"... and podcasts off Spotify, saying that 'I find Joe Rogan problematic for reasons other than COVID interviews… For me it’s also his language around race.' Arie subsequently posted a video clip on Instagram compiling 24 times Rogan used the N-word on his podcast. 'He shouldn’t even be uttering the word,' Arie said in the post. 'Don’t even say it, under any context. Don’t say it. That’s where I stand. I have always stood there.'"
If we're going to take the "language around race" seriously and withdraw from group projects that include you with someone who's said something racially wrong, then where can you go? What can you do? And won't we also take the language around gender seriously? All of the machinery of pop culture will collapse.
ADDED: I've asked where's the stopping point, and I can see an answer in this quote from India Arie: "You" — Spotify — "take this money that you generate and you use it to invest in this guy." It is the special and huge investment in Joe Rogan that makes him different from all the other performers on Spotify whose "language around race" might be considered wrong. That link goes to Independent, where you can see the montage India Arie presented. It's hard to listen to carefully, because the "n-word" is bleeped with a piercing sound, but it seemed to me that Rogan was (always?) talking about the word, not actually using the word. Is there any reason to think that Rogan is a racist? Well, there's reason to think that racism is unavoidably woven into every human organism, but that returns me to my where's-the-stopping-point question.
ALSO: If you search Spotify for the "n-word" (written out), you'll find lots of songs and spoken word. There are artists who use that word as part of their name and at least one who has that as his entire name. And I saw multiple profiles that had just that word as their name, including one whose profile picture is a photograph of a naked, erect penis.
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