Mayweather, McGregor wrong to spew such hate
Maybe we deserve this MayweatherMcGregor farce.
As this country grapples with the uncomfortable questions of who we are and what we stand for, it’s worth noting that hatred and bigotry didn’t start with Charlottesville. It’s in the assumptions we make, the inequality we accept, the discrimination we don’t challenge. And, yes, the spectacles we celebrate. Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Conor McGregor are reprehensible people, a fact they’ve been all too happy to prove with racist, sexist and homophobic rhetoric during their tiresome promotion of Saturday’s fight. Mayweather has a long history of violence against women and has served time for it, making his empty claims to the contrary a flat- out lie. He’s doubled down on his disdain for women of late, likening them to property and commodities. He also hurled a homophobic slur at McGregor.
McGregor has been no better, calling Mayweather “bitch” so many times the uninitiated could be forgiven for thinking it was one of Mayweather’s nicknames. He also called Mayweather “boy” and made reference to a monkey.
Yet despite their obvious comfort in the moral gutter, it has not diminished interest in their fight.
Anyone who pays $ 99.95 for the payper- view is rewarding Mayweather and McGregor for their baseness. And giving tacit approval to the kind of bigotry and hate that has roiled this country and shaken much of America to its core.
“For some people there definitely is a conflict. Especially when you put their commentary within a specific context of what’s happening in this country, with the administration, the on- the- ground battle of Confederate monuments, the rise of white supremacists,” said Khaled Beydoun, an associate professor of law at Detroit Mercy who is affiliated faculty at UC- Berkeley’s Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project.
He understands the appeal of the fight, a first between the best boxer of his generation and a mixed martial arts champ.
It’s easy to denounce the grand displays of hate and prejudice. But it’s harder to confront in smaller spaces, especially when disguised as entertainment. Accepting hate in any form normalizes it. Normalizing it keeps it entrenched.
Mayweather and McGregor deserve your condemnation, not your $ 99.95.