On Wednesday, several TV personalities tried to argue that rap music is directly responsible for the racist chant sung by the University of Oklahoma's SAE fraternity. The video of the brothers singing the offensive verses surfaced Sunday and since then, the fraternity has been shut down and two students identified as leading the song have been expelled.
Rush Limbaugh tried to argue that the public's reaction would be much different if Kanye West used the same lyrics — which were filled with racial slurs and referenced lynching — in a rap song.
"If the had been a song by Kim Kardashian's husband, and they had sung this song at the Grammys...it'd be a hit," Limbaugh said. After a colleague disagreed, Limbaugh proceeded: "I'm telling you this stuff gets awards and the people who sing it are portrayed as American royalty in terms of celebrity. You can't deny that."
MSNBC's Morning Joe hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough were on the same wavelength when they claimed that rappers are to blame for the SAE's racist chants, and tried to say that rapper Waka Flocka Flame doesn't have a right to be disgusted with the video.
"If you look at every song, I guess you call these, that he's written, it's bunch of garbage," Brzezinski said. "It's full of N-words, it's full of F-words. It's wrong. And, he shouldn't be disgusted with them, he should be disgusted with himself."
"The kids that are buying hip-hop or gangster rap, it's a white audience, and they hear this over and over again," Scarborough added. "So, do they hear this at home? Well, chances are good, no, they heard a lot of this from guys like this who are now acting shocked."
The idea that idea that rap music is to blame for such despicable actions is preposterous. After all, as Jon Stewart pointed out, the "N-words" that Brzezinski spoke of, the word the SAE brothers felt more than comfortable shouting in unison, came way before rap.
Brzezinski later clarified her comments saying, "The students in the video are responsible for their behavior. And, as we said this morning, they did it, and it's beyond appealing. In no way is anybody else to blame for what they did on that bus. They are responsible and they had a choice."
Racism isn't a joke. There's nothing amusing, appropriate or valid about Limbaugh's comments. The chant wasn't funny or acceptable when the SAE brothers sang it, and still wouldn't be if Kanye performed it on stage. We've got a long way to go. Like President Obama said at his monumental speech last weekend in Selma, "The march isn't over yet."
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