(Name-mce) ListServ Black entertainers struggle with the N-word

[bill at billhowe.org]

Commentary:  The use of the "N" word comes up in my classes all the time,
usually raised by white teachers in a rather defensive tone, asking why the
kids can use it but if they did, they would be called racist. I actually
look forward to when this occurs since it is a great time to start being
more open and honest about personal biases. It is a signal to me that the
class is comfortable enough to get more uncomfortable....Bill

 

 

Black entertainers struggle with the N-word

After Richards flap, some comedians say they'll quit using epithet for
laughs



By Darryl Fears

 

Updated: 12:28 a.m. ET Dec. 2, 2006 (Washington Post)


Paul Mooney is a popular black comedian with a foul mouth who's used a nasty
racial epithet as part of his shtick for decades. But when his friend
Michael Richards, who's white, spewed that same epithet during a gig at a
Los Angeles comedy club, Mooney said it "freaked me out" and "filled me with
disgust." 

 

Mooney joined the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) this
week in calling for a moratorium by entertainers who use the n-word, the
nation's ugliest black pejorative. The proposal, spurred by Richards's
racist rant last month, initiated the latest round of a long-standing debate
about the term. Black people have fought over the word for years. And
nonblack hip-hop and rap music lovers now ask, "If black people can use it,
why can't I?"

 

Mooney said he believes Richards "was trying to channel Lenny Bruce," the
edgy comedian who first turned invective into laughs. He was also imitating
"Paul Mooney and a bunch of other people," Mooney added in his mea culpa.
"He had heard it in rap and all that. I'm part of the problem. I contributed
to it, yes."

 

Randall Kennedy, a black Harvard University professor who authored a
controversial book about the word, says he understands its complexity: "It
does have a terrible history. It is a word that quite frankly is steeped in
blood."

 

But over centuries, it underwent a sort of Jekyll and Hyde mutation,
particularly in black communities. "Like so many words, it does mean
different things in different contexts," Kennedy said. "It can be used right
now to terrorize and demean people. It can also be used to say you're my
man, to show solidarity, to satirize racists and put them down."

 

'A romance with the word'

'Which is how Mooney used it in his comedy -- far too much, he said: "I was
having a romance with the word, and I was married to it." But now, Mooney
said, "I'm free of it. I won't be using that word onstage, and I won't be
using the b-word. We're asking the rappers and all the people on Earth to
stop using the word."

 

  

Reaction has been mixed. Some black people said Mooney's stand is principled
and noble. But others, including comedian Dick Gregory, who said he was once
Mooney's mentor and will perform with him today at the District's Lincoln
Theatre, reacted as if the comic had made another joke. Gregory said he
might pledge to continue using the word to poke fun and force Americans to
confront the ugly side of race.

 

That happened in earnest on Nov. 17 when Richards singled out a black patron
as a heckler -- wrongly, it turned out -- and launched into a hate-filled
tirade, rattling off the word like a machine gun and saying that 50 years
ago the man would have been hanging "from a tree." The rant was captured by
a cellphone video camera and distributed on the Web.

 

 

Gregory said he was one of the first to use the word onstage, without
crossing a line as Richards did at the Laugh Factory. In the 1960s, during
the civil rights movement, Gregory joked that when a white restaurant owner
shouted to him and other black protesters that "I don't serve [blacks]," he
dryly replied: "That's okay, because I don't eat 'em."

 

The late Richard Pryor, once the most famous black comedian, rode the word
to fame in the 1970s with chart-topping albums that crossed over into white
culture. Another black comedian, Dave Chappelle, duplicated Pryor's feat by
using the word as slapstick and social commentary on his Comedy Central
cable show.

 

Both Pryor and Chappelle backed away from the word. Pryor vowed to stop
using it after traveling to Africa and saying he saw no one there who fit
the description. Chappelle said his skin crawled when a white youngster
casually used the word while praising one of his TV sketches.

 

The word is so reviled that newspapers, including The Washington Post, often
refuse to print it. Television and radio stations censor it with a bleep.

 

Jackson said the word should be permanently muted. He called on Americans to
not buy the DVD boxed set of the seventh season of "Seinfeld," the hit TV
show on which Richards portrayed the character Kramer.

 

Mooney, who wrote for a number of shows and foulmouthed black humorists,
including Redd Foxx, said he will wean himself from the word like an
alcoholic. "One person can make a difference," he said. The Laugh Factory,
he said, has banned the word.

 

The word is widely used in black entertainment. Comedian Damon Wayans, star
of the syndicated black sitcom "My Wife and Kids," even tried to patent it
for a line of clothing this year. That effort failed, as did a dozen or so
others before his. "I resent the word," Gregory said. "I think it's the
filthiest thing in the history of the planet. But we want to get rid of the
word without really talking about it in America. You don't clean it up by
denying that it exists."

 

Mark Anthony Neal, an associate professor of black popular culture at Duke
University, said the word should be policed in most media but not deleted
from the culture altogether.

 

"Before we can start telling white people who aren't using the word as a
pejorative that you can't use it, we need to be honest about how we've used
the words," Neal said.

 

Richards clearly crossed a line, he said, then added, "How much political
capital do we want to use in admonishing Michael Richards? Should we worry
about people who call us [that word] or about people who treat us like
them."

 





Bill Howe 
 <http://www.billhowe.org/> http://www.billhowe.org

 
Past-President 

National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME)
 <http://www.nameorg.org/> http://www.nameorg.org

 

 

 

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