Nick Cannon Gets His Job Back After Calling White People ‘Savages.’

Morgan Wallen is watching his career implode before his eyes as a consequence of a video that catches the country music star using a racial slur. {snip}

It’s clear that Wallen used a word he should not have used. It’s also clear that he didn’t mean for it to be public (though he did shout it in the street, which is not a good way of keeping things private), and he meant it as a joke. Nonetheless, as expected, the penalties have been quite significant. Wallen apologized profusely but that did not stop the inevitable: his record label suspended him, the Academy of Country Music Awards revoked his eligibility, and Cumulus Media, iHeartMedia, and SiriusXM pulled all of his songs from their stations, effectively removing him from the radio altogether. {snip} 

While Wallen’s star is rapidly plummeting after saying one offensive thing — a thing which, if context matters, was said drunkenly and in jest — another star is ascending again after a minor and temporary dip. The juxtaposition is instructive. Nick Cannon and ViacomCBS have reunited and the production of his VH1 series “Wild ’N Out” will resume, following a brief suspension of their relationship following comments Cannon made on his podcast last summer. What provoked the backlash was Cannon’s claim that black people can’t be anti-Semitic because they “are the Semitic people” and “the true Hebrews.” {snip}

{snip} The even more offensive and racist remarks were never acknowledged by most of the media, or by Cannon himself, or even by ViacomCBS when they initially condemned his statements. Cannon in fact has faced no consequence — not even a temporary consequence — for the rest of his racist diatribe, in which he claimed that white people have a “lack of compassion” because of their melanin deficiency. If that wasn’t enough, he also said that white people are “a little less” (inferior to people with darker skin) and that because they don’t have “the power of the Sun” (?) they have behaved “out of fear, out of low self-esteem, out of deficiency” and acted “evil,” robbing and raping in order to survive. White people, Cannon said, “are closer to animals” and are “the true savages“:

The people that don’t have (melanin) are – and I’m going to say this carefully – a little less. When they didn’t have the power of the sun, it started to deteriorate them so then, they’re acting out of fear, they’re acting out of low self-esteem, they’re acting out of a deficiency. So, therefore, the only way that they can act is evil. They have to rob, steal, rape, kill in order to survive. So then, these people that didn’t have what we have – and when I say “we,” I speak of the melanated people – they had to be savages. … They’re acting as animals so they’re the ones that are actually closer to animals. They’re the ones that are actually the true savages.

This is by far and away the most racist thing that any celebrity of his stature has said in many years, and he never apologized for it. {snip}

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Who, who has the privilege here? The man who said a bad thing, apologized, and lost his career anyway, or the man who said a worse thing, didn’t apologize, and quickly got his career back? You cannot say the first man has the privilege without removing all meaning from the word.

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