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Quoting the N-Word

  
  

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illmatic
08:59 / 03.03.06
Tuna Ghost: I think your post gets at what I was trying to express.

""But what about those who hear it and are made uncomfortable by your use of it, but would rather not cause a scene and call you on it?" This situation is so kind of weirdly abstract, that does it even need answering?

To a degree it should be obvious anyway - the answer should be NO, unless you have some kind of context of friendship or understanding with whoever your speaking to, that gives permission to use that word.

What I was trying to get at my closing comments in the question above isn't that interrogating our use of language and subjective attitudes is unimportant. It's rather that there seems to be a tacit assumption that this conversation is taking place in a largely "white only" space and coming out of this, I'm interested in the issues that segregate us in our personal and professional lives. I'm actually a lot MORE interested in these and see them as much more important than this intense focus on correct use of language.

I hope this makes sense.
 
 
miss wonderstarr
14:15 / 03.03.06
What's so attractive about this word that makes us want to start a thread about whether or not we can use it, to try to think of ways and situations which will allow us to "get away with it"?

Sorry I have been (and still am) far from home and checking this from internet cafe. Just to say that this isn't how I intended the thread and that those questions weren't meant to be inherent in my original post -- I wasn't trying to seek a way round self-censorship, or work out excuses -- I was in an unstructured way raising the situation I'd found myself in, where adopting an artist's voice and effectively playing at being in his cultural position led me to say something I wouldn't otherwise say. I didn't mean to ask "how can I get away with doing this again, cause it felt good to use the bad word!!!!"
 
 
*
19:41 / 03.03.06
Okay, sorry, I guess I did imply that was your underlying intention in starting the thread, when what I meant was that's a social current that I think this thread is becoming a part of. I don't believe this is so much a problem with individual posters, as something we could stand to work on as a society. The driving force behind this discussion, as behind most other discussions among white people of when the nsplat is permissible, seems to be "When can we (WHITE PEOPLE) justifiably use a word which denigrates them (BLACK PEOPLE) without looking like bad people?" Which is a kind of argument which tends to divide people into a few different groups:

1) White-identified people explaining why they use the word in various circumstances and how this doesn't make them bad people
2) White-identified people explaining why they refuse to use the word under any circumstances and how this makes them better than other people
3) People of color who are placed in a position of having to respond to this dichotomy to which they are inherently outsiders, EVEN THOUGH the word under discussion rightfully belongs to them (and they can choose to A) be used as references for white people's good behaviour, or B) if they critique white people's behaviour they risk being labelled strident and oversensitive, or C) they can take up a position even further outside the discussion by critiquing the nature of the discussion)
4) People on the sidelines going "WTF" with various degrees of reflection, personal experience, and discomfort.

As Illmatic points out, what this thread is not doing very successfully yet is getting into what effects the word really has, probably because the nature of the discussion and the space it's being held in makes the people who are most clearly able to see these effects less likely than white people to take part. Of course this is an abstract problem to me: I'm white. As such, it's far easier for this thread to affect me by making me feel good about myself for being such an anti-racist than it is for it to affect me by making me think extra hard about what effects my behaviour has on others.

I'm reminded of white people who hear a story about a situation a person of color has to deal with regularly because of racism, and then respond with something like "Hearing about that makes me feel so sad (or angry)!" The problem, as I see it, is that white people like myself spend too much energy talking about racism in terms of how it affects us, and not enough energy dealing with racism in terms of how it affects people who actually suffer because of it.
 
 
*
19:46 / 03.03.06
(I do also want to point out, for people taking note and getting irritated with me, that I'm aware I look like a dick in this thread, for the following reasons: I'm still being self-righteous about how anti-racist I am, I'm still acting like I have knowledge which I don't have, and I don't have knowledge which it's really inexcusable for me NOT to have. I'm not sure what the proper non-dickish thing is to do, so I'm just going to go out on a limb and make my mistakes and hope people are kind enough to point them out to me however it occurs to them to do so.)
 
 
eddie thirteen
05:10 / 05.03.06
I don't think you're being a dick, Id, but let's be honest here -- no one can be an objective authority on these issues. You have to accept the idea that your own position is both where you're coming from (you = your ethnicity, race, age, gender, etc., plus all the things that uniquely make you yourself; that last meaning as separate from everybody else who shares your ethnicity, race, age, gender, etc. -- the further you drill down, the more the ranks of that group will shrink, but we're still talking about quite a few people until we add that last categorization, whereupon the number becomes one) and what you figure is correct for all from your own perspective -- which, to my mind, is not inherently of greater or lesser value than anyone else's, and is also not strictly the product of your various social stata...ii...uses...shit, I used to know this....

