So posted now former McKeesport, PA, recruit police officer Melissa Adamson several months ago on Snapchat when she was with another department.
She was in uniform when she posted it, making it the digital equivalent of a kill shot.
Given the current national crisis around policing, could there possibly be a more inappropriate thing for a white cop in uniform to say?
I’m thinking not.
Adamson made the case that it was “just humor,” saying, “Everyone that knows me knows I don’t have a racist bone in my body.”
She has apparently forgotten that the brain is not a bone.
Or, did she ever know?
Count me among the group that is of the opinion that the use of “ni**a”, especially by white folk, is what might be termed “gangsta-rap slop-over” and possibly an example of cultural appropriation by wanna-be “homies.”
“Film maker Spike Lee has apparently criticized gangsta rap as analogous to minstrel shows and blackface where performers – black and white – were made to look African American, and acted in a stereotypical uncultured and ignorant manner for entertainment.”
Lee’s assessment is quite ironic in the Adamson case as he accuses gangsta rappers of perpetuating negative stereotypical images of blacks meaning that her crime was, at least in part, to commit their crime, one for which they are paid handsomely and for which she was fired.
Such is the critical difference venue and skin color can make.