LIFE: Have we lost the ability to mobilize?

It began with Snoop Dogg walking the red carpet with women on leashes and escalated with MTV 2's “Where My Dogs At” depicting black women as pets on all fours, defecating on the floor. Now, Essence magazine quotes Kanye West as referring to biracial women as “mutts,” saying that without them, there would be no video ‘hos. Um, when did it become okay to equate women to dogs (or black men to niggers for that matter)? Interestingly enough, West’s quote has not caused nearly as large an uproar within the media as Michael Richards’ recent comments have. Is the public that desensitized to men demeaning and respecting women in the world of hip hop that we can’t recognize a sign of offensive prejudice when we see one? A New York Times Op-Ed columnist complained that the media failed to address the fact that in both the mass killings in a Colorado high school and an Amish school in Pennsylvania, the killers singled out female students and if the attackers had chosen to pick out the black students or Jewish youth instead, the public's response would be much different. The same argument seems to apply here.

-Muse
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