Cooper was interviewing some honkiefied Uncle Tom oreo named Geoffrey Canada who presented himself as an educator. Yeah, he is an educator all right. He wants to educate you to be sheep.
The premise of the segment was fairly stated in the first paragraph of the script:
I guess Anderson Cooper is a little more of a nellie boy than I thought he was. If you are a scrubbed white kid from the suburbs, it's probably pretty hard to understand why a snitch is the lowest form of human life, just below cops, lawyers and politicians.(CBS) In most communities, a person who sees a murder and helps the police put the killer behind bars is called a witness. But in many inner-city neighborhoods in this country that person is called a "snitch."
And Cooper's exchange with rapper Cam'ron totally missed the point. Street cred only matters to double stuffed oreos like rap stars. Street cred is just a hip-hop word for public relations. The issue really concerns community solidarity. When there is an occupying army in your town, the last thing you want to have among you is a collaborator. To a kid in South Dallas, the police are an occupying force. They are foreigners sent to harass and intimidate. The only local police force in these communities wears gang colors.
So, the ethic behind disapproval of snitching is simply an aspect of community survival.
I've always thought that it was a whoosy thing to do, to say, "I'm gonna go tell your mommy on you."
There is something inherently cowardly about the act or even the threat. Snitches are simpering little cowards that can't stand up for themselves and they don't have enough sense to know that when you betray your family or your neighbors or your community, you are murdering yourself. Even the Bush administration knows this. Their lips are sealed with superglue. It takes a two year special prosecutor's investigation just to get a chirp from Scooter Libby, and not a peep from Dick Cheney, his boss. All their undershirts probably have the 'Stop Snitchin' slogan printed on the chest.
Snitches are the lice of any community.
And they should remember that these days
it costs fifty cents just to drop a dime on somebody.
