Kirsten West-Savali: Gwyneth Paltrow and the Black Folks Who Cried Wolf

Kirsten West-Savali of Clutch Magazine spoke to the recent incident during which actress Gwyneth Paltrow took a picture with some black performers and tweeted “n****s in Paris for real.”  West-Savali says that the easy use of the term in the black community can hardly leave one to fault Paltrow, and she notices that Kanye West and Jay-Z have not jumped out in her defense, as have The Dream and Russell Simmons:

 

While hanging out with two self-proclaimed “n****s in Paris,” the A-List actress — who for some reason can often be found shaking what her mama gave her somewhere in the vicinity of Jay-Z – decided to tweet that she was with “Ni**as in Paris for real.”

And the Civil Rights police turned on their loud sirens and went to work.

If you’ll notice by that first sentence, there’s a lot of “n***a” throwing going on, yet there was no outcry until the white woman said it. One has to question why exactly it’s perfectly acceptable for two, adult black men (Jay-Z and Kanye West) to make a song about a couple of “n****s” ballin’ in the City of Lights, but when their white friend tweets the name of the song, she’s all of a sudden racist.

It’s this kind of backwards thinking that always amazes me. Many in our communities have co-opted a word created specifically by white Americans to degrade black Americans; yet when we say it it’s supposed to be an inclusive thing. It’s the unofficial logo on the “Black card,” accepted anywhere that you can find a group of “n****s.”

READ MORE

Comments

comments

Powered by Facebook Comments