The N Word

Discussion about the use of the "N" word has been very much in the media lately after Michael Richards ("Kramer's") public disintegration into spewing that word and reminding a black audience member at The Laugh Factory of the good old days of lynchings. If you've seen the video of his racist tirade, you know that it wasn't an attempt at politically incorrect humor but rather was the verbalization of some deep seated feelings about African Americans. The way it hit the media confirms that no one took it as an attempt at humor.

The timing of all this came just a few days after I'd watched the movie Crash, a rather deep film about everyday race relations in LA. The movie really made me think about the racism that's buried deep down in most people's hearts. I tend to run around thinking of myself as a very progressive, non-racist, live and let live individual. Watching that movie made me realize that even those of us with the best of intentions harbor some stereotypical view of people of different races that certainly could be seen as racist.

The N word has long given me a tinge of nausea. I wrote once about Richard Pryor teaching me to use the word and then teaching me why it should never be used. One of my favorite columnists, Leonard Pitts, has written a wonderful column discussing how the word has always been ugly and that there simply is no rationalization for it's use under any circumstances, by people of any color. It makes no difference if it's spelled with an "er" or an "a" at the end, the word simply carries the history and the connotations that a few hundred years of usage during lynchings, beatings, legal discrimination, voting suppression have given it.

Now that some high level black entertainers, leaders and politicians are finally saying enough, maybe we'll start to hear it less and less in the lexicon of today's rap/gangsta oriented youth. It's well past time. The word is simply a word of hate. Hatred by a an non-African American person towards someone who is or the ingrained, self-hatred many African Americans often feel subconsciously. The word cant be cleansed or made ok. It just aint possible.