Adrianne Curry boycotts BET and Black History Month

56 thoughts on Adrianne Curry boycotts BET and Black History Month

1. I knew there was a reason that I don’t MySpace despite all the invitations.

2. It never ceases to amaze me that white people can say crap like this and be completely serious. The black community is being racist because there’s a television channel geared toward their interests? I guess I’m a bigot too cause I like to shop from home and there’s not just one, but TWO channels aimed directly at me.

   Seriously though, am I the only one to notice that such people never recommend that one or more of the other eleven months be set aside for the other subgroups they suddenly care so much about? I can’t say that I’ve ever heard a white person complain about the lack of material on other non-white cultures outside of this context.

3. I think you should punish her by unsubscribing to her myspace blog and leaving a strongly worded message with appropriate emoticons in her inbox. Might I suggest the Mr. Yuk face that used to adorn bottles containing hazardous chemicals? Or an animated farting .gif?

   As for my dream channel comprised of all-white programming, I imagine that it would have to have lots of made-for-TV movies about suburban struggles and prominently feature former cast members of Family Ties. And I shall call it: Whitetime. No, wait: Lifetime.

4. Anytime you have to use the phrase, “Think I am racist?”, you have already answered the question.

5. What a tool! Who the hell is Adiranne Curry? It’s times like this I really enjoy being an old fart who’s out of the pop culture loop!

6. So she isn’t aware that there’s a Native American History Month, an Asian/Pacific Islander Month, a Hispanic Heritage Month, etc.? My absolute favorite, however, is that we need American History Month. Honey, we call that SCHOOL. I’ve spent years of my life in the study of American History and it’s hardly enough to scratch the surface, so I doubt there’s any help for this young woman.

   She apparently does not get Univision, either…. Sometimes, the stupid just burns.

7. You guys, she is so obvs not racist. She liked a black boy once!

8. yet another celebrity who deserves to be placed in an internment camp,

9. lol, I love this argument … I mean, it’s SO been refuted so many times, and is incredibly easy to do … yet time and time again, this pops up.

   It’s a sign of three possible things. Either the person is ignorant, a moron, or a bigot. Or some combination.

   Though I do love the touch of adding in a variation on the “some of my best friends are X!” cliché as a refutation for, very correct, accusations of racism.

   Someone hasn’t been eating their Wheaties.

10. Me too, Rose…

    WOW. Clearly not a combination of beauty and brains, is she?? What a maroon…

11. Clearly racism in America ended w/ the abolishion of slavery. So just get over it already! :rolls eyes:

    There ARE channels for white people; they’re called ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, C-SPAN, CMT…

    And white people have their own months too! It’s called everything other than February, when we can sweep the accomplishments of blacks under the rug and get back to celebrating Chris Columbus.

12. ::shaking head::

    “…” (speechless)

    ::shaking head again::

    What do you say to that kind of ignorance? That kind of privilege? That kind of complete and utter cluelessness? Nope. Racism doesn’t hurt white folks at all. It doesn’t make us so much dumber than we otherwise would be. Nope. Not a bit.

13. We have to wait for the aliens to realize we are all one….

14. I already posted this at feministing, but I thought I might as well bring it over here:
    This debate, color-blind versus social justice, is a very real debate that goes on even in the Supreme Court affirmative action cases.

    Color-blind people believe that the best way to deal with racism is to have no special programs be based on race, in other words, to be color blind. They believe that the playing field is level and we should just go on from this point treating everyone as equal.

    Social justice people do not believe that the playing field is level at this point and believe in special programs based on race as a means to “level the field.”

    (These are simplifications.)

    I am a social justice person, but I agree with Jen at Feministing that the attitude expressed this person shouldn’t be minimized as just “dumb.” If we (social justice people) see the color-blind side of the debate as dumb, I think we ignore the fact that there are people in power who share these views, even intelligent people. I think the only way to defeat these views is to understand the intellectual arguments that are fueling these ideas and then engage with those intellectual arguments.

15. I don’t see how it’s an intellectual argument. Such a thing would proceed from observed facts. This model comes across horribly because she doesn’t seem to be at all aware that the playing field is not level. The default race is white. The default gender is male.

    Just yesterday I was in the drug store, and I couldn’t help but notice that every single face in the hair dye aisle was white, except for a little column of black faces off to one side. It reminded me of one of the most powerful moments in an African funeral service that took place in my (normally lily-white) church, where the pastor told everyone to look around. There are black faces everywhere! We are a majority now, not a minority! That matters. Nobody wants to be marginalized.

