Thanks to my cable provider, CNN (Celebrity News Network) is one of the first channels on the station listing. And thank goodness they were on the case with Mel Gibson.
Apparently, Gibson's ex-girlfriend and mother of his child, Oksana Grigorieva, has a few recordings of Gibson threatening her, abusing her and using the "n-word." This, after he made anti-Semitic comments during an arrest in 2006.
I know — I'm crushed, too. I mean, he looked like he really was friends with Danny Glover in the "Lethal Weapon" movies. Could he have been — acting?
Back to the "n-word." Why do we call it the "n-word" anyway⢠It's like we're 4 years old.
Additionally, there are a lot of words that start with N. Why, I know someone really cool whose name starts with an N. It's so unfair to attach the word's reputation to a letter and other to perfectly acceptable words -- such as, I don't know, niggardly -- because we're afraid to say it.
That's probably part of the reason we'll never get past racism in this country. It's a bad word with a terrible history, and instead of airing the room out, we keep the windows closed. That'll help, won't it?
The real dilemma with this word, for many, is that black people say it, too. So Jay-Z, or some other rapper, uses it for a word to rhyme with "trigger." Is that OK⢠And if you're a white fan of the rapper, can you sing along and say every word, or do you have to just hum along when you get to the "trigger" part⢠Does it depend on who's around when you're singing⢠When it comes to art or music, is there a different set of rules?
The "n-word" is a powerful one with a historical grip on us that we might never shake. We won't shake it by calling it the "n-word."
Jay-Z and other rappers are trying to give it a different meaning. They're trying to render its negative connotation useless.
In a way, it's reminiscent to the "A" that Hester Prynne had to bear in "The Scarlet Letter." It started out as something negative, and she made it mean something else, something good.
But lyrics generally surrounding the "n-word" are negative. If the idea is to make the word mean something else, you can't embrace it in the same context with guns and a criminal lifestyle. It's different, but it's not any better.
Is Mel Gibson a racist⢠Judging by his track record, he might have some Klan-ish tendencies. But his use of the "n-word" isn't necessarily the tell-all. We'd first have to decide who, if anyone, is allowed to say it.
