Lou Perez

Thursday

10 February 2022

It’s not Joe Rogan who needs to apologize

From our US edition

We are spending too much time talking about Joe Rogan, and Joe Rogan is spending too much time apologizing. “Whenever you're in a situation where you have to say, ‘I'm not racist,’ you fucked up,” Rogan apologized on February 5. “And I clearly have fucked up.” Rogan was addressing a montage that is circulating on social media, showing him saying the N-word on multiple episodes of his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience. When Joe describes the montage as “the most regretful and shameful thing that I've ever had to talk about publicly,” I believe him. And I don’t think Joe made a mistake apologizing. That was Joe expressing his authentic self.

Friday

25 September 2020

Lou Perez

Borrowing Blackness

From our US edition

I’m old enough to remember when it was considered a noble goal for the United States to become a colorblind society. I’m also old enough to have forgotten when that goal of colorblindness became, you know, just another way to perpetuate systemic racism. I don’t know how we got here, but I’m afraid I might be one of those perpetuators who ‘doesn’t see color’. Because, if I’m being real, lots of people of color look white to me.These old-timey Perez eyes of mine may be onto something though. Five years after Rachel Dolezal shocked the world with the revelation of her whiteness, we’ve seen three back-to-back cases of white women pretending to be black go viral.