are you serious?


X-Sender: mdcb@well.com
Mime-Version: 1.0
Date: Thu, 9 May 1996 13:46:08 -0500
To: sttaylor@mechanon.com (S. Taylor)
From: mbowen@metrodec.com (m.d.c.bowen)
Subject: Re: Basketball
Cc: mdcb

If you could rename the html document and give it a new title sans "niggers", I'd really appreciate it. Anyone who looks up "basketball" on Alta Vista right now sees "niggers and basketball" with my name right next to it. (I *really* don't like that word. I was conditioned hard against it. If you notice, even in my spoof I carefully avoided it.) If you rename the html document, next time the Alta Vista spider zips by it will delete the old document and replace it with the new one.
i've decided not to rename it but to post all the relevant replies and this correspondance along with it. 'niggers and basketball' will be distinguished from the rest of the missives with '(and response from the author)'.
The problem is not so much the posts representation within your site. The problem is how it looks from a search engine. You are attributing words to me which I did not say, which I would not say even in jest. I will take responsibility for what I said, but *only* for what I said. You have no moral right to attach your words to my name.


well, you might have saved yourself the trouble and just said 'niggers' but instead you made mention of a 'degenerate crew of darkies' with 'simian knuckle-dragging postures' for which basketball provided 'domestication'. are we truly afraid of the n-word comrade taylor or merely its stigma? it seems to me that if one is committed to parody as a weapon, as say george carlin, richard pryor or lenny bruce, the use of the word 'nigger' would be the least of your problems. the greater problem would be the efficacy of your work, which is in this particular case mostly lost on me and clearly lost on all of your hate-mailers. whether or not my captioning of your post causes you virtual discomfort is of some concern, but i beleive i do have a moral right to make an example of you. did thomas call himself 'doubting thomas'?

i think you are getting messier in trying to toss off this tarbaby. go ahead and say the word. get liberated. what difference does it really make if you sounded more like strom thurmond than bull conner? the content is self-evident, the choice of weapons is almost immaterial once you have declared war.

yes of course but you had not declared war, you were merely skirmishing behind enemy lines, an undeclared spy caught in the crossfire by the regular army and now perhaps a friendly fatality. still, as you say you have been raised not to say 'nigger', my mind keeps flashing to oj simpson who 'would not, could not and did not..'. aahh i have to laugh. i don't doubt your sincerity but i think you protest too much.

is s. taylor a spy? is use or disuse of the n-word an appropriate litmus test of intractable racist thinking? can a non-black person ever use the word and not get stomped? i am tempted to organize a tribunal in apwp cross-posted to scaa, but that would be too farcical. still i'm curious to know pyramid's input on your role in apwp. at any rate, darkies and basketball is just as worthy of redicule, and i suppose now i am running out of patience.

i get the impression that you are trying to squirm out of this. you could damn well be bob grant for all i know. he never called anybody a nigger on the air either and he beleives that his input to the dialog on race is constructive. 'i said that those particular individuals were acting like savages..' yeah fine. if all i have to go by is the use or disuse of a word, then it's all very thin.

you tell me, and i beleive you, that this was all a big joke and so i say to you as an equal partner in righteousness, you were just trippin' and you need to just admit it and move on and stop trying to cover your ass about this word or that word attached to your name. if your name is all that, then you ought to be able to handle the flack. if you have a body of work, then this paragraph or that paragraph is not going to kill the whole thing. if you don't, then maybe you should take this opportunity to check yourself - find out if it's worth it to you to move forward. determine whether you are happy with the integrity of your thinking and your cyberpresence. did you think that you wouldn't get your hands dirty finghting white supremacists? did you think that you would make a bunch of pals with everyone who is a political ally in anti-racist struggle? did you think you could be exonerated from criticism just because you didn't say 'nigger'? anybody who can read can see the context of the site and the title of your post. you landed in dead nigger storage. grow up.

people who are trolling the net for 'niggers' in altavista or anywhere else are going to find you. can you handle it or not? if not, i'll change the title and that will be the end of it.

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m.d.c.bowen