to do things here that I wouldn't in some parts of the world? Yes. But my family paid the price for that in actual blood, sweat and tears. If more people were like Rock and acknowledged the truth maybe we'd be in a better place as a Nation.
MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry shared her thoughts on Independence Day in a recent show. After calling America's "complicated history", Harris-Perry called the men who founded America "embarrassingly imperfect."
"The land on which they formed this union was stolen," she said. "The hands with which they built this nation were enslaved. The women who birthed the citizens of the nation were second class. But all of this is our story."
Fox
hosts Bill O'Reilly and Gretchen Carlson were critical of the remarks and laid
into Harris-Perry for taking such an approach to discuss the holiday.
"She's not wrong historically," Carlson said. "But you know what
Bill, on the Fourth of July, do you think any American really wants to hear
about the negatives of this country?"
"Well
people who watch that network do," O'Reilly said of MSNBC viewers.
"The far left in America, which is entirely what watches that, they hate
the country. They want to break it down and build back a totally new
America."In a segment titled "Word Police," Harris-Perry reacted to O'Reilly and Carlson's criticism.
"Out
came the word police, with their frankenbite, selective excerpts of what I had
to say," Harris-Perry said of her Independence Day monologue while a
graphic of O'Reilly and Carlson appeared on screen. "Out came their
condemnation of any criticism of the nation so close to the day commemorating
our founding -- a founding based on the very principle of the right to
criticize, oppose, even at times, to revolt. Revolt -- world police -- holster
your weapons, pocket your badges. This is not a revolution being televised.
It's just television. We're just talking, with our words, just as those who
came before us fought and died so that we could."
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