A Moratorium on the N-word?

[Elfdart]

After Michael Richards went apeshit at a comedy club, calling hecklers "nigger" and screaming about how many years ago, they would have been lynched (in other words there was no joke involved, nor was he being ironic) he did the Publicity as Therapy song-and-dance by publicly eating shit, whining and crying on TV. If he was a bigger star he might have made Oprah's show or 20/20. Instead, he went on Jesse Jackson's radio show and kept claiming he wasn't really a racist (then why all the talk about lynching, asshole?).

After the show, Jackson and others called for a moratorium of the use of the N-word in entertainment. Jackson has been making one futile effort after another to get people to stop buying ganster rap and stop watching blaxsploitation movies. Of course having Jackson campaign against them probably drove up sales...

This time it isn't just preachers and church ladies campaigning against the word. Paul Mooney used to write for Richard Pryor, In Living Color and Dave Chappelle (he invented and played the sage character Negrodamus) and even a few months ago was saying the word was no big deal and was in the Lenny Bruce camp that if people used the word often enough it would lose its sting. Now Paul Mooney says he won't use the word in his stand-up act or anything he writes for others and he wants others to do the same. He says watching the Richards' shit-fit changed his mind and if it's out of line for Richards to say "nigger" on stage, he shouldn't do it, either. In other words, this time it isn't just squares trying to buck the trend.

Is this all much ado about nothing? Or is it a long overdue backlash against people using the word in gratuitous fashion?

[Darth Wong]

I always thought that the "take ownership of the word" argument was stupid. "Nigger" will always have a derogatory connotation because it implies a certain lack of intelligence and education, and it implies that the racists were correctly characterizing blacks all along. As one pundit once put it (paraphrasing), "There's blacks and then there's niggers. I'm a black man but I'm not a nigger."

Shows like Dave Chapelle try to take "ownership" of that stereotype too, gleefully portraying blacks as violence-prone uneducated trash and then laughing at uptight white people for being afraid of them. I don't care whether you think it's funny (I personally think his show was overrated) but it's certainly not a positive message about race in America.

[General Zod]

Paul Mooney used to write for Richard Pryor, In Living Color and Dave Chappelle (he invented and played the sage character Negrodamus) and even a few months ago was saying the word was no big deal and was in the Lenny Bruce camp that if people used the word often enough it would lose its sting.

It only loses its sting when it's black people saying it. Watch a white person saying it and you'd better hope they've got a fast escape route. But really, it's about time people started realizing that calling each other racist terms just to 'buck the man' is just fucking stupid. You don't see asians going around calling each other chink or emperor. What makes this dip think it was ever acceptable for black people to go around calling each other racist shit?

[Magus]

I've wondered that too. Why do we need to recycle our words? The English language is diverse enough to bury a word with bad connotations and use/make up another one.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I never saw the need to ban a word, since banning "nigger" would be pretty hard to do anyway, it's a waste of resources. It should be actively discouraged, yes, but as Mike has said, too many try to own the word like the homosexual community did with "queer". It doesn't seem to help really and comes off as helping perpetuate the terms instead.

[Darth Wong]

The problem is that they "own" the word by accepting its stereotypical connotations. Nobody refers to Colin Powell as a "nigger" because they don't consider him one. They consider him to be a black man who became fairly successful in a white man's world. They are accepting that "nigger" means "fails to meet expectations in a white man's world" and they're trying to run with that by arguing that there's something wrong with those expectations, which is the worst way to approach it.

[darthbob88]

The problem is that they "own" the word by accepting its stereotypical connotations. Nobody refers to Colin Powell as a "nigger" because they don't consider him one. They consider him to be a black man who became fairly successful in a white man's world. They are accepting that "nigger" means "fails to meet expectations in a white man's world" and they're trying to run with that by arguing that there's something wrong with those expectations, which is the worst way to approach it.

Indeed. "There's nothing wrong with me, your standards are just too high." A classic explanation, oft utilized by children too ignorant and lazy to improve themselves. I can speak from experience, it didn't work when I tried it.

[Elfdart]

I think trying to ban the word is absurd and not just on the grounds that it's futile. I don't think the scene in Roots where Kunta Kinte is being flogged for trying to escape works if the Vic Morrow character says:

"What is your name, African-American?"

"Kunta -Kunta Kinte!"
<multiple lashes>

"Your name is Toby, African-American!"

