Sharpton upset with NY Post for ‘racist’ column about Burress
Rev. Al Sharpton is upset with columnist Steve Serby of the New York Post about his column on Monday about Giants’ wideout Plaxico Burress.
Post columnist Steve Serby began his column in Monday’s editions with “Good for Tom Coughlin. Good for Coughlin for tightening the noose around Plaxico Burress.”
Burress has been fined and benched by the Giants for infractions including tardiness and missing practices. On Saturday, the wide receiver skipped a treatment for his neck, and was benched during the first quarter of the Giants’ win in Pittsburgh Sunday.
In criticizing Burress, Serby used a racially loaded and offensive term, Sharpton told the Daily News. “To make such a blatant racist statement about an African-American football player with a neck injury is completely unacceptable,” Sharpton said. “Clearly, the racial connotation is very disturbing. … This is the verbal reflection of a hanging noose.”
Sharpton said that if the Post did not acknowledge that the column was offensive, he would further highlight the issue but he did not specify what steps he would take. “They have to act swiftly,” Sharpton said. “If we don’t see action, I will lay out exactly what that is … we would like to talk to someone there about whether it was the writer or editor who let this in.”
Why any writer would even hint at anything that could be construed as racist is beyond me. And for an editor at the Post to not have the wherewithal to see that what Serby wrote could potentially be a problem is unconceivable, too.
But my understanding of the word “racism” is to have hatred towards another person because of their skin color. Now I don’t know Serby personally, but it’s probably safe to say that he doesn’t hate Plaxico Burress because of his skin color. He used an incredibly poor choice of words (seriously, there are millions of words in the English language and you go with noose?), but what he wrote is being taken out of context.
That said, the power of words can be incredibly damaging and Serby was flat out insensitive (and shortsighted for that matter). People should use their brains over their emotions to decipher what he meant, but still, I completely understand why Sharpton and others would be upset over this.
Posted in: NFL
Tags: Al Sharpton, Al Sharpton comments on Steve Serby, Al Sharpton Plaxico Burress comments, Al Sharpton racists Plaxico Burress comments, Al Sharpton Steve Serby, New York Giants, NFL Week 8, NFL Week 9, Plaxico Burress, Steve Serby, Steve Serby column on Plaxico Burress, The New York Post
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Hyperbole is Sharpton’s best tool – always has been. You’re right – it was a very poor choice of phrasing by the writer and boarderline incompetence for the editor to let it pass, but it’s not really racism.
Insenstive? Certainly. Racist? Doubtful. My guess is that he would have said the same thing about a white athlete.
Sadly, Sharpton’s histrionics on issues like this water down real complaints.
Ahhh, Anthony, I agree with you about the bad choice of words by a professional writer. But, please don’t give Sharpton more credit than he deserves for his reason to be upset.
This racist of all racists sits around waiting for things like this to pop up so that he can put on his equipment and “start swinging”.
Bad choice of words by Serby, but Sharpton could care less about Plaxico Burress. All he wants to do is get his big mouth in front of a microphone.
Why does the media even respond/post what Al Sharpton has to say anymore? All he does is sit around all day and wait for something to happen that he can label as racist. Well, it takes one to know one Al.
When are you going apologize to the Duke Lacrosse team?
Has anyone considered that the reason that Mr. Serby used this particular choice of words is that we have moved far enough as a nation that the racial connotations surrounding the word “noose” simply never occurred to him? I know when I first read it I didn’t make any racial connection until I heard Rev. Sharpton’s complaint. Maybe without these Civil Rights dinosaurs like Rev. Sharpton swooping in to stir things up (to his own financial benefit I might add), innocently intentioned comments like this might not even be noticed, and we might move even further down the road of societal evolution.
This is a complete example of Al Sharpton just wanting attention. If a white person even utters the word “BLACK” He’s all over him like WHITE on rice. I am so sick of him and his Black Panther antics. I am so sick of white people having to watch what they say because fear of what Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson might do to them! I’m sick of it. But yet entertainers like Paul Mooney (if that’s what you want to call him) can have a CD tilted “Jesus was Black and F*ck it so was Santa Clause” I’m offended by that but hey guess what no one cares there do they. But the second I title a CD “Michael Jordan was white and F*ck it so was Martin Luther King”. I’d have NAACP calls up the A** I’m am so sick of Al Sharpton and his crap I wish he would just go away and I hope one day I can tell this wanna be Don King to shut his mouth.
D.J. Palm U.S. Army veteran
why any body gives Sharpton the time of day is beyond me. During the whole Tawana Brawley incident he set back race relations 50 years and never suffered any repercussions.
Theonly racist in this story is Sharpton