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.
