DiversityInc - January/February 2008

out that in Indianapolis in 1988, an all-white neighborhood did not object to the state establishing a residential treatment center for convicted child molesters in its neighborhood. However, after the center was converted into a shelter for approximately 40 homeless veterans, 25 of whom were black, a group of whites protested the “encroachment of ‘niggers’ and burned a cross.”

Chapman is not the only public figure to use the N-word. Michael Richards, who starred as Kramer on “Seinfeld,” was probably the most well-known celebrity to use it publicly in recent years. Richards launched into an N-word tirade at the Los Angeles club The Laugh Factory in 2006 after black audience members heckled him. The Laugh Factory’s owner has banned the use of the word from his clubs. Richards, after apologizing, has kept out of the spotlight.

More gruesome, however, was the news of Megan Williams, a black West Virginia woman who was kidnapped by six whites, then raped and beaten while they called her the N-word.

CONT

IS THERE A DOUBLE STANDARD?

White, racist politicians, angry white celebrities and white criminals are not the only people to use the N-word. It is used regularly by black rappers to describe other black men. Over the years, as rap became ubiquitous, so did use of the N-word among rap’s audience.

Black Americans have used the N-word from the earliest days of its use. Blacks, however, used the N-word in jokes to lighten the

scourge of Jim Crow racism.

“To poke fun at the grisly
phenomenon of lynching, African
Americans told of the black man
who, upon seeing a white woman
pass by, said, ‘Lawd, will I ever?’ A
white man responded, ‘No, nigger,
never.’ The black man replied,
‘Where there’s life, there’s hope.’
And the white man declared, ‘Where
there’s a nigger, there’s a rope,’”
recounts Kennedy in his book.
Poking fun at the tragic reality
of Jim Crow segregation in the
South and general racist behavior
in the North was a means by which
black Americans lifted the burden
of subjugation based on skin color.
“I can understand the double
standard to a point,” says conserva-
tive author David Horowitz. “It’s
like Jews can tell jokes on Jews, but
if someone else does it, then it has
a different ring to it. I have to say,
though, there’s a little difference
with the frequency—you know
Jews don’t go around calling each
other kikes.”

Richard Pryor brought to the stage that “little difference,” the tradition of joking about racism. Effectively, he showed the white world that black Americans used the word but did so to poke fun

and r elease tension. Pryor even used the N-word in the title of his hit 1970s comedy routine “That

N*****’s Crazy,” which earned Pryor a 1974 Grammy award for best comedy recording.

“The first time, 29 years ago, I opened my club The Laugh Factory on the Sunset Strip and Richard Pryor was on my stage and he used the N-word so many times that afterwards I had a talk with him,” recalls Jamie Masada, owner of The Laugh Factory. “I said, ‘Richard, why use that word? Isn’t there a lot

of pain in it?’ Because I myself am Jewish and people have called me names and it’s painful.”

Pryor told Masada he wanted to diminish the N-word’s meaning. “He said the word has so much poison and pain, ‘I’m trying to make it so that if someone calls a bunch of black people the N-word, they won’t be so hurt,’” recalls Masada.

While Pryor brought to the public the black use of the N-word, rap artists made it fashionable. Arguably, it’s the ubiquitous use of the word by rap artists when referring to men along with the omnipresence of rap that has created a so-called double standard.

Rapper Marshall “Eminem” Mathers, who is white and has “assumed many of the distinctive mannerisms of his black rap colleagues, making himself into a ‘brother’ ... in his music, his diction, his gait, his clothes, his associations … refuses to say any version of [the N-word],” notes Kennedy.

“That word,” Kennedy quotes Mathers as saying, “is not even in my vocabulary.”

“When others use it, it jostles us, startles us and angers us because they don’t necessarily use it i n a friendly way,” says Dr. Julianne Malveaux, president of Bennett

College for Women. She adds that when black people use the N-word, “It’s like, ‘my brother, my man, my cousin, my dude or my boy.’ It’s almost taking something ugly and putting sugar on it.”

Kennedy quotes Ice Cube, a black rapper, actor, and film producer, who said: “When we call each other ‘nigger,’ it means no harm. But if a white person uses it, it’s something different, it’s a racist word.”