    Once the “color-blind people” are willing to acknowledge the base-line fact that society is nowhere near color blind, I’m willing to listen to them.

16. secondhandsally –

    I can see your argument, and to a certain extent I do agree, that we shouldn’t just dismiss arguments that we disagree with.

    However, I honestly don’t see this as merely a difference of opinion, of argument. Arguments like this ARE stupid, and do not reflect reality whatsoever. If an intelligent person were to believe such, then I’d have to assume either ignorance or bigotry, because reality does not hold up this argument in the slightest.

    Further, such arguments aren’t just a matter of being stupid. They actually CONTRIBUTE to prolonging the racist system around us, by refusing to see it. It’s a position that actually reinforces a horrible status-quo.

    I think we can respect people, without respecting the arguments or beliefs that they hold that are nuts.

17. I agree that this (the color blind one) argument is stupid. What I’m saying is that there are people on the Supreme Court who have made essentially the same argument in affirmative action cases. So yeah, with that random person on the street saying these things we can just shrug our shoulders and say, that person is stupid. But when it’s a Supreme Court Justice, we better sit up and take notice, because “that’s just a stupid argument” isn’t going to fly as a dissent that can be taken up by later Supreme Courts as their opinion.

    I think that part of refuting this argument is pointing to the evidence that makes it clear that we are definitely not playing on a level field.

    I don’t think we should respect these arguments. But I think treating them as totally illegitimate (although I think they are) at this point, is a very dangerous tactic.

18. Well, at least she’s right about one thing– slavery did, in fact, suck some major balls (and in a bad way). The feudal system blew goats, too.

    Sorry, couldn’t help it.

19. Pingback: Links to share… « Words From The Center, Words From The Edge

20. so was that Chanel No. 5 that was recently dedicated to the – sorry, checking my notes here – “black race”? [wording seems awkward] they must be overjoyed. does it say so right on the front of the bottle?

21. What I find really odd (beyond the obvious) are all the calls to “move on” and “get over it.” Excuse me, what? Unity is a pretty dubious quality anyway, but why should unity mean erasing the experience of others, though it may include trauma, horror and death? Why should we ever forget difference? That’s no history at all.

    But then again, what do I know? Her “hubby is a Jew,” after all. She obviously knows whereof she speaks.

22. Just yesterday I was in the drug store, and I couldn’t help but notice that every single face in the hair dye aisle was white, except for a little column of black faces off to one side.

    Well, that’s actually because the textures of “black” hair and “white” hair are significantly different. I’ve had friends do significant damage to their hair – as in, frizzing, sizzling, and breaking off – by picking up the wrong box of color at the drugstore. But I do see where you’re coming from; even L’Oreal’s 24 “True Match” shades pretty much range from “whitey white whitey” to “olive” with only the barest nod to “hey, you’re, like, really tan.”

    You guys, she is so obvs not racist. She liked a black boy once!

    Actually, the first time I read through it, I thought, “She knows what racism is! She dated a guy named Justin!”

23. Ok, this hits home for me because I thought this way for most of my life. Granted I’m still youngish, so I guess there’s hope for me yet. For a long time I resented all the special “black people” stuff. Special months, special classes.. it seemed we spent more time on black history than on american history in my education. (and I had the same gripe about there being only one month for one race until someone informed me that there were others for other races. But it strikes me that they are so little known comparitively) I know Eli Whitney, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, etc better than the guy who killed Montezuma and his people… starts with a C I think… maybe… wasn’t he spanish, anybody remember his first name? Anyways. I know the mindset this woman is coming from. It is ignorance but I’ll bet she’s heard all about race and the differences between whites and blacks and all that stuff so much that she’s just sick of it. (I’ll bet she grew up in the south too) Like when Princess Di was killed and people would talk about nothing else… anybody else remember anything historically signifcant happening around that time? Me either.

    She’s probably just sick of the compensating for race inequality, because to her (what with her privlege and all) it probably feels like overcompensating for white guilt. (And really, who wants that guilt hanging over their shoulders all the time) She’s just ignorant of the realities of the inequality that still exists.

