Look Not For Me

thenoobyorker:

itsmesherese:

Mos Def, Salman Rushdie, Hitchens

This video in it’s entirety angers me because it is the perfect example of what black and brown folks go through with white faces. Instead of having an intelligent debate with Mos Def, Hitchens begins to attack his intelligence and cast him off as “ignorant” or “not knowing”. Mos def immediately becomes invalid to Hitchens and does not attempt to respect his opinion and respect him as a person. 

If you’ve ever been in a college class and you were the brown or black face in the see of many white faces, you’ve experienced this tactic and you understand how Mos Def feels. 

Dear god. (emphasis mine)

lol the only ignorance on display here is coming from whoever tried to frame it this way. There’s absolutely no reason to think that the color of Mos’ skin had anything to do with the way this went down. “Humans with pale skin disagreed with someone with brown skin, therefore, they must be dismissing him based on his race.” Have you actually seen any of these people speak before? I’m not going to defend Bill Maher because he’s a greasy blowhard, but Hitchens treated everyone he debated that way, and WOOPS Salman Rushdie is fucking Indian.

The only thing that did make me wince, was the manner in which Bill Maher told Mos to hush and let Salman finish his point. That was ugly. It was like he was telling a child to be quiet and let the grown-ups talk. The way he handles race always makes me uncomfortable— it’s one of the reasons that it’s hard for me to watch his show.

Mos is my dude, and I like a lot of what he was saying, but you can’t just ignore the caveat that only one group is trying to obtain these weapons with the specific goal of detonating them.