My God. You're... you're all.... absolutely right. How dare black people satirize each other? How dare white folks laugh right alongside them? I'm going to burn all my Chris Rock CDs, like, yesterday.
*Uncontrollable sobbing*
*Sniff... sniff...*
Now.... what I find totally fascinating is that not one person (excepting Cutout) has thought about this for longer than two minutes, and have simply let predictable left-liberal reflexive rage dictate their response. Even in the case of Cutout's not-entirely-helpful link to a subscriber-only academic paper, you have a calm, reasoned appeal to PC conventional wisdom.
[Heads up to Cutout: I read Leavitt's Freakonomics, and I have been keeping tabs on the Freakonomics blog at the NYT, and I've noticed that the debate about names is not entirely dead over there, either. To wit:
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/25/are-distinctively-african-american-names-a-thing-of-the-past/.... and related topic:
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/07/how-much-does-it-cost-you-in-wages-if-you-sound-black/I would also check out John McWhorter's scholarship. He gets into related matters in his books "Losing The Race" and "Winning The Race," which are not about the naming issue per se as they are attempting to diagnose and perhaps cure larger social ills. I don't always agree with him, but he's smarter than me, and it's food for thought.]
So! There's more than one kind of socio-political orthodoxy at work here, and it's pretty clear where most of the FOT populace tends to sit, if they sit anywhere at all.
I am saying this as someone who has embodied every left-liberal-radical cliché ever and recovered. I've browbeaten myself for being the Eurocentric phallocentric oppressor, tried veganism, marched in militant gay pride rallies, fellated and buggered men, eaten out of dumpsters (but only upscale dumpsters), chopped veg and swept floors at a goddamn "anarchist" Temporary Autonomous Zone, slept among homeless in the park, first (girl) love was from Sri Lanka, subscribed to every commie pinko rag in existence, speak one Euro language with fluency and am literate in a few others, went to an insane asylum for a while, volunteered with and donated to lots of bleeding-heart causes, card-carrying Amnesty Int'l./ACLU/former AFL-CIO, went to friggin' Ani DiFranco shows with a bunch of lesbians, and, uh, dropped a ridiculous amount of cash to ensure the global supremacy and longevity of hippie-noise station WFMU, because like any good full-of-shit liberal-leftist, I have inherited some money. Oh, and I voted for Obama in the primaries and the general election, and helped vote him into office as a senator. (I could go on, by the way. I am the cliché incarnate.)
So, I'm just saying, I've paid my dues as a liberal batshit lunatic.
AND YET.
I haven't drunk all of that particular batch of magic Kool-Aid.
I retain the right to a moderately conservative opinion regarding the phenomenon of people disrespecting their children with ridiculous names. It is a trend that does not bode well for us, I fear. I am not alone in that regard.
On the other hand, I fancy myself a pragmatist, so I am fully prepared to take that road, but only on the condition that we become much more creative and wacky and even, ugh, ironic, about the whole business.