Dwelling too much on the "but who am I to say this?" doesn't accomplish much, because it's not like you can help but be whoever you are. Which sounds uncomfortably like I should be signing off with "and that's one to grow on" or "knowing is half the battle!" but fuck it.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
14:40 / 17.03.06
There's a draft post saved somewhere that I never posted to this thread - will have to come back and do so this weekend (hopefully).

For now, I wanted to put another spin on the issue - one that really makes me think maybe this thread could move to the Music forum, if only to help said forum out...

Recently Popchor Berlin's cover of '4 My People' by Missy Elliott has come to my attention, and I've been listening to it a lot. It's a great song, and a great cover. However, I cannot admit to feeling a little ambivalent about the inclusion, in full, of Eve's verse. I can debate it either, way, y'know, but there's no getting away from the fact that to hear that last line (the one that starts "see him when the shit is over") intoned by these people makes me a little... queasy:



Mindless Self Indulgence have covered Method Man's 'Bring The Pain' in similar fashion, and I felt much the same misgivings about that. I understand the context, I can understand the argument that when Meth said "n***** get tossed to the side" he probably meant anyone who tried to get in his way, rather than anything racially-specific, and that therefore MSI ought to feel free to sing the same thing. Even so. "N***** get tossed to the side":



Thoughts?
 
 
eddie thirteen
04:22 / 18.03.06
At the risk of sounding sexist -- or, worse yet, at the risk of joining Warren Ellis in the camp of those who have yet to receive the memo that the whole Suicide Girls thing is now officially cliche and 100% ovah -- the woman on the right...yeah. That's my first thought. My second thought...

I think, at best, white bands using the n-word -- never mind whose song it was originally -- show a certain measure of naivete. Because, yeah, the n-word seems mostly to be used in hip-hop to essentially mean "dude," and I guess it's theoretically possible that a white vocalist could do the same song, mean the same thing, and not see how there could be anything wrong with that. Because this is the 21st century, etc.

Now to me, that sounds ridiculous -- but. A guy I know in his early twenties recently posted to his LJ something to the effect of his generation having been raised almost entirely without prejudice. Which is, of course, totally fucking preposterous. I understand where he's coming from -- someone born in the '80s has come of age well after the Civil Rights era, well after the sexual revolution, well after women have been commonly accepted in the workplace, and...again, etc. The social progress of the past few decades is hard to discount. But again -- naivete. If one grows up, as my friend has, in a wealthy, predominantly caucasian area where liberal politics are generally accepted as the way things should be, and if one has had little direct experience with everywhere else, then I guess it would be easy to look around at one's peers and say all those -isms are a thing of the past, or at least that they soon will be once all those prejudiced old bastards die off. I suspect that my friend will be perhaps painfully disabused of this notion in the years to come...but my point is, there really are people who think it's all been taken care of but the shouting, and I guess someone like that could feel comfortable casually dropping the n-word (with the "a" appended). It's a totally alien mindset to me, but okay.

On the other hand, a white band that uses the n-word may well just be going for a reaction. A "*gasp!**choke!*h-how could you say that?" reaction. Which also strikes me as...not naive, really, but adolescent. We-didn't-write-the-song-we-just-sang-it is, I guess, kind of a safe way to be "subversive." Then there's the whole joke/novelty aspect...I dunno if that's really tasteful, but I suppose tastelessness is kind of the point.

Hmmmmm. I guess they could also just really like the song.
 
 
matthew.
04:26 / 18.03.06
Why are you reading some random's LJ? In a word: laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame.
 
 
eddie thirteen
04:29 / 18.03.06
Are you calling me out as lame?! I will take you ON! (Are you drinking, Matt? Because that'd totally make this fight better. For me, I mean. Then we can fight a drunk dog.) Anyway, it's not a "random" if you know the person, right?
 
 
matthew.
04:31 / 18.03.06
Yeah, I meant the LJ was lame. Sorry, not clear. I'm not drinking, but I am fucking tired. Apologies. Tried to be funny and was not.
 
 
eddie thirteen
04:36 / 18.03.06
It's cool -- I wasn't actually offended, and am also pretty tired. I concur that LJ/blogs are, as a rule, lame.
 
 
matthew.
04:43 / 18.03.06
Back on topic, I think the
We-didn't-write-the-song-we-just-sang-it
is a lame excuse. It's rationalizing ignorance, I think. They know for a fact that some people will find it offensive, but not in that gender-bending, America-is-evil kind of way that Marilyn Manson gets away with.
(For the record, I don't like MM's music. I just think he's a smart guy. A good interview subject generally)
People who go out of their way to be offensive are, as you put it, eddie, adolescent. It's time for these bands to grow up, in my opinion.