I don't think bowdlerizing the word out of books and movies is a good idea. I think Mooney and Jackson et al have a point about its overuse in music and comedy, but the same can be said for the words "fuck" and "whore" and "bitch". A blanket ban strikes me as stupid. Some of the most effective artistic works against racism used the word nigger to great effect, like Blazing Saddles and Mark Twain's novels.

[Darth Wong]

I think trying to ban the word is absurd and not just on the grounds that it's futile. I don't think the scene in Roots where Kunta Kinte is being flogged for trying to escape works if the Vic Morrow character says:

"What is your name, African-American?"

"Kunta -Kunta Kinte!"
<multiple lashes>

"Your name is Toby, African-American!"

I don't think bowdlerizing the word out of books and movies is a good idea. I think Mooney and Jackson et al have a point about its overuse in music and comedy, but the same can be said for the words "fuck" and "whore" and "bitch". A blanket ban strikes me as stupid. Some of the most effective artistic works against racism used the word nigger to great effect, like Blazing Saddles and Mark Twain's novels.

I think censorship is different from what I thought they were talking about, which was voluntarily not treating the word as an acceptable way to refer to black people. In the context you're talking about, it's portrayed as a totally unacceptable way to refer to black people.

[RedImperator]

The problem is that they "own" the word by accepting its stereotypical connotations. Nobody refers to Colin Powell as a "nigger" because they don't consider him one. They consider him to be a black man who became fairly successful in a white man's world. They are accepting that "nigger" means "fails to meet expectations in a white man's world" and they're trying to run with that by arguing that there's something wrong with those expectations, which is the worst way to approach it.

Indeed. "There's nothing wrong with me, your standards are just too high." A classic explanation, oft utilized by children too ignorant and lazy to improve themselves. I can speak from experience, it didn't work when I tried it.

That's really not the connotation behind it. It's more along the lines of "There's nothing wrong with me, you've rigged the game so I'll never meet your standards anyway, so fuck you". Which is just as poisonous in its own way. It also, unfortunately, happens to be true entirely too often.

[darthbob88]

The problem is that they "own" the word by accepting its stereotypical connotations. Nobody refers to Colin Powell as a "nigger" because they don't consider him one. They consider him to be a black man who became fairly successful in a white man's world. They are accepting that "nigger" means "fails to meet expectations in a white man's world" and they're trying to run with that by arguing that there's something wrong with those expectations, which is the worst way to approach it.

Indeed. "There's nothing wrong with me, your standards are just too high." A classic explanation, oft utilized by children too ignorant and lazy to improve themselves. I can speak from experience, it didn't work when I tried it.

That's really not the connotation behind it. It's more along the lines of "There's nothing wrong with me, you've rigged the game so I'll never meet your standards anyway, so fuck you". Which is just as poisonous in its own way. It also, unfortunately, happens to be true entirely too often.

Ah, so I'm wrong again. Nothing unusual there; my family used me as a political barometer--find out what I think and vote the other way.

[Elfdart]

I think censorship is different from what I thought they were talking about, which was voluntarily not treating the word as an acceptable way to refer to black people. In the context you're talking about, it's portrayed as a totally unacceptable way to refer to black people.

You and anyone else with a functioning brain can draw that distinction. I'm wondering how long before books with the word in them are simply taken out of schools altogether (which has already happened in some schools, by the way), or serious use of the word is thrown out with its use for cheap effect -and of course the question of who gets to decide what is proper use and what isn't.

There's a hilarious act by Nathan Stroman -aka Earthquake, who drops whe words nigger, fuck, whore, bitch, motherfucker and shit all through his act, yet it's not just for a cheap laugh. Someone asked him if he's afraid of "terrorists" and his response was brilliant:

FUCK NO! I'm a nigger! I've had to live with terrorists all my life.

Then he goes on about how he can't go to a club without some asshole shooting the place up, or how so many women are living with terrorists:

Bitch! Where you been? <whack>

Ow Earl! Not in front of the children!

That nigger's a terrorist!

And so on. Yeah, he's vulgar and offensive but he's making a point much bigger than the shock value laughs from the use of the word.

I don't think outright censorship is the issue, since it won't happen. I just think this could lead to media being bowdlerized more than they are already, with suits nixing anything with the N-word.

[Cao Cao]

To me, "nigger" is simply another vulgar label used by people who aren't funny or talented to prop up their acts.
I don't really think there should be an outright ban. For one thing, at least I know someone who constantly uses slurs is instantly not worth my time. And that goes for cracker, chink, faggot and all that as well as nigger.

