I don’t watch reality teevee and I have never heard of bounty hunter Duane “Dog” Chapman. The fact that Chapman is a racist mildly fits my preconceptions about the typical bounty hunter…we all have our biases. Dog Chapman was upset that his son was dating a black women, and he gave his son an ultimatum:
Duane “Dog” Chapman: I’m not taking the chance on some motherf**ker. I don’t care if she’s a Mexican, a whore, whatever…it’s not because she’s black. It’s because we use he word n***er sometimes here.
I’m not going to take a chance ever in life for losing everything I’ve worked for for 30 years because some f**king n**er heard us say n***er and turned us into the Enquirer magazine. Our career is over. I’m not taking that chance at all, never in life. Never. Never.
If Lyssa [his daughter] was dating a n***er we would all say F*ck You. . .and you know that. If Lyssa brought a black guy home ya da da…it’s not that they’re black, it’s none of that. It’s that we use the word n***er. We don’t mean you fucking scum n***er without a soul. We don’t mean that shit. But America would think we mean that. And we’re not taking a chance on losing everything we got over a racial slur because our son goes with a girl like that. I can’t do that Tucker. You can’t expect Gary, Bonnie, Cecily, all them young kids to [garbled] because ‘I’m in love for 7 months’ – fuck that! So, I’ll help you get another job but you can not work here unless you break up with her and she’s out of your life. I can’t handle that shit. I got ’em in the parking lot trying to record us. I got that girl saying she’s gonna wear a recorder…
Tucker Chapman: I don’t even know what to say.
Ironically, his son taped the conversation and gave a copy to the National Enquirer. So, what do you think Dog Chapman did in response?
Dog has asked esteemed Reverend Al Sharpton to help him, and has retained the African American pastor that performed his last marriage to speak on his behalf.
Of course, A&E has suspended production of Dog’s reality show until they can assess the fallout. But I’m more concerned with this role that Al Sharpton plays every time someone gets caught making a racist statement. In this case, it seems that Sharpton has a close relationship with the family, having officiated at Chapman’s wedding. But what is he going to say? So Chapman has gone to black churches “to help inner-city kids”. Does that mean he isn’t a world-class jerk?
Pam has some interesting observations about the greater meaning of Chapman’s diatribe, but I find it hard to draw too much from it. Here’s what I found most intriguing:
Stripping away the crudeness of his remarks, you can see the underlying emotion being articulated — Chapman’s disappointment at his son for even contemplating, let alone actually dating, someone outside his race. It’s pretty obvious that Tucker Chapman grew up in a home where the word “nigger” and other racial slurs were used casually. Through the profane bluster on the audio, there is disbelief directed at his son in that moment; he’s reallly saying “Didn’t you get the message when I used that word in our home for all those years? Did I have to spell it out for you? Stay with your own kind.”
I think it’s safe to say that many parents who feel the same way about interracial relationships and their children are equally reluctant to spell that sentiment out directly to them. What has spun out of control for parents uncomfortable with the idea of their son or daughter dating outside their race is the ability for subtle (or in Dog’s case, not-so-subtle) messages about what is “appropriate” to get through to their kids, because it’s hard to project and foster tolerance in public, and then justify the opposite in private. In interpersonal relationships it’s quite difficult for people who hold opposing public and private views on race they have to interact with a real person, not a stereotype, and that bores into long-held assumptions and beliefs. It. Does. Not. Compute. They only way to hold on to the security blanket of private racism is to isolate oneself from people in that group that challenge those beliefs, because the conflict is too messy to deal with.
The whole affair reminds me of Plato’s dialogue of Euthyfro where Socrates makes a fool of a young man for having the gall to turn his own father in for murdering one of his slaves. Socrates could be such an a-hole. Maybe Al Sharpton could have rehabilitated him.