(Suicide Girls are a cliche now? I think they're hot)
 
 
eddie thirteen
05:03 / 18.03.06
Marilyn Manson is smart, and his interviews crack me up. For the record, I'm a big fan of his Resident Evil score and I think the band's covers are usually pretty entertaining (the originally stuff is typically godawful, though).

Suicide Girls is so five years ago. It's not easy for me to say that, because it's a look that gets me, too, but -- I dunno, at some point around when small-of-the-back tattoos became so commonplace that they received their own sexist epithet ("tramp stamp"), I'm pretty sure it all just kinda blurred over into the mainstream. That and it's a type that seems to drive fanboys wild, and you know that can't be good news for its cultural currency. Like I said, this hurts me too, but we all have to move on sometime.

I think I've officially rotted the thread. Man....
 
 
Phex: Dorset Doom
05:49 / 18.03.06
Okay, back on track: Holiday in Cambodia.

This is a song I like, a song I sing along to without censoring the 'bragging how you know...' line. The song, or at least that verse, satirises white college kid's use of other cultures to show how hip they are, the 'I kinda know why the caged bird sings' thing. The context is important, and like anyone a black listener can see what the writer (Jello Biafra) is saying (IMHO, white kids feign respect of black culture while deep down still clinging to stereotypes of it).
Like I've said, I don't have any problem singing along to this song, or playing it with black friends in the room (My gut says I'd have to bleep it when playing it on the radio mind you). Am I wrong? Is Jello Biafra a big fat racist?
 
 
miss wonderstarr
06:33 / 18.03.06
Glad this thread has perked up -- the only issue about moving it to Music would be that it might die there, but that's a circular argument.

One interesting development for me since my initial post. I was actually referring up top to the mash-up track "Brush Your Bittersweet Shoulders Off", Verve vs Jay-Z, instead of the real thing.

The difference it makes to have the rap merged with the indie anthem is really worth another discussion -- I find the same with Missy Elliot mash-ups, where the original backing track is very spare and brutal, and combining it with Love Will Tear Us Apart or Faith gives it a whole new tone.

But anyway -- I started listening to the Jay-Z original instead, where he makes all kinds of menaces and brags at the start of the track ("tuned to the mu-fuu'in greatest... turn the music up in the headphones... brush yo shoulders off, n*gga").

I work with a lot of black British students, and frankly I can't walk down the corridor or through the courtyard listening to this -- partly in case I accidentally mouthed along with it, partly in case anyone overheard the trigger-word from my headphones (after I followed Hov's advice and turned it up) and partly because it seems kind of wrong to have "n*gga" filtering my perceptions as I'm looking at young black people.

This isn't a "hey, I'm white but so fuckin sensitive" post : just an interesting further dimension that I didn't even feel right listening to the thing (privately) in certain environments.
 
 
miss wonderstarr
06:40 / 18.03.06
Another thought -- there is precedent for censoring or just adapting a lyric when someone covers it and gives it a new spin.

Johnny Cash's cover of NIN's "Hurt", as I recall, altered "I wear this crown of shit" to "I wear this crown of thorns". That's a born-again Christian covering a track by what I believe is a more nihilistic, atheistic outfit, and he wasn't going to sing the original line.

What the change does is give the song a new tack, just as Cash's cover of "Personal Jesus" felt totally sincere while the Mode's original felt like a wry joke.

But Cash was already changing the song just by arranging and delivering it differently. Surely when someone covers a song we expect a new interpretation -- according to the new artist's persona, talents, take, genre, cultural position.

For a white artist to change the line "n*gga" in a track originally penned and rapped by a black artist isn't necessarily censorship at all (and that wouldn't automatically be a bad thing) or over-sensitivity -- it's a recognition that when someone different covers a song, it becomes a different song, in a different voice, from a different person. Any claim that you have to stay authentically to the original (and so you can't not say "n*gga" if the original artist said it) is kind of bullshit... of course you don't, any more than you have to stick to the same instruments or time signature.
 
