Transcription
So anyway, this is part two, uh, to the Andre Iguodala, the Andre Iguodala situation. We left off with Max looking scared as hell. I think Max, I think the real reason why Max is scared as hell is 'cause he's scared somebody's going to find a, a video or a clip of him using the so-called n-word back in his day, back when he was a, a hip-hop loving, uh, Caucasian Jew. Go look up when you, when y'all get a chance. Type in the YouTube. Type in "Max Kellerman rap video" so you can see back when he was a rapper back in it, back, back in the early '90s trying to rap. All right, I guarantee you he was using the n-word back then.
But anyway, his part two, I think I'm pretty much hand in hand with you on this conversation. First of all, um, I would start with this. It's not my place, really, to say who should and should not use this word. Agreed. To define when and when it is not appropriate. Um, I, uh, obviously there's a double standard, Max. And, um, I'm with you. I'm okay with that. This isn't a pursuit. No, your body language shows that you're not okay with it, and near the end of the conversation, he's going to show you that he's not really okay with it. Suit of fairness and who can say what? If your point as an adult is, if one person can say it, why can't I? You're intentionally avoiding all of the historical and intellectual baggage and nuance that goes into understanding, as Michael Wilbon said, the context of the usage of the word. But my interest is not really obvious. Facts of life that adults should be able to wrap their heads around. I do think, and this is what you started to get to, Max, when Jaylen and Michael Wilbon say it should be ex, used exclusively among ourselves, meaning the black community. You know, here's the thing. When I come on this show and I have race conversations with you, with you, I come from a position where I am standing on a premise that I know to be right. And I, no, you're standing on a premise that you think to be right. Right? 99.9% of people in America, they stand on racial premises that they are told, not what they know. They, they're going by what they're told. Like I stated previously, uh, the classifications of so-called race in America are based on corporate designations. All right? It's not based on anything real or, or, or substantial. Nothing of substance. Are, are, are racial conversations or racial designations here in America? Everything here is based on the corporate designation. Meaning they just want you to check a box so that they could track who's who. All right? There's no such race as black or white or any other color. A color, a color cannot be a race. I don't even say your color because when you look at so-called black people, they're not black. They're different shades of brown. All right? So if, if Wesley Snipes and Steph Curry stand next to each other, you're going to tell me that there, that they're the, the same race based on color? And neither one of them are black, and neither one of them look anything like the other in regards to their physical appearance or so-called skin color. All right? So your race, the word race means seed. That's what the word race means. It comes from a Latin word, "raza." It means your seed. So the man carries the seed. The man is the person who establishes what race you are. All right? So whatever your father is, is what your race is. That is, that is based off of the linguistic etymology of the word race. Right? It's not based off of any type of, of a belief system. All right? Even though there are legitimate belief systems that will tell you the same thing, just going by the, the literal meaning of the word race, it means seed. All right? In America, they don't want you to really concentrate on your own seed because that goes into to culture. When you come into America, they, in this one confident discussion, you mean you're willing to bluff? My perspective is, it's curious. It's open. I don't know. That's a good start. You don't know. I like that. All right, you don't know. That's a good start. Good admission. I live in New York City. It's a very diverse community. My family and I live in a very diverse part of New York City. A lot of [ __ ] there, huh? When my kids, five and nine years old, get on the subway and hear that word used, almost always in a, um, in a friendly way, not in a pejorative way. I don't know my kids have ever heard it used in the pejorative. They've, no, they've never heard it used in the pejorative way on the train, in public. They've only ever heard it used in the amicable way. Right? But it still makes you cringe, and I still wonder, how do you explain to a five or nine-year-old it's a bad word? He's not using it. You can explain to a five or nine-year-old that it's a bad word. The only thing that you can do is, is explain that it is a word. All right? Just like any other word. When you know, when you sit down and you and you and you're hungry, you say, "I want to eat something." Right? "I want something to eat." Right? When you, when you go to, you get on a basketball court, you get into a competitive environment, you say, "I know I'mma eat today." Right? Those, that's the same word with two different meanings. So what's known as a homonym. There are many of them in the English language. The English language is a very complex language because of the idiosyncrasies of the words. You can have the same word that has multiple meanings. The word [ __ ] is not the only word that has that, uh, type of stipulation. And like I said, like I've stated before, the literal meaning of the word [ __ ], all it means is black. That's all it means. That's a word that has taken on a negative connotation in the mid-1800s. That's when it took on a negative connotation. The word [ __ ], it just means black. You can go back in history and you can see the use of the word [ __ ]. It comes from the Latin word, uh, "niger." But in the Latin, it was pronounced [ __ ]. Right? It's the same word. There are many men in history and in, uh, particularly in Ancient Rome, or there was a Scottish king named, uh, Kenneth Niger. Like I said before, the original Scots were black. You can look him up. Kenneth Niger. He ruled around the time of, and he also was a, uh, one of the ancestors of Macbeth. All right? Macbeth was a historical figure written by Shakespeare. He was a historical man, and one of his ancestors was a king of Scotland named Kenneth Niger because he was black. There was an emperor in Rome named Pinius Niger. P is in Peter, E is in Charlie, S is in Charlie, E is in Charlie, N is in Nancy, I is in Ian, U is in Ulysses, S is in Sam. Niger. He was a great general in Rome and he became a emperor for a short time before he was assassinated. All right? That is a surname that, that is a, uh, that term Niger, that was a descriptive name used for somebody who was black. There's a general, if you, if you, uh, know about Alexander the Great, right? As, as