bro, you're reinforcing his point and you don't even realize it.
Not all white dudes with tattoos on their face= uber violent neo-nazi's; just like
Not all black kids wearing a hoodie= violent hoodlums
HOWEVER, we're all susceptible to judging a book by its cover due to survival instincts and self preservation. When they show a "crazy white boy" on TV or in movies doing some reckless shyt, that's typically how they're portrayed. The same with "inner city thugs" on TV and in movies. This creeps into our subconscious as observers and starts to affect how we assess risk in a particular situation. Obviously not everyone who looks that way is one of the dudes from American History X or Omar from The Wire, but it still is a prejudice.
If that same black kid was now wearing a suit and it was broad daylight, would Cuban (or I) still cross the street? Nah. Because our brain doesn't set off that "oh shyt, let me be on alert". So it actually has nothing to do with race as much as it does just subconscious prejudices that we all harbor.
Yeah, but the problem with this is I'm a social ass dude who moves in a variety of circles and I can think of like 3 white dudes I have ever seen with shaved heads and tattoos all over their faces, while I can think of countless "black kids" with hoodies I encounter on a daily basis. So black danger comes in a common package, while white danger takes the shape of a barely existent caricature of evil.
His comment was stupid and troubling for a lot of reasons. It's 2014 and people still have no framework for talking about race and racism. We have no real discourse. People recycle stale talking points that belong to a deeply racist past, and casually stigmatize large swaths of the black population as dangerous while characterizing white danger as so cartoonish it's irrelevant.
We're stepping in the rubble of our economy every single day. The arctic sheet is melting past the point of no return. Scientists With no political affiliations are bein dismissed as leftist propagandists because they are warning us that we've done irrevocable damage to the environment. Drones are delivering death from the skies in foreign countries. Citizens who engage in activism are being bullied out of it by new, unprecedented reinterpretation of the law. The same people who gutted the country faced no repercussions and are right back at the same old game. Large chunks of the population are condemned to a cycle of poverty, incarceration, drug abuse, and sub-standard living conditions before the race even begins for them.
I know what kind of white dude I'd cross the figurative street to avoid, and it ain't the caricature of the jailhouse meth addict with primitive white supremacist leanings.
Overall, my problem with Cuban's analogy is it's uncalled for. No one gives a fukk about his personal philosophy on inherent prejudice. As business-minded as he is, he somehow doesn't get that the issue here isn't whether we can police someone's thoughts? The issue is Sterling, the issue is racism made public - especially when the business you traffic in is predominantly driven by blacks.
If a non-Jewish owner called Jews "the enemy" and compared them to second class citizens and dogs, does anyone really believe Cuban would hedge on whether that person was a suitable owner? Would Cuban look into the face of that brand of hatred and decide to explain his philosophy that some people cross the street to avoid the hooded negro youth and the shaved, tattooed white dude as well as the conniving, greedy Jew because we all live in glass houses?
Cuban needs to shut the fukk up and stop making this about him, and about some philosophical musings about prejudice. It's plain inappropriate. It's like me showing up to a funeral and pointing out to the grieving that I don't share their grief because people die every minute of the day, and no death is more important that another in the grand scheme, as all life is equal at the point of conception, and the universe is so vast that the span of an individual's life it not even a sneeze in the context of time and existence... I would hope someone would tell me to shut the fukk up with the 9th grade deep thoughts and kick me in my fukking ass in that case.
CUBAN COMPARED SOME DUDE IN A HOODIE
for CubanHE ALSO SAID "AND THAT GUY HAS TATTOOS ALL OVER HIS FACE"
lmao you got it, bro
