Posted by
L Gravel on Monday, November 27, 2006 11:59:22 PM
From
FoxNews/AP, we get this important story:
The Rev. Jesse Jackson and others said they will meet with TV networks, film companies and musicians to discuss the "n-word."
Asked about free-speech issues, Jackson said the word is "unprotected."
U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., charged that only situations such as the Richards incident turn mainstream media attention to issues involving the black community.
"This is not simply about whether or not the black community forgives or forgets, this is about understanding that this is pervasive, that this happens in all of our institutions, one way or the other," Waters said.
No surprise here -- this is how the racial profiteers make their profit, by waging war on symbols. Inanities abound, of course. If the n-word were successfully stricken from the nation's vocabulary and stuffed in the garbage can alongside the rebel flag, it wouldn't provide one job for a black person, much less put one dollar in his/her pocket. Maxine Waters, as usual, smears everyone with her comment. And the TV networks? Which episode of
Desperate Housewives does Rev. Jackson want to discuss?
Over the decades, our society has given tremendous power to... the word. We have built it up as that great, nuclear
thing that lurks out there; so awesome, so terrible, that no one can even dare utter it.
I say let's go the other way -- let's drag it out into the open and drain it of its power. The way black comedians have been doing for years. The way Mel Brooks did with
Blazing Saddles. Treat not the word as if it's sacred; rather, throw it around like something common, like "pale" or "freckled" or "telephone."
Tear the word out by its roots. I'm no linguist, but the word sounds to be a slang pronunciation of the word "negro," as in "United Negro College Fund." And negro is Spanish for "black." Let slip all the baggage. It serves no one, save the profiteers.
Jackson & Co. claim they want a utopia in which the word is never spoken. Here is a competing vision: a world in which a white guy says, "hey, (n-word), what's going on tonight?" And a black guy responds, "not much, snowflake; want to go to the ball game?" Be offended if you wish, but in which world do we find the races fully reconciled?
True, some words need to retain their power, their history and their full meaning, such as slavery, lynching, holocaust, genocide and torture. But the n-word is not among them.