Jim wrote:
"Now it depends on who says it. [And to anyone who says
that's not fair, guess what. Neither's life. Now get over it
and watch your f***ing mouth. :-D]"
This idea isn't original to me, and I'm sorry to say I can't
remember who I got it from (possibly Todd Boyd, maybe Randall
Kennedy), but whoever it was pointed out that this is one of
very few slurs whose power has been successfully inverted and
(to a large degree) empowered by the people it was meant to
degrade. The same, usually white, people who complain so much
about having to be careful about, and not being able to use,
a single word of the language ignore the fact that
non-powerful groups have traditionally had plenty of words
they must be careful using.
The debate following Spike Lee's complaints about Tarantino
using the word in his movies was also pretty interesting. Lee
was implying that a white writer simply should not be allowed
to use the words in his scripts (though it's fine for him and
other black writers to use it -- it seems to be an extension
of his blacks, by definiiton, can't be racists argument). Now
there are definitely times that Tarantino has used it pretty
gratuitously -- the "dead n------ dumping ground" scene comes
to mind -- but Lee complained about how many times the Samuel
L Jackson character in Jackie Brown said it (I forget the
exact count). It definitely sounded like a vital part of that
character's speech to me. And Jackson defended QT's use of
the word, though his explanation that it was okay because
Tarantino was some sort of honorary black man because of his
background seemed a stretch (the same argument used to build
Eminem's hip hop cred, though he doesn't use the word, the
one controversial word he shies away from). No, it was okay
to use the word because it was right for the character to use
it -- just as many of us pointed out about the word
fuck.
Mark
ps -- as Jim also pointed out, the word was initially
classificatory, so I guess its meaning has actually been
inverted twice.
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