    There ARE channels for white people; they’re called ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, C-SPAN, CMT…

    That’s sucks, I hate the news. I don’t mind BET, because I also don’t mind Lifetime or Oxygen or Spike and whatever that other “guys” tv channel is. I’d be thrilled if there was an “anime” channel but I’ll settle for Cartoon Network. That reminds me, there are channels specifically for CHILDREN! OMG what’s wrong with the world?! And there’s even a channel for NERDS/GEEKS/DORKS (Sci-fi channel anyone?)! OMG! Oh and lets not forget Telemundo! A channel specifically for hispanics.. I think I feel faint… /sarcasm

    There are black faces everywhere! We are a majority now, not a minority!

    I used to think that too. I’d look around where I lived, and at my school and seemed outnumbered by minorities, hell I used to laugh and say “minorities my ass” every time it was mentioned. But then I saw the map of the 2000 census by race and that’s when it hit me. OMG, they really ARE a minority. It’s just that I grew up in the south, which is where the majority of blacks in the US live, so my perception was skewed. I mean, I’m white, I grew up in the south and had the race thing shoved down my throat since grade 1. So as I grew up I just got sick of hearing it.

    I guess what I’m saying is. I always knew that women were oppressed because I felt it. It affected me. But I’m not black and while being poor put me right in the midst, it still didn’t give me the insight to see what was going on. To see how it was different for others than it was for me. We all seemed the same and I resented being made to feel like an outcast or a villian by the majority around me just because of the color of *my* skin. I never sunk as far as to hating an entire group of people based on their race, but I sure as hell resented that racism existed. I’d think to myself, Cats don’t care what color they are, why the hell should we? (another reason why cats should rule the world IMO)

24. I recall making this argument when I was 12, before I ever took a sociology class and before the concept of institutional racism ever sunk in. Looking back, had someone punched me in the back of the head when I said that, they would have been completely justified. As a matter of fact, I wish someone had.

25. Wait till she finds out there are channels on her TV that aren’t even in English, even if she pressed her SAP button.

    Black History Month seems more like tokenism than anything else. I mean, why pick the shortest month to commemorate black achievement?

26. Yeah, I was down with the “colour-blind” thing when I was a teenager; but I lived in the whitest, whitest suburb ever, there were seriously 4 black kids in my high school and no one treated them differently so it never occurred to me that racism was a real problem. (We don’t really do black history month in Canada.)

    Then I grew up.

27. Just a minor comment about the idiocy of the rant that is the subject of this post:

    This person should ask her hubby for a little bit of clarification. The pyramids were built long before the Hebrews were slaves in Egypt (before the time of Abraham, in fact). The Bible is clear on this — the Hebrew slaves built two royal cities. Not the pyramids.

    I don’t think those cities survive. So alas, I don’t think we Jews get to be compensated for our efforts 😉

28. Again, if we continue to define combating racism in this country as something white people do for “the Other”, it is doomed to failure. Until whites recognize that racism is a cancer (or a virus, pick whichever floats your boat) running through our* lives, twisting our souls, it will receive nothing more than token attention until the news cycle changes. It will get the “that’s too bad” treatment, and then everything will go back to being “normal” which is dysfunctional.

    POC have 400 yrs of history and experience living around this elephant in the living room, and it is similar to living with a violent alcoholic. They know how. They don’t need our liberal white asses coming to “fix this” for them, between lunch and clubbing this evening. How insulting is that?

    No, what needs to happen is for the white community to recognize that it isn’t to save the others. It is to save ourselves. POC have been saving us from the most dire results of our dysfunction for decades (David Duke for Governor, anyone?). We have given up too much to be “white”–our cultures, our intellectual honesty, our wealth, our resources, our Constitution. We’ve learned how to live in deep denial about ourselves and our country and that is so not a good thing to learn how to do. It lead to the questions after 9/11, “Why do they hate us?” Well, duh. If we didn’t live in such utter denial of all that is reality, we would know why. It very much lead to the invasion of Iraq. White males overwhelmingly said yes to the question “Even if it meant the deaths of 10,000 Iraqi civilians, would you still support the invasion?” White females were split 50/50. POC overwhelmingly said no. It has lead to the Republican victories for the last 20 yrs. All they have to do is push the race buttons and whites are running in droves to the booths to vote for them and I’m not talking about the KKK members here. I’m talking about the more dangerous kind: the kind who start sentences with the phrase, “I’m not racist but…” ; the kind who would never tell a racist joke with a POC in the room but won’t say a thing when ‘white bonding’ takes place in front of them; the kind who says, “If blacks would just [insert white, middle class value here], then they would be successful too.”

