Sharon's Muse.... Let's chat over coffee while I ponder some things
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Sharon's Muse.... Let's chat over coffee while I ponder some things |
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Name::Sharon Cullars
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Sunday, November 26, 2006 On "Nigger" and "Nigga" In the wake of the Michael Richards' rant caught on tape (and no, I'm not linking to it; you all have probably already seen it by now anyway), I have actually read comments by some apologists defending Richards as though they know something other than what the the tape says - that Richards is a racist. These folks want to believe that "Kramer" was having a bad night, that some racist hecklers egged him on, and that "nigger" should be taken in context with a comedy schtick gone wrong. After all, Chris Rock and other black comedians say "nigga," why can't "Kramer?" Let me take that from a couple of levels. Let's go with the more simplistic and visceral explanation. You might call your momma a bitch (and this is always wrong if you don't know it) and you may or may not get slapped by said momma or another family member. Now, let someone outside the family call your momma "bitch", and it's going to get ugly pretty fast and you'll be the one throwing the first punch. But let me clear this up really fast. No one should be calling any woman bitch period (another argument, another post). And when it's said, there's a level of hate being reached for. You're not stroking a woman with the word; you're trying to wound. On the more complicated level, there are those who say that "nigga" and "nigger" have different connotations. They don't. Even though the first is an attempt to neutralize the second, folks, it ain't working. When a black person calls out nigga supposedly as a term of affection, it signals a defeat. Yeah, they can try to "take back the word" as Whoopi tried to do with the Ted Danson debacle a decade or so ago, because after all "sticks and stones" right? Let me tell you something - words are potent and no one who calls herself or himself an author doesn't know that. The world was supposedly built by a word; wars stem from words; so does death. And a race that has been vilified with a word that was coined just for them and has never signalled anything good in their existence cannot bleed out the venom in the word by "taking it back" or using it "affectionately." If you as a black person want to signify some racial unity, some sort of otherness that's going to describe our blackness in greeting, "nigga" ain't the word. And we as a creative folk should have long ago been able to coin a word of greeting that encompasses our unity without degrading us. So there really isn't an excuse for black entertainers to go there with "nigga" and just because they do, don't think this is accepted by the race as a whole. It's not. Even the comedians and rappers who seem to have the word tatooed on their asses really don't buy into their own defense of the word. They can call each other "nigga" to the cows come home, and it's only a sad case of self-delusion. They have accepted their branding, have conceded defeat. They have become "Toby," the name beaten into Kunta Kinte as he forever said goodbye to freedom. Most of these self-ascribed "niggas" know the venom of the word even as they call it out to one another, even as they syncopate it to a beat, even as they spew it out to their audience. And there's a difference when the word is the point of a comic piece, such as when Chris Rock expounds on the difference between a "nigger" and a "black person." Because he's riffing on something we in the black race know, but want to keep secret: when some black people go there with "nigger," they mean it, they mean it with the depth and breath and everything the word was meant to connotate and forever will. And how do I know: because as comedian Sinbad notes in a CNN interview (Sinbad was backstage the night of the rant), all of us go to that place where we seek to wound. So yes, I have said the word and meant it in my heart those times I have christened another of my race with the word. Just as I have said "bitch" and meant it. Because when you let hate zip through you even for a moment, you seek to wound at that moment and you "go there." So let's get this straight. The venom of "nigger" is never going to be obsfucated, nullified, destroyed. In the end, even Richard Pryor knew that when he vowed never to use the word in his standup. And Richards and his apologists also know that. When Richards said it that night, he meant it. His defenders can talk rings about his not being a racist and it's not going to fly. Outside of his prior incidents of racism and anti-semitism coming to light here and here, even if he had never said that word prior to that night, as Steve Gilliard notes, the man took it to another level. As disturbing as the nigger litany was, what Richards apologists seem to wax over with some sort of whitewashing (ironic word, ain't it?) is the statement about lynching that Richards hurled at the black men in his audience. Let's analogize. Another vile comic, Andrew Rice Clay, made a living out of his misogynistic statements, but imagine his telling a couple of female audience members, "I'll show you what I'll do to you bitches with my dick rammed up your ass." Signifying rape? Yeah, that's crossing the line. Just as Richards saying that fifty years ago "we" (as though he identifies with the lynchers) "would have had you niggers hanging up a tree with a pitchfork up your ass..." Signifying lynching and rape (inanimate object rammed up the ass classifies as such)? You damn skippy, he crossed the line of no return (at least with me) as well as exposed a "black" heart. (why does the word"black" have to signify negativity? - another topic for another post). The CNN interviewer asked Sinbad whether Richards could ever come back from this. In the end, Sinbad said that in Hollywood, Richards could salvage his career because Hollywood feeds off of these moments. Unfortunately, he's right. Because if Hollywood could bestow an Oscar on a director who drugged and raped a thirteen-year-old girl just twenty years prior, then it will forgive Richards his little racial rant. Because Richards only said out loud what many of them feel in their hearts anyway. He is symptomatic of backstage Hollywood and closed door America. But whether Richards can ever come back from that dark place in his soul, only he and God knows. Labels: Racism
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