 
Char Aina
08:09 / 18.03.06
i think its diffuicult to find acceptable substitutes for rap. finding something that rhymes and scans and makes sense in the context of the lyric is hard.
wigger rhymes, but has some pretty unfortunate connotations of its own.
you'd have to drop the line (my huckleberry friend) or rewrite it completely.
 
 
miss wonderstarr
08:35 / 18.03.06
In the radio edit of Busta Rhymes' "Fire It Up", it's replaced with "my people":

"Flipmode be people you wanna form a team with... them people that used to be getting money fre-quent, until they start takin my people to the pre-cinct", and so on.
 
 
miss wonderstarr
12:04 / 18.03.06
Thinking about this further, a substitution would seem quite possible in circumstances where a rap was covered by white artists (or just a white fan who doesn't feel entitled to or comfortable with the n-word)

if n = "guys" then substitute "people"

if n = "you, buddy" then substitute "brotha".

eg. from my original case:

"if you're feelin like a pimp, brotha, go an brush your shoulders off
ladies is pimps too, go an brush your shoulders off
people is crazy, baby, don't forget that boy told you
get, that,
dirt off your shoulder"

I think "brotha" is more or less OK for a white person to say when performing hip-hop?
 
 
illmatic
07:48 / 19.03.06
because it seems kind of wrong to have "n*gga" filtering my perceptions as I'm looking at young black people

Why? Really, why? Are you that unsure of yourself and your attitudes that simply hearing a word on headphones is going to somehow going to affect your interactions with them negatively? How does the fact that they are in all likelyhood listening to very similar music themselves affect things?

I work with a lot of black British students

Well, here's a thought. Why don't you actually ask them what they think about these issues? Instead of discussing this in the abstract, on the bodiless internet, in an all WHITE space, with a load of WHITE people, why not discuss this with some real live black people, y'know, the people these issues actually affect?

I'm sorry, Kovacs, I don't mean to get at you (well, not too much), I'm simply trying to illustrate why this discussion is pissing me off. I teach also, and have a lot of black pupils, and I never shy away from these discussions, which come up frequently. My own background gives me the confidence to talk about this issues a bit more directly, maybe, but I've found that pupils really respond to this, largely because they're used to white teachers dancing round the issue for fear of offending. Put yourself on the line, for chrissakes.

I guarantee it'll be a lot more interesting than these strangely abstract discussions about Johnny Cash (what's he got to do with it anyway? Fuckin' honky).
 
 
miss wonderstarr
08:58 / 19.03.06
Why? Really, why? Are you that unsure of yourself and your attitudes that simply hearing a word on headphones is going to somehow going to affect your interactions with them negatively? How does the fact that they are in all likelyhood listening to very similar music themselves affect things?

Well, I think the difference between a black person using the word "n*gga" and a white person doing the same is similar to a black person hearing it as opposed to a white one. That's the difference in terms of a word belonging more to one community than another, and it having the potential to be used as a neutral or positive by one community, and the history of being used as a negative by the other.

No, I didn't mean anything so direct as that the music will shape what I say or do. I'm sorry if you don't understand it but I was just expressing a kind of unease about walking around black people with some secret voice in my ear saying "n*gga... n*gga". Maybe if you interrogate it, it sounds stupid, but as I said at thread-top, I was feeling OK here about just putting down unstructured, honest, maybe irrational thoughts and responses for discussion.



I work with a lot of black British students

Well, here's a thought. Why don't you actually ask them what they think about these issues? Instead of discussing this in the abstract, on the bodiless internet, in an all WHITE space, with a load of WHITE people, why not discuss this with some real live black people, y'know, the people these issues actually affect?

A few issues here. Firstly, I don't think talking on the internet = some bodiless abstract. We're real live people talking to each other in a space no more virtual and abstract than as if we were on the phone. We're communicating through our bodies' interaction through technology, not through a mind-meld. People often speak very personally and emotionally here. You use "abstract" again below: I don't see why it's more abstract to talk about a Cash cover on Barbelith than it would be in real life.

Secondly, is this really a WHITE space? I don't know. I really don't. I don't know who I'm talking to unless they say so. (OK, that does support your point about abstraction!) I agree that if this thread is all white folks talking about racial language, then it has limits, though I don't think it's redundant. But I didn't assume that only white people would or could post, and I don't know if only white people have posted.