    Until we recognize that racism is about us, not about them, we are contributing to our own moral decay.

    *Our=white, as I am one.

29. A lot of this is coming from her husband. Not that that excuses it. It just shows that idiots love company, or something.

30. Rhiannon:

    Funny thing, I think she is from the south. checking now…

    Oops. She’s not. But she’s from Joliet, Illinois.

    I have a friend from rural Illinois (i.e. not chicago area; hell, she was even about an hour away from the Chambana area) and if she wanted to talk about all the OVERT racism she’s seen and heard in her 18 years living there, she’d have to hold a day long seminar at least. To talk about all the subtle, covert racism, she’d have to hold a retreat to discuss it.

    She’s happier in Boston right now, to be sure.

31. What I was going to say before I zoned out, though, was that when you’re from a place like that and you want to NOT be racist, I think your natural reaction is to ‘be colourblind’ because it seems fair, and what your parents, relatives, neighbors, friends, etc are doing is definitely POINTING OUT and NOTICING race… so obviously, the alternative would be to think that race doesn’t influence anything at all. It’s flawed, but I do think it’s a natural reaction to being in an especially intolerant area…

    I hope that made sense?

32. i am so ashamed that this woman is from my area. so ashamed. and the kick of it is, she should really kno better coming from a suburb that is pretty well balanced racially between mostly blacks, whites, and latina/os, its not like shes from some rich ass lily white town where you never even see people of color, and as someone calmly explained to me when i tried to compare the hatred of jews in this country to systematic racism against POC, yeah, all of these groups face hatred and opression, but your average jewish person is not so much going to be pulled over for driving while brown/black or followed around stores or dismissed as unimportrant or ignorant in classes and workplaces based on appearance alone.

33. Cleary she has no understanding of racism. That is truly disturbing.

34. Ironically, there is an ongoing campaign against BET by some in the black community because of the negative stereotypes the station promotes. Protests have been held at the home of BET’s programming director Debra Lee and things are escalating. (see links to What About Our Daughters below). So, Ms. Curry can complain about BET all day long. Many blacks do not consider that a station that represents us fairly and accurately.

    http://whataboutourdaughters.blogspot.com/2007/09/protest-in-front-of-bet-ceo-debra-lees.html

    http://whataboutourdaughters.blogspot.com/2007/09/more-video-from-enough-is-enough-ralley.html

35. For the record, Joliet is a suburb of Chicago, maybe an hour or two away, but absolutely not a farm town. Its most famous for the casino(s).

36. […}”The sheer amount of clueless racism here makes it, I think, an excellent teaching device for those who might not be quite so ‘challenged’ but who still might be pretty darn clueless about racial issues, racism, institutionalized racism and the fallacy of ‘colorblindness’.”[…]

37. Oh yeah, sure, there’s no racism any more

    Wonder what she thinks of LOGO (the gay channel)?

38. I laugh to keep from crying because I know how many people believe/feel as Curry does.

    How do you answer things like “It’s 2007. You’re not being oppressed by the man anymore. Stop whining and assert your equality instead of whining about it.”

39. jenlovesponies:

    sorry, i was just going off the description a friend of mine gave me. she told me that joliet is a chicago suburb and it’s not like farm country, but that certain parts of it can become more rural, like when you’re approaching the boundaries of the city?

    sorry i fucked up! 🙁

40. How do you answer things like “It’s 2007. You’re not being oppressed by the man anymore. Stop whining and assert your equality instead of whining about it.”

    ‘if you’re saying shit like that, then yes, in 2007, we are being oppressed by the man.’

    it doesn’t even make sense when they say shit like that. don’t they know that part of racism is thinking that you know what’s best for people of another race, and that you are the True Unbiased Opinion because you aren’t in that race, so OBVIOUSLY you wouldn’t have all that victim-y shit blurring your perceptions?

    did people seriously miss that that’s racist?

41. oh. jenlovesponies:

    for some reason, i thought i had noted in my original comment that Joliet was a suburb. but i didn’t cause i zoned out while writing my comment. so, yeah, i look dumb now, lmao…

42. Speaking for my as a Native American, I find it (perhaps inordinately) offensive when people talk about our history with American Imperialism and what we deserve. The hell do they know, anyway?

    Every group has the right to decide how to celebrate their common culture and heritage and that right is exclusive to them.

    Also, it’s good to know she’s gotten her life lessons from cheesy Will Smith vehicles.

