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The Original Rudeboys want nothing to do with Chris Brown

The Original Rudeboys could have opened for Chris Brown in front of 14,000 screaming fans in Dublin’s O2 Arena. But they didn’t, because, well, Chris Brown.

Bandmate Sean Walsh tells Irish TV station RTE, “Even though it’s a huge opportunity to play in the O2 with a major hip-hop star and a substantial fee was offered, we are completely against Chris Brown’s assault on Rihanna.

“In addition, with our latest single Blue Eyes being about domestic violence, it goes against everything we are about as a band and supporting Chris Brown would send out the wrong message to our fans.”

In other Chris Brown news, he dressed up for Halloween.


23 thoughts on The Original Rudeboys want nothing to do with Chris Brown

    1. The whole “prejudice + power” thing doesn’t work for you?

      I ask not snarkily or with an answer in mind, but because I’ve vacillated back and forth on that question myself for a long time.

      Incidentally, it seems to me that due to the international nature of the Internet, such a formulation makes calling a blog post (for example) racist basically impossible unless you can trace the IP address of the person who posted and figure out what country they’re living in (ethnic Japanese person posting from Japan- can be racist! posting from UK- can’t be racist!) and so on.

      1. I ask not snarkily or with an answer in mind, but because I’ve vacillated back and forth on that question myself for a long time.

        I have always found the power + prejudice definition pointless when discussing racism on the individual level. It just makes for clumsy language to call someone for example “racially prejudiced” instead of “racist”, and it really does not add any value as far as I can see.

        When it comes to institutional racism and group privilege, differentiating between the more and less privileged groups makes more sense. However, even then racial prejudices on the part of the less privileged group is also often relevant to the analysis so we would need to invent alternative terminology to discuss that.

        Personally, I do not normally use the sociological definition, but depending on context I will try to adapt my language for clearer communication.

      2. They’re not necessarily inconsistent with each other. Chris Brown doesn’t individually need to be white in order for his actions to reiterate and draw upon the broader social values of white supremacy, and it’s those broader social values that give racist actions power rather than his race on an personal level.

        1. Like, didn’t we cover this with the whole “women can use sexism against other women for strategic gain but they cannot be sexist towards men as a class because men as a class don’t have a gendered vulnerability to exercises of power” thing?

      3. It’s reductive bullshit, IMO. Better than simply “prejudice”, but better isn’t good. Or, at the very least, it (perhaps willfully) ignores lateral racism between similarly oppressed communities, as well as the ways in which other axes of oppression are leveraged by racist non-whites against other races.

        And even where the framework of white supremacy isn’t the primary one (India, Sri Lanka, Japan, China, Malaysia, Uganda, the Middle East, I’m looking at you) there’s plenty enough racist narratives to go aroundbased on other factors like hue, culture, language and region.

        So why the insistence on “POC can’t be racist”? a) because it’s simpler to blame the white guys half a world away than to look at your own asshattery, and b) because nobody wants to acknowledge that oppression happened before and after European colonialism. It borrowed heavily in many cases from European frameworks, but that’s hardly the same thing, hm? With a possible c) of “Immigrants can’t be racist because… because I can’t wrap my head around complexity, okie?”

        (Because anybody who tells me the Indian immigrant community in North America isn’t racist towards Black people and ethnic Chinese is talking out of their ass and I will slap them even sillier if they do. And I don’t imagine it’s THAT different for other communities either.)

        1. ? a) because it’s simpler to blame the white guys half a world away than to look at your own asshattery

          …which isn’t to say that in many, many, many cases colonialist structures aren’t what sparked off racist narratives, but to simply remove even the possibility of a non-white being racist because WHITE PEOPLE EVERYWHERE is a bit…uh. Witness-protesting-too-much-y for me.

        2. No problem, amblingalong. I’m really grateful you asked, rather than assuming the worst; it’s something people have a tendency to do here and everywhere and I’m well aware that the one-sentence distillation of my thought on this looks problematic.

        3. (Because anybody who tells me the Indian immigrant community in North America isn’t racist towards Black people and ethnic Chinese is talking out of their ass and I will slap them even sillier if they do. And I don’t imagine it’s THAT different for other communities either.)

          Indeed. I’ve also noticed that the Arab immigrant community in North America is very racist towards Indians and ethnic Chinese. Unfortunately, if I tell my Moroccan step-mom that she’s being a racist asshole when she LAMENTS the fact that there are a lot of Indian immigrants where we live, she’ll probably just pretend that she’s not racist and then yell at me. And then the next day she’ll talk about how “Indians used to be the slaves of the Arabs.”

          On a related note: apparently my dad (who is Indian) holds strong anti-black racism – at least enough to tell a black woman to “go back to Africa” in a fit of rage. (Unsurprisingly, his own dad thinks that black people are “uncivilized”.) I just hope that he’s at least not a hypocritical asshole as well. Also: I seriously wish I was in the car with him so that I could yell at him.

          (Granted, it’s been a while since I’ve heard racism from them, but I don’t think that racist attitudes disappear so easily.)

        4. “Indians used to be the slaves of the Arabs.”

          Is that meant to be referencing the Mughals? Obviously I don’t have anywhere near the understanding of Indian history as mac, but off the top of my head I can’t think of anything else that might come close.
          And the Mughals weren’t Arabs in any case.

        5. And the Mughals weren’t Arabs in any case.

          That was pretty much my thought on it, yeah. West Asians (they were from Iran), not Middle Easterners. WTF is about my reaction.

          But then, Iranians should be used to having their accomplishments (even the rather dubious ones) hijacked by this point. I guess they lost the Mughals when they did their sea access.

      4. Personally, I think we have the term “institutional racism” for a very good reason. We also have the broader term “racism” for a very good reason. Trying to redefine that latter as the former pisses me off because it gives us one fewer word to describe a complicated issue. Also, it’s dumb, but somehow that’s a less convincing argument.

        It’s also why I hate the section of feminism that wants to redefine sexism as institutional sexism. Qualifiers are useful, hijacking nouns isn’t.

  1. Chris Brown gives me a massive headache. And can we talk for a second about the complicated and messed-up-ed-ness of the general enabling of his behavior by his mom, his friends, and the media in general? I was taught not to feed into a child’s tantrum, and yet…here we are…

    1. I read about this and it doesn’t sit well with me. Not out of any desire to see Chris Brown receive any less than the ultimate shunning and mocking and making into a complete and total pariah, because believe me, I DO.

      However, I feel it’s kind of exploitative to have Rhianna’s bashed-in face plastered on billboards, since given their current circumstances, I highly doubt she’s given permission for her image, especially a photo taken at such a vulnerable moment, to be used in this way.

      Point out that the guy is an abuser, oh hell yes.. Shout it from the frickin’ rooftops. Blow-horn that shit. Don’t let anybody forget that he beat the shit out of his girlfriend with an umbrella. Repeat it until your throat is sore and/or your hands hurt from writing it.

      But using a victims photo who is still around to see and may not approve of its use.. well, it reeks of exploitation.

      1. Not out of any desire to see Chris Brown receive any less than the ultimate shunning and mocking and making into a complete and total pariah, because believe me, I DO. (want to see that, that is. I can’t not make sentences good.)

      2. Agreed. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth as well. Perhaps a better choice would have been a domestic violence hotline.

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