The N-Word is of course controversial and although it’s moved through various forms from repressive to being owned by certain elements of the black community the word still carries the power to harm, it carries a vicious meaning, one of repression.
It’s debatable if the word should be allowed to be used at all, some calls to push it into obscurity have been made but would such actions would surely just increase the potency of the word. That is at least a point put forward by Lenny Bruce in the early 60s, one of the original political comedians, back in his hey day.
Lenny was of course a white Jewish guy, but he played the jazz clubs and hung around in multi-cultural circles in the 60s. He was arrested for profanities on stage and eventually drove himself to madness trying to defend his own arrests in court.
He often put his feet down when it came to race and relations and one sketch of his puts forward an interesting notion.
Lenny argues that if everyone just used the N-word over and over and over that it’s violence and repression would be eradicated, take away it’s power, own the word. He advocates for all to use it, to kill it!
I would love your thoughts on his words.
The original audio, Dustin Hoffman’s interpretation (from the movie Lenny) and the movie transcript can be seen below:
Are there any niggers here tonight? Could you turn on the house lights, please, and could the waiters and waitresses just stop serving, just for a second? And turn off this spot. Now what did he say? “Are there any niggers here tonight?” I know there’s one nigger, because I see him back there working. Let’s see, there’s two niggers. And between those two niggers sits a kyke. And there’s another kyke— that’s two kykes and three niggers. And there’s a spic. Right? Hmm? There’s another spic. Ooh, there’s a wop; there’s a polack; and, oh, a couple of greaseballs. And there’s three lace-curtain Irish micks. And there’s one, hip, thick, hunky, funky, boogie. Boogie boogie. Mm-hmm. I got three kykes here, do I hear five kykes? I got five kykes, do I hear six spics, I got six spics, do I hear seven niggers? I got seven niggers. Sold American. I pass with seven niggers, six spics, five micks, four kykes, three guineas, and one wop. Well, I was just trying to make a point, and that is that it’s the suppression of the word that gives it the power, the violence, the viciousness. Dig: if President Kennedy would just go on television, and say, “I would like to introduce you to all the niggers in my cabinet,” and if he’d just say “nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger” to every nigger he saw, “boogie boogie boogie boogie boogie,” “nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger” ’til nigger didn’t mean anything anymore, then you could never make some six-year-old black kid cry because somebody called him a nigger at school.
I remember in the ’90s there were many Afro-American artists who were still reclaiming the word to reduce its power. One example could be its use in the song ‘People Everyday’ by Arrested Development. Interestingly, in most sources online that song has now been edited to remove the offensive word.
I would be interested to know when the group took the decision to make this change, and if they ever made any statement about this. I totally understand why they would do this, and also that they might have used it in the first place, but would love to hear their perspective on their change of heart.