Thirdly, yes you make a fair point. If I really am just putting these ideas and concerns about my relationship with hip-hop and its racially-loaded language out in a safe space with a certain small group of educated Western whites, then yes, that is safe and contained, and maybe as you seem to imply, it's cowardly.

In practice, I can see other problems arising if I were to try to ask some black students how they felt about white people rapping along to lyrics that contain "n*gga". It could seem pretty patronising -- "hey kids, I've gathered you black people here today to ask your opinion".

Personally I do avoid asking questions about racism directly to black students, because I want to avoid any idea that they're the in-house experts to be called upon whenever it comes up -- like if you were teaching Orientalism and kept looking at the one Japanese student as if they should know all about it.

As it would be off-topic in terms of the actual stuff I teach, it might feel a little unorthodox and uncomfortable. Working-class black students aged 20 perceive, I think, a significant distance between me and them in terms of our position at the university, our age, culture and class as well as ethnicity. White students are going to feel a similar distance. And I suspect they kind of like and need that distance, too; I don't think they want me acting on their level.

But... I think it's a genuinely worthwhile idea to think about. If it was more "on-topic" within a straight film curriculum, I wouldn't hesitate so much. (That is, if I was still in cultural studies, it could easily be brought in.) As it would be such a tangent topic now, it is more something to mull over.

Anyway, I take this point on board.

I didn't think the Johnny Cash bit was so irrelevant, as we were talking about how someone from a different cultural position would change the lyrics of a song and still retain its integrity, just give it a different direction.
 
 
illmatic
22:00 / 19.03.06
Kovacs/Miss Wonderstarr: Thanks for a thoughtful answer.

I was just expressing a kind of unease... Maybe if you interrogate it, it sounds stupid, but as I said at thread-top, I was feeling OK here about just putting down unstructured, honest, maybe irrational thoughts and responses for discussion.

Well, TBH I appreciate you doing so, and I appreciate you qualifying it in such a way. I think it's these kind of odd, subjective, irrational reactions to the subjects of race that it's important to ask questions about, to present and to explore. What do you think the source of your unease is?

This is what I see as “personalizing” the conversation as opposed to "abstraction" - what I mean by this is minimal personal content, and very little "consequence" from those discussing it... I could see a lot of this in the discussion above. "Is it right from Musician X to make Statement Y" - all very hypothetical, at least in my eyes.

I think we are all slightly screwed up in our attitudes here, by our awareness of the conflicting narratives around race and identity. One of the things that tends to cut through all this for me is person to person contact – though, as you point out, trying to engineer this has problems of its own.

is this really a WHITE space?

I think so. I do think Barbelith is largely, a white space. A number of things feed into my perception – Firstly, I've met about 20-30 posters on here IRL, and all of them bar one has been white. I’m aware of a few other non-white posters but only two or three. Secondly, I assume people are white, as on the most part, they don’t have a problematic experience of race, and people do divulge a lot of their lives and problems here – it’s kind of like the ambient background noise is set for whiteness (as, in light of the Fem 101 thread, perhaps it’s set for “maleness”?). I realise there are probably some dodgy assumptions in that statement but I’m not going to unpack them right now. Some other things feed this perception – a lot of the concerns of the board seem to emerge from academia, which I see as a middle-class, white field (open to correction on that also). There's also a clas/race correlation and I'm sure this affects things like internet access at home and at work.

Having said that, I agree that the conversation can still be valuable, but I’m just drawing attention to its limits, and stating my own discomfort with certain aspects of it.

Personally I do avoid asking questions about racism directly to black students, because I want to avoid any idea that they're the in-house experts to be called upon whenever it comes up -- like if you were teaching Orientalism and kept looking at the one Japanese student as if they should know all about it

Yeah, I appreciate what you're saying here. It's something you have to handle very sensitively. Possibly someone with directly relevant teaching experience could comment? (i.e. on the identity side of cultural studies – Ex?). On the other hand, a complete exclusion of racial matters seems a bit"playing safe" - this is only a subjective thing but I feel like my pupils respond to my willingness to talk about these things, because it gets passed over in other lessons. I appreciate personal matters might be not be on a syllabus, but even with film, how do your students feel about the racial representations they are confronted with? Or the Quentin Tarintino stuff discussed above? You might not want to ask them about the n-bomb directly, but I've found discussing personal experiences of race and identity quite illuminating and they tend to emerge from many different areas of study.