43. achem, for myself*

44. unfortunately people, this is how the average (even liberal) american thinks. try to recall about how many times even all of us enlightened folks have heard the phrase “I don’t see race” uttered by one of our friends. It has nothing to do with intelligence or education, it has to do with WHITE PRIVILEGE PEOPLE! If you are white, you have the privilege to not see race. period.

    I’m a black college student and people say shit like this to me all the time. Even supposedly educated college professors. It has nothing to do with being dumb, its about being WHITE and not noticing privilege. I actually give Adrianne Curry a C+ for actually thinking about race more than most white people ever do in their lifetime. There are those who deny that race even exists at all…

45. I think Curry is ON to something, though. It is NOT FAIR that ONE group gets to have their OWN MONTH. In fact, if she hasn’t thought of this ALREADY, we should separate ALL RACES into twelve groups color coded by SKIN color and they should all have their own month to celebrate by SHADE, starting with albinos in January and ending with “Alex” Wek dark chocolate in December. That way everyone GETS A CHANCE to have the fun times, regardless of their skin tone or their ball-sucking past.

    I’m also SO GLAD that BET is like her favorite CHANEL. Smells good, at least.

46. Thanks to the spread of urban sprawl, Joliet is now a suburb of Chicago. But until ten years ago, it was surrounded by cornfields in all directions. Before the casino, Joliet was most famous for the state penitentiary (seen in the Blues Brothers), and for having the nation’s first public community college (Joliet Junior College.)

47. “I don’t see race” uttered by one of our friends.

    Your friend is proud of not being a racist. Now, I grew up surrounded by white people who did see race: My dad, reading the paper: “Well it looks like the spooks are moving in across Western Avenue.” “You mean, Casper, Dad?” I asked, all excited. My lifelong Democrat grandfather who vowed to get a shotgun and sit on the porch if black kids were bused to the school down the block. My aunt, who once told me that Chinese people didn’t bathe. So yeah, your friends are just dripping with white privilege. But to me it represents progress.

    (Not to mention my grandmother, watching The Sound of Music at Christmas time, telling me, “You know, Hitler did a lot of good, too.”)

48. A minor point in a jaw-droppingly oblivious post:

    “Do we hear the Jews crying that they were made slaves for thousands of years?”
    What, she and her hubby never celebrated Passover?

    “Do we hear them bitch and moan about Hitler, etc?”
    Ditto, never been to a Holocaust museum?

49. Your friend is proud of not being a racist.

    Err, not they aren’t. They’re trying to pretend that racism doesn’t exist, and more importantly, as a while person, that they don’t contribute to the maintenance of said racist system.

    If you’re white in a social system that privileges whiteness, then by definition you’re racist. All you can do is try to mitigate and minimise as much as possible how much racism you’re contributing to.

    And a start is to acknowledge that racism exists, is a system, and that as whites we play a part in it.

50. I admit to being privileged, but if I’m declared to be racist just for being white, then I can never escape my racism because I will always be white. Racism becomes a thought crime without even the necessity of a thought. At that point, being called racist means nothing. Some similar crimes:
    If you’re good-looking in a social system that privileges looks, then by definition you’re facist.
    If you’re smart in a social system that privileges intelligence, then by definition you’re brainist.
    If you’re thin in a social system that privileges thinness, then by definition you’re weightist.

51. I don’t think anyone’s saying “white=racist”
    To think so would be highly prejudiced in itself.

52. A lot of this is coming from her husband

    Damn, Peter Brady is a racist????

    Hector, if somebody calls you a racist, it wouldn’t be because you’re white, it would be because you said or did something that displayed your white privilege. You can’t help having white privilege, but you can help whether or not you acknowledge it and try to minimize it, and whether or not you dismiss any discussion with ‘racism, blagh blagh blagh, thought crimes, thoughtless, meaningless, just like how smart people “discriminate” against the less intelligent, PC, so sick of this everybody’s a racist I can’t win” etc.

53. She’s smart but uneducated. This is what happens in a culture where looks matter more than brains.

54. Do we hear them whine that they should OWN the pyramids in Egypt because THEY broke their backs making them?

    While you’re boycotting BET, check out the History channel sometime, and learn.

55. Peter Brady is Jewish?

56. I hope one day aliens land and try to kill us.

    That was amazing.

    Oh Adrienne Curry, STOP TALKING! Wasn’t My Fair Brady enough?

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