A few days ago in The Words We Use: The Rhetoric of Race, I wrote how unpunished hate speech is the root cause for the disparity we are currently having in this country between whites and people of color. Because it goes unpunished, it diminishes targeted group members and advocates their different treatment.

Just when you assume Paris Hilton could not get any lower, she manages to prove you wrong. Paris Hilton captured on video uses the N-Word and spewing anti-gay and other racial slurs at guests while attending a party with her sister, Nicole. As Paris hit the dance floor with sister Nicky and boldly declared, “We’re like two n…s.” The racial epithet was not the only slur she spewed out, later in the video, Paris is caught screaming “faggot” several times at another dancer, in the clip that turned up on ParisExposed.com. (video)

This bitch! She’s a fucking hoodlum, broke, poor bitch from, like, Compton. Public school bitch. Faggot!

Through out the video, she is mocking African Americans by claiming “I’m black and I steal.” Paris Hilton is also heard verbally degrading other group of people other than African Americans in the video, she is heard saying, “blacks … bitch … ni_ … I steal … whore … slut … Jew … I got fucked in the butt for coke … poor desperate blacks … I’m black and I steal.”

Why isn’t their a bigger uproar about Paris using statements against gays and black? The answer is simple. Soon after the video started circulating on the web throughout the celebrity gossip blog after it was acquired by ParisExposed.com, Paris Hilton has filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles federal court against ParisExposed.com, claiming the website is “the single most egregious and reprehensible invasions of privacy ever committed against an individual.” And as soon as the clip, places like YouTube, IFilm and TMZ among were “issued a temporary restraining order … prohibiting the distribution of Paris Hilton’s lurid belongings” by a Federal judge.

ParisExposed.com, now shut down, was the Web site owned by Bardia Persa, which charged customers $39.97 for unlimited access to Hilton’s private diaries, topless photos, videos and other stuff. The site was launched January 23, and shut down less than a week later, but not before the celebrity got to see pictures and videos of Paris. According to ParisExposed.com via Wall Street Journals’ Law blog:

As she was moving from one LA mansion to another, Paris Hilton, heiress to the Hilton dynasty, and this generation’s most famous celebrity, put more than 6,000 square feet of her possessions into an ordinary self-service storage facility. Believe it or not, this supermodel, from one of the wealthiest families in the world, failed to pay her $208 bill. . . . As you probably guessed by now, the storage unit was auctioned off . . . the heiress lost all rights to her goods. . . thankfully for her, (and you), we’ve retrieved, catalogued, itemized, and digitized every last item.

The racial slur video was one of several videos the hotel heiress left in an L.A. Storage facility with thousands of other personal items, including records of a miscarriage and a prescription for genital herpes.

Other videos included videos she made with “Girls Gone Wild” creator Joe Francis doing cocaine (video) and smoking marijuana.

According to the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) “Access Hollywood” reported that the infamous N-word video “appears to be several years old,” while ITV reports that the “video was filmed at a recent party.” Either way, GLAAD is calling on Paris Hilton to “explain and apologize to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) and African American communities for her use of anti-gay and racial slurs in a video.”

What is interesting about the whole incident, when Michael Richards was caught on tape hurling racial epithets the coverage was non-stop and videos were never asked to be pulled down. However, an heiress of one of America’s capitalist elites is caught, everything is whitewashed. This is the point I was trying to make in my post, The Words We Use: The Rhetoric of Race. By always repeating racial slurs, not only does it perpetuate institutionalized discrimination it becomes the standard and white people believe they have the right to own it and use it whenever it suits them.

When Paris steps into the camera again to vent about a run-in with a woman at the party, she described her as a “fuckin’ hoodlum, broke, poor bitch from like, Compton – public school bitch.” It is ironic that Paris taking on an elitist attitude about the girl’s schooling. Her remark is a typical statement one hears from the privileged members of society. They see themselves as a morally good person in the mirror but see a very different and immoral person when looking at someone who is not from the same social status. What is ironic about Paris’ statement is her own education background. When it comes to Paris Hilton’s own education, she really shouldn’t be talking because opted to live life of a socialite instead of graduating from high school. She dropped out of Dwight High School, a selective, private school on the Upper West Side in New York City. Soon after her short-lived engagement to Paris Lotsis, a Greek gentleman known to be heir of a shipping business Hilton relocated to Hollywood Hills, in L.A. County to live with her sister, Nicky where she earned her GED. The point is, the words she chose, like Joe Biden, she too saw black people in America as different from the “norm” - unfamiliar and not equal, unlike her former best friend, Nicole Richie, who is African American.

The message that is being sent out, if you are an exclusive member of Amerikkka’s wealthy elite club, say whatever you want about any group, because your money can delete, edit, and rationalize your racist statements.

Technorati Tags: Paris Hilton, ParisExposed.com, Bardia Persa, Joe Francis, GLAAD, African American

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