Whoopi Goldberg seems like an unlikely ally to Justin Bieber, right? Yet the co-host of The View oddly came to his defence after another video surfaced in which the Canadian pop star used racist slurs. It's not his fault, she claimed. The n-word means something different up north.
"Canadians words—I'm going to say the word so get ready to bleep me. N----- doesn't mean anything in Canada," said Goldberg in a recent segment. "Black Canadians and black Americans are two separate groups of people."
According to an article in Yahoo, Goldberg shot a movie in Canada last year, so she knows of what she speaks. Er, no...
Even though Bieber himself publicly apologized for the videos, filmed when he was 15, saying he knows better now that he is older, I don't buy it.
While our racial politics are perhaps not as strained here in Canada, I would argue that that word is just as derogatory here, and that most 15 year olds know that. Unless they are racist, of course.
Goldberg is a little too forgiving and naive in her assumptions. Though maybe not to the same extent in the U.S., with its history of slavery, racism is alive and well in Canada, too. Don't kid yourself, Whoopi. And please, please, do not for a minute justify Justin Bieber's ignorance.
What do you think? Is the term less offensive in Canada?
This man spent more than $20,000 to look like Justin Bieber (and still looks nothing like Justin Bieber).
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