In an interview with HuffPost Live, Rachel Jeantel reacted to Rush Limbaugh’s use of the N-word summing up everything Limbaugh is by calling the host racist and disrespectful.
Video via Media Matters:
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Transcript:
Mark Lamont Hill: Do you know who Rush Limbaugh is?
Rachel Jeantel: No.
Hill: He ain’t nobody you need to know, but Rush Limbaugh is a very popular radio host, a conservative radio host, and he felt some type of way about your comments, about the n-word, and the use of n***a. I’ll play for you what he said.
(Video of Limbaugh)
Hill: What would you say to him?
Jeantel: “Well, when you say [the n-word] out loud in person in front of people, that’s disrespectful. N-word, I’m not going to say is my kind of way. It is racist for an adult. Why teenagers use it? I don’t know.
Hill: You say it is racist for an adult. Does it matter if the adult is black or white?
Jeantel: Yes.
…
Hill: Let me ask you different. When you heard Rush Limbaugh say it, did it sound racist to you?
Jeantel: Well, yes it did.
Hill: It sounded racist to me too.
Jeantel: But I can’t judge him. Why? Did I it on television yesterday? Yes. I don’t mean you’re supposed to say it out loud. That’s a cuss word. ‘Cracker’ is a cuss word too.
Here is a 19 year old girl with better manners, and a greater sense of decency than Rush Limbaugh will ever have. This young lady has been absolutely savaged and mocked by people on the right and left, but especially by those on the right, and she is still trying to do the right thing. It is a shame that a teenager has to educate Rush Limbaugh on proper manners and civil behavior, but that is the truth.
By making her the authority of the use of the n-word, the media has put Jeantel is a horribly awkward position. She’s just a kid. She isn’t an expert on the subject. All she can do is offer her opinion. Limbaugh’s use of the n-word yesterday on his show was racist and disrespectful. It was also despicably planned and calculated.
No one should be using the n-word, or any of it’s derivatives. I understand the concept of trying to take a word back in order to take away it’s power, but there will always be people in this country like Rush Limbaugh for whom that word will always be powered by ugliness of prejudice, bigotry, and racism.
Jeantel described Limbaugh and every other American who uses that word with ugliness and prejudice. They really are disrespectful racists.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