he's called in history, Alexander the Great. He's known for his great four generals. If I remember correctly, uh, Cassander, Lysimachus, and Seleucus. Those are the four generals that he is always, uh, uh, that we're always told were his top four generals. His actual top general was a black man named Cletus or Cus. Melis in the Greek. Right? Melis in the Greek. Melis, where we get the name of the term melanin from. But in the Latin, when they tell the story of Alexander the Great and they mention Cus Melis, they changed the term Melis to Niger. All right? Cus Niger because he was a black man. That's all the term [ __ ] means is black. That's all it means. But now because the word has gone through this transformative stage, now it has a negative meaning. So now you know, certain people cannot use it. That's just life. Like I said before, I'm a so-called black man. I would not go up to an Italian man and say, "a pan." He's going to look at me like I'm trying to mock him. You know why? Because I'm outside of that circle. All right? And I respect that. You know what the other races do when they don't want to include people in their, in their circle? They speak in their native language. See, so-called blacks don't have that. We don't have that ability to speak in our own language. So what we do is we, we know, we make up these colloquialisms. Right? What you call Ebonics. So that a lot of times to the point where people cannot even understand our jargon. All right? Right? That's all it is. It's not that, you know, uh, um, it's not necessarily that we're that, so-called blacks are trying to stop other people from using the word. It's just that the word has gone through a metamorphosis where it has a negative connotation, and now you're no longer allowed to use it. It's not that difficult to figure out, right? There's words like that in every language, amongst every subculture. It's not really that difficult. It's not really that big of a stumbling block. But a lot of times the Caucasian stresses it because they want to use it because they feel like the word has power. It is a bad word. You can't use it. He can use it. When you reduce things sometimes into the eyes of a child, it gets very difficult to explain what seems like something adults should get their heads around. And sometimes a childlike view, I think, is worth looking at something to its core, particularly in family entertainment, which the NBA has marketed as family entertainment. Um, I appreciate both y'all's perspectives. Now he's going to try to jump in and act like an authority figure and, and let's see if he makes a ass of himself as he normally does. Y'all are not wrong about anything that you said. Obviously, when you think about a child, a child shouldn't hear that word. But for every white person, Jewish person, Hispanic, anybody else that hears that word and they point to children, I would ask you to consider the black child that has been called that word, and how does it make them feel? Because when that, that's why it's incumbent upon you to know the actual meaning of the term and be able to explain it. We know that you can't do that. That word is called to them, particularly by somebody outside of their race, it has very iniquitous and insidious connotations attached to it. But let's be real, Stephen A. The majority of the time that a so-called black child hears that word, they're going to hear that from another so-called black person. All right? For the most part. I mean, we're not living in the 1950s anymore. For the most part, when a black child hears that word, [ __ ], and it's even applied to them, it's going to be by another so-called black person. Right? Be real to it. So just imagine how that makes the child feel. This is something that black folks have alluded to for centuries in terms of the residual impact that it has had on our community. You're right. It's not a debate. The, the residual impact. The only residual impact that has been on the so-called black community is a lack of knowledge of self. Right? No culture. You have no culture. You have no economic base. That, that had nothing to do anything. This every race has been called slurs. The difference is they've been allowed to maintain their culture. That's why they've been able to bounce back. And I appreciate you guys being open about that because again, it's about where you're coming from. The perspective that there is to get directly to the point about Sage, Will, Jaylen Rose, those two, those two dudes are my brothers. I love him. I love him dearly. Sage is my sister. I love her dearly. Sage is your sister. I guarantee you she'll get your black ass fired with the quickness. I side with Jaylen and Michael Wilbon and I completely disagree with Sage Steele. And here's where I disagree with her. She talks about the hypocrisy of it all. No, Iguodala has no business using that word while the cameras are rolling. Iguodala has no business using those words when you know the camera is on you and the mess is going to be disseminated to the masses. But what I took from what Sage was saying was that even amongst ourselves, it's not something that should ever be echoed and should ever be used, and we would be hypocritical. Even if we're using it, then of course she's going to say that because like I said, she's the product of a so-called interracial union. So she most likely did not hear that word used as a colloquialism of, of, you know, of any type of amicability in her household. She didn't hear that. So of course she's going to, uh, look at the word as something that should be eliminated because not only, not only is she the product of an interracial union, she's also in an interracial union herself. So she's part of that Rainbow Coalition belief system where, you know, you totally let go of everything and love everybody and let everything slide. That's where her mind is at. So how could you expect, like I said before, the products of those type of unions, they don't know where they stand. So how could you expect her to have any type of firm grasp of the situation? My response, she's thinking about her husband first. Is that you can't compare that a black culture that the word has meant so much in such insidious terms to us, and somehow someway we found a way to deal with it, communicating with ourselves. All right? In a, and let me say this, that term, n, uh, [ __ ], my [ __ ], that has been a term that, that so-called blacks have used amongst each other not for decades, but for thousands of years, going back to the time of the Romans. All right? We've used that term as a term of, of, of brotherhood for, for going back to the time of the Romans. All right? If not before that. That term is not, is not a new term. If you look up the word negative, tell you first used as a, um, you know, sign of, of, of friendship from the 19. But, you know what? We're going to continue on part three. We'll get to part three. Peace. Peace.