AJaRuleStan
All Star
I've thought it over carefully and revisited the song again, and I'm just not sure how that read is being made. I don't see any real difference in the level of contempt being expressed about the other side from each character. The black character demonizes the other side as being devoid of empathy, arrogant, innately evil, and consumed with so much hatred that they're purposely passing down said behaviors and ideas to their children with the intent of corrupting them, I.E the demonic cac label.The white dude was saying "I'm not racist" while actually saying a bunch of racist shyt, offensively. The Black dude was saying "I'm not racist" while saying a bunch of non-confrontational shyt, defensively.
"And all you care about is money and power
And being ugly and that's the cracker within you
Hatred all in your brain, it slowly start to convince you
And then you teach it to your children until the cycle continue"
One could easily argue that the moral condemnation is more harmful than the, they complain too much and take no responsibility stuff because of what one can justify on the grounds of the other party being evil in some intrinsic sense.
But that's secondary, the other reason why I don't see how such a read is being made when it comes to validating a perspective is the line at the end of each verse which illuminates the central idea of the piece, "But there's two sides to every story, I wish that I knew yours". The implication being that the tropes being drawn are incomplete, there is vital information being missed due to a breakdown of communication. Yes, in a sense, both sides are equivalent, but not in its truthiness, morally or logically, but rather in its incompleteness.
In retrospect, Its both of these points that I just made which is leading me to believe that what is really going on here is that preconceived notions people carried before watching the video ran in conflict with how they felt after watching it. On the subject of culture vs white racism, some people -- for whatever reason -- are finding validity in a perspective that they determined as profoundly invalid, and as a way to rationalize said feelings away, they're placing all the blame on Joyner's portrayal of the black character. When in actuality, I think the faults being detected by some isn't in the portrayal of the argument, its with the actual argument itself.