CLICK HERE to watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ayzRdcbsxc
“The apology stems from a Sunday segment of Melissa Harris-Perry, in which several panelists mocked a photo of former presidential candidate Mitt Romney with his adopted African-American grandson, causing a torrent of outrage yesterday.”
Cenk Uygur, Jimmy Dore, Steve Oh & Dave Rubin discuss her comments and apology. Tell us what you think in the comment section below.
Read more: http://www.mediaite.com/tv/melissa-harris-perry-tweets-apology-to-romney-family/
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Comments
Hi I could not help but be offended by your suggestion that Melissa Harris-Perry is not intelligent. She is an extremely intelligent woman and she has appeared in forum discussions with giants in the field of critical gender, sexuality and race theory – for instance the Bell Hooks forum discussion I have provided a link for. I agree with you that she did nothing wrong making a 100% harmless joke about Kanye West’s child being romantically involved with the Romney grandchild and that the comments made by the other comedians on the show could not be construed as racist in any way shape or form – discussing race and racism does not make you a racist. I suppose that one could make the argument that making a public spectacle of their grandchild is tasteless, and they may have drawn on uneasy feelings mixed race family and adoptions crossing racial boundaries to derive some of their humor. I think that most of their humor was motivated by the fact that Mitt “go deport yourself/Polling 0% among African Americans/Boo’d at his NAACP Speech for telling them Obama is buying their votes with free stuff” Romney is basically the embodiment of uptight white-guy ness. However Dr. Harris Perry (yep she has a PhD in political science!) felt that it was possible, even if the Romneys had not said anything publicly, that she could have caused legitimate pain to the family or contributed to tension in their relationship with their grandchild. Because she felt it was more important to live by her principles and issue a genuine and unqualified apology to the family rather than engage in some kind of hyper-masculine pissing contest with right wing journalist does not make her “not that bright;” probably it makes her more bright. She talks about her experience balancing the tension between trying to craft her media persona and living according to her principles and speaking her conscience in the interview with bell hooks I linked to. She made the decision to follow her conscience. I agree with her; An apology – like a hug – costs nothing, and it can often do tremendous good. I think that your commentators uninformed snap-judgement that she is “not that bright” may have been motivated by unconscious or even conscious bias against women speaking their minds publicly.
Dr. Perry and bell hooks –
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OmgqXao1ng