Goddamn, Hogan. Just two days removed from going on national television to beg forgiveness for the multiple racist rants that ultimately got him fired from WWE, Hogan is still proving to be completely tone deaf to the consequences of his statements. He’s already caught major heat from his former Tampa neighborhood by blaming it for normalizing the racist epithets he used, and now a flippant response to a question posed on Twitter could make things even worse for the disgraced legend:
@ThoughtsNThots how about all lives matter
— Hulk Hogan (@HulkHogan) August 31, 2015
Wow. How about “All Lives Matter?” Well, should you be trying to dig yourself out of a shameful hole whose depths seem to extend somewhere just below the Earth’s crust, it’s probably best to dig up.
We can’t know Hulk Hogan’s intent, and it could be that he simply does not understand how taking that stance is offensive. The unfortunate fact is that whether he meant it to be offensive or not, it is.
While this favoured phrase of your casually racist aunt on Facebook is a seemingly egalitarian one, in reality, it’s completely dismissive to any and all of the issues facing black Americans today. The phrase — a dismissive rebuttal to anyone saying that “black lives matter” — ignores any possible existence of white supremacy. Marginalization is not a competition, nor does recognizing it mean that you are placing one group of people above another. “All lives matter” is not a cry for us to pay attention to all lives, it’s the erasure of focus on the struggles and oppression that lives who are not yours are fighting against daily.
You have to assume that someone like Hogan has employed the services of someone in the PR field. Maybe it’s time to find a new one?