[That NOS Guy]

You and anyone else with a functioning brain can draw that distinction. I'm wondering how long before books with the word in them are simply taken out of schools altogether (which has already happened in some schools, by the way), or serious use of the word is thrown out with its use for cheap effect -and of course the question of who gets to decide what is proper use and what isn't.

On this note, isn't/wasn't there movements to get The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn thrown out of public school because of the use of the N word around Jim?

[Coyote]

I have to say that, in the overly-simplistic methods of interpretation all too common in the American public, a "voluntary disuse" of the word will eventually be interpreted and ramped into a ban and then outright censorship.

Asking people to think about things like "context" is, unfortunately, asking too much. There is a huge difference between how the word is used in Roots and Huckleberry Finn and the way KKKramer used it onstage. Knee-jerkers don't understand that, and they'll count on the probability that most Americans don't either-- or that most Americans may not even have a grasp of what the word "context" itself truly means or its relevance here.

So, yeah-- voluntary disuse by entertainers is good, but be prepared to man the barricades when that spills over into censorship down the road. I know that is a slippery-slope fallacy, but given the nature of the American citizenry to overreact and misinterpret these things I fear it may be all too likely.

[Darth Wong]

So let me get this straight: you people are worried that if comedians and other celebrities stop encouraging the use of the N-word, then this will somehow "slippery slope" into censorship? Are you serious?

[Coyote]

So let me get this straight: you people are worried that if comedians and other celebrities stop encouraging the use of the N-word, then this will somehow "slippery slope" into censorship? Are you serious?

Unfortunately... yes. Mike, remember, you're dealing with a largely ignorant public that will hop on a trendy bandwagon the moment someone tacks on the catchphrase about "protecting the children".

Once the entertainment world catches onto the idea that "Nigger" should not be used routinely, how long will it take for the "oh my goodness" soccer mom public action crowd to jump on it and move to ban such works as Roots or Huckleberry Finn because they also contain this word?

Movement to ban Huck Finn has been underway in many different places already for exactly this reason; a "nigger-moratorium" in the entertainment industry would be seen as a validation of their works-- a "see, even Hollywood thinks this should be banned" move. Would it be a logical fallacy on the part of the crusaders? Yes, it would. Will that stop them? I wouldn't hold my breath on that.

[Darth Wong]

You disprove your own argument. People already try to ban those books in schools no matter how often comedians use the word, so the two phenomena are unrelated. In case you hadn't noticed, comedians say all kinds of things in their routines which parents consider unacceptable for their children. There's a reason why kids aren't even admitted into comedy clubs.

[Coyote]

Conceded-- it probably won't make a difference after all, now that I think it through.

[Dalton]

As one pundit once put it (paraphrasing), "There's blacks and then there's niggers. I'm a black man but I'm not a nigger."

That was a Chris Rock bit, wasn't it?

[wolveraptor]

As one pundit once put it (paraphrasing), "There's blacks and then there's niggers. I'm a black man but I'm not a nigger."

That was a Chris Rock bit, wasn't it?

I don't think he says that verbatim in this often-posted clip, but that's pretty much his meaning.

[Frank Hipper]

The current Google ad is shocking in it's tasteless irony, BTW; "Learn how to braid beautiful corn rolls and twists"?

[Elfdart]

On this note, isn't/wasn't there movements to get The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn thrown out of public school because of the use of the N word around Jim?

Still happens.

So let me get this straight: you people are worried that if comedians and other celebrities stop encouraging the use of the N-word, then this will somehow "slippery slope" into censorship? Are you serious?

No, I just think as Coyote does that this "ban" will only encourage morons who see no difference between the word being used as a form of abuse and its use in things like Huckleberry Finn or Blazing Saddles. Several years ago a man working for the District of Columbia was run out of his job for complaining that his budget was "niggardly". I think there's enough stupidity already.

[wolveraptor]

Several years ago a man working for the District of Columbia was run out of his job for complaining that his budget was "niggardly".

Okay, seriously, how the fuck did they get away with that? All his lawyer would have to do is show the judge a fucking dictionary.

[Elfdart]

The guy finally got another job with the city -not so much because he was in the right, but because he's gay and the gay community protested his ouster.

As much as I like Paul Mooney, I think his idea for a "voluntary" ban on the word is stupid and and will goad on more stupidity.