Hey, Chris Cuomo, “Fredo” is Nowhere Remotely the Same as the “N-Word”

What The Hell Were You Thinking?

Christopher Charles Cuomo is a famous person. He’s famous, in part, because he has a television show called Cuomo Prime Time. He’s also famous because his father was Mario Cuomo, former Governor of New York, and his brother is Andrew Cuomo, current Governor of New York. With that sort of pedigree and name recognition, Chris Cuomo should not be a stranger to people who aren’t a fan of his political leanings. Such was the case when Chris Cuomo unleashed his anger on a stranger who called him “Fredo” while out at a local event with his family. Cuomo took umbrage with the comment and released a fuselage of expletives on the guy who was also recording the interplay. One of the interactions between Cuomo and the stranger was when Cuomo stated that by calling him “Fredo” was the same as calling him the ‘N-word’. Really, Chris, you’re going to lobe that out there and not expect to get any push-back on that? Guess again.

This is not the first time I heard a white person use race, particularly racism and racial discrimination as a tool to bolster their position that benefits them. It’s an easy caveat to deploy when there is no opposition to counter that argument. I remember early on in Ellen DeGeneres’ career where she was becoming an advocate for gay causes that she invoked this statement that being gay is the same as being black. I believe she said that on her TV show in her early development. There are so many points to counter that statement that will say that being gay is nowhere close to being the same as being black. But she pushed her narrative through without a hint of protest.

Chris Cuomo, on the other hand, has taken the position that a fictionalized character from the Godfather movies is now a racial slur because he deemed it so? Fredo has never had any history of being recognized as a racial slur. I looked up a list of ethnic slurs and nowhere in this compilation did I see ‘Fredo” listed as being an ethnic slur https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_slurs . Calling you ‘Fredo’ is the same as calling you Gilligan or Urkel or Shemp. You’re just the butt of a joke.

Cuomo has used ‘Fredo’ on many occasions as well as his cohorts when they have described Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and anyone else who are on the opposite side of their political point of beliefs. Moreover, CNN, his employer, has taken the position to defend his tirade as acceptable behavior. Chris Cuomo is a seasoned journalist, a lawyer and a New Yorker. He shouldn’t have easily taken the bait from this guy.

But the underlying point to all of this is that Chris Cuomo wanted to infuse race into this argument that would make his tirade more of victimization on to him. I don’t know Chris Cuomo personally. I don’t know anything about his life and upbringing. I can only speculate and that he and I had two diametrically opposing lives growing up in this country. I grew up in poverty, he did not. I saw violence first hand as a child, he probably did not. I saw friends die from drug overdoses, gun violence, and other events before I got out of grade school and he probably did not. I saw friends bring weapons to school and openly brandish them and he probably did not. For me, this was part of the culture, for him it may have been an exception.

Cuomo’s name gave him a leg up in job placement. How can someone with no journalism degree find work at ABC? Maybe a Harvard law degree is the same thing? Having the Washington name only means that your ancestors were once the property of General and President, George Washington.

Was Chris Cuomo wrong to place race into a baited exchange? Yes. He laid insult on more than just one group of people, he laid it among his own because he didn’t want to be the butt of a joke. Ethnic and racial slurs have weight, have substances, it robs people of their history, their dignity, their self-worth, their humanity. You don’t get to qualify ‘Fredo’ as any of that just so that you can shift the narrative.