I teach a younger age group, and the closest I’ve come to a topic directly relevant is media representations of race, but race and related discussion come up quite a lot just out of the way the kids interact, their/my interest in music etc. But as I said, it’s perhaps easier for me, because of my background.

The Johnny Cash thing was just a silly quip BTW!
 
 
miss wonderstarr
10:27 / 20.03.06
Fair points and interesting questions, Illmatic.

What do you think the source of your unease is?

This is what I see as “personalizing” the conversation as opposed to "abstraction" - what I mean by this is minimal personal content, and very little "consequence" from those discussing it... I could see a lot of this in the discussion above. "Is it right from Musician X to make Statement Y" - all very hypothetical, at least in my eyes.


I suppose the source of my unease is (irrational perhaps) that while I don't imagine hearing certain words will lead me to parrot them, they may in some way shape my perception and discourse. So, if I'm listening a lot to hip-hop that uses "n*gga" to mean, in a friendly or neutral way, "mate", "guy", it could slip out if I was jokily slipping into a certain type of voice. And I think that would be offensive even if I meant it as a harmless performance of a certain cultural voice and vocabulary. (I might similarly, after listening to a lot of Morrissey, find myself responding to someone's conversation cue about being "still ill" with a Morrissey impression, or after listening to the Fall, be inclined to come out with Mark E. Smith-isms.)

Just as I think that some Tarantino fans, who often like to rehearse and practice lines from his script, may find themselves deliberately or unconsciously repeating snappy dialogue about "dead n*gga storage" or one of the lines given to Samuel L Jackson above. And again, I think that could sound pretty bad even if you were just performing something you liked from a film. Your intention wouldn't be much of an excuse.

I think so. I do think Barbelith is largely, a white space...

Largely convincing though it would be interesting to see how people identify in terms of ethnicity.

I appreciate personal matters might be not be on a syllabus, but even with film, how do your students feel about the racial representations they are confronted with? Or the Quentin Tarintino stuff discussed above? You might not want to ask them about the n-bomb directly, but I've found discussing personal experiences of race and identity quite illuminating and they tend to emerge from many different areas of study.


Yeah, it's certainly not as if it ever comes up.

I believe I do explore it when there's an opportunity -- it would be offensive, actually, not to raise questions and challenges about some of the clips we look at, and to just leave them as they stand.

It would feel kind of shoehorned in to ask these specific questions in any class I'm currently involved with. But as I say, I think more general issues do come up and I do try to facilitate that kind of discussion -- not out of duty but because it seems both obvious and interesting to do so.
 
 
grant
14:08 / 24.10.06
I found this rather interesting piece in Editor & Publisher today -- it came out a couple weeks ago.

The Washington Post assistant managing editor for copy desks, Don Podesta -- the "style guru" for the paper -- no longer wants writers to use "the N-word" as a euphemism.

Podesta wrote that it would be better for Post reporters to "take a few more words and say something like 'a well-known racial epithet.'"

In a telephone interview Monday afternoon, Podesta said the issue came up first as an aside during a conversation with an African American colleague.

"She said, 'You know, I'm really sick of this term, it's really trivializing and childish ... and we should find something more adult" when referencing the word, Podesta said.

Other African American journalists told Podesta they found the word "annoying," a few suggested simply running the word, at least on first reference.

"The word is so freighted with meaning, it's like, wink-wink, we're saying the word, and we're not saying it," Podesta said.

Podesta noted in his memo that the newspaper has printed the actual word 1,254 times since 1977, "mostly in the titles of plays and books, but also in news stories about racial harassment."

Last June the black-owned and -oriented Chicago Defender stirred some controversy with a story about the African American community's view of the word that carried the word in a front-page headline.

"Black America, isn't it about time we made up our mind about the word nigger?" the headline read.

"If we (at the Defender) can't raise the issue, then who can?" the paper's executive editor, Roland Martin, said at the time.

Interesting thoughts, and funny that "n****r" didn't come up as an option.
 
 
miss wonderstarr
16:46 / 24.10.06
"She said, 'You know, I'm really sick of this term, it's really trivializing and childish ... and we should find something more adult" when referencing the word, Podesta said.

That does seem true: it's like "shhh, you-know-who". You can almost imagine Andy Millman or David Brent giggling and winking, "ooh, musn't say it... that'd be racist... hee hee". I almost like "the N-Bomb" better ~ something I've only ever heard on the American Apprentice, alongside "the F-Bomb".
 
  

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