Roundtable: The 'N' Top 10 (pt. 3)

[UPDATE (03/18/07): Elvis Mitchell emailed to say: “The discussion on the blog reminds me that when ‘Nigger Charley’ ran on the African Heritage Movie Network – remember that syndicated package hosted by Ossie Davis? – it was called ‘The Legend of Charley.’ Which means, first of all, that the ‘nigger’ was silent, like the ‘k’ in knife, I guess. But the pasteurized refitting made it sound like a ’50s sitcom.”]

Here’s the last of the discussion between me, Larry Alexander, Lorenzo Heard and Thomas Stanley regarding the word “nigger.” I hope it hasn’t been too much. (Like when Paul Mooney used to mock white people’s reaction to his comedy: “Make that nigger stop saying ‘nigger’… I’m getting a nigger headache!”)

But as far as I’m concerned, the best occasion to use the word is when trying to understand the word, and thus understand ourselves and American society.

This chunk of conversation dwells on the 1970s, the decade in which the four of us came of age. Naturally we dealt with Pryor and how he should be represented on our “Nigger” Top 10 list…

LARRY ALEXANDER: I still think that “That Nigger’s Crazy” gets the edge. Because what white people meant when they said “That nigger’s crazy” is different than what black people meant when they said “That nigger’s crazy.”

LORENZO HEARD: I remember when that won the Grammy. Roberta Flack and some white guy up there with her – he wouldn’t say the title. He said, “The winner is – Richard Pryor.” And Roberta Flack said, “ ‘That Nigger’s Crazy’!”

DAVID MILLS: I have a memory of a talk show that Richard Pryor was on – I want to say “Dinah Shore,” but it couldn’t have been “Dinah Shore” –

HEARD: Could’ve been. He was on “Dinah Shore” twice.

MILLS: But they were talking about that title –

HEARD: “Dinah Shore.” John Byner was on it. And she kept asking [Pryor] – He kept saying, “Look, it means something different when we say it.” Dinah Shore said, “Well, what if I called you a nigger?” He goes, “I’d punch you out.”

John Byner said, “Richard, you have a phone call. It’s some nigger.”

ALEXANDER: I remember that!

MILLS: John Byner said what?

HEARD: John Byner ran off stage, he came back, “Richard, you have a phone call. It’s some nigger.” Everybody starts laughing, and Richard Pryor’s laughing. Then he started choking on him. Then they went to a commercial.

MILLS: Good Lord. On “The Dinah Shore Show.”

HEARD: It shows the difference in the ’70s, the different way people perceived the word. Well, the different way black people perceived it. Because there was an episode of “The Jeffersons,” and Tom [Willis] –

ALEXANDER: The argument?

HEARD: Yeah.

ALEXANDER: “You know y’all can’t argue –”

HEARD: [George] said, “Of course y’all don’t fight. Y’all afraid to fight.” And Tom says, “I don’t understand.” He said, “’Cause you know that the moment you guys start really going at it –” [Helen] went, “Watch out.”

“– when y’all get to really arguing –” She said, “Don’t you say it.”

“– the first word out your mouth gonna be ‘nigger.’ ” And she goes, “He said it.”

And it just tripped Tom out ’cause he never thought about that. [George] said, “Y’all scared to fight ’cause you know you’re gonna be throwing ‘niggers’ all over the place.”

THOMAS STANLEY: We showed in class the episode of “The Jeffersons” where the blackout occurs and they rob his store –

ALEXANDER: Oh yeah. That was great.

STANLEY: We had an agenda for why we were showing it, about the blackout and how all this looting happened. But I couldn’t believe, during this 30-minute episode, man, they were throwing “nigger” back and forth like it was nothing. It was just in the mix.

ALEXANDER: Remember [on “Sanford and Son”], Big Money Grip said that Lamont was his son? It’s edited out now if you catch it on TV Land, but Aunt Esther said, “Nigger, are you crazy?”

HEARD: Back then, especially on the black shows, that wasn’t a problem. “That’s My Mama” – you heard it a lot on “That’s My Mama.” It wasn’t the big deal it is now.

MILLS: And there were those blaxploitation movies in the ’70s that defined “nigger” in a heroic way. Even had it in the title – “The Legend of Nigger Charley,” “Boss Nigger” – the nigger-as-hero because he lived by his own rules. Were any of those movies any good?

HEARD: I thought “Legend of Nigger Charley” was a great film. I’ve always loved it. I’m still looking for it. I never saw “Boss Nigger.”

But “The Legend of Nigger Charley” – he never called himself Nigger Charley in the movie. He called himself Charley. It was the white folks that called him Nigger Charley, the people tracking him that called him Nigger Charley.

There was a scene in the movie where they made it a point to let us know that these people didn’t view us as people. We were animals and/or property. There was a scene where he was making love to his lady and these white guys burst in, said, “Look at that. They do it just like humans.” First thing out the guy’s mouth.

When I think about it now, I’m amazed they got away with that title.

MILLS: Was it advertised in the paper like that?

HEARD: Yeah. “The Legend of Nigger Charley.” On the marquee. I remember wanting to steal the word “nigger” and take it home.

We had a [neighborhood] football team. Each street put together a football team; this was organized by the recreation center. We called ourselves the Niggers, because I kept saying, “The intimidation factor. ‘Ooh, we’re playing the Niggers. We forfeit!’ ”

(Laughter.)

STANLEY: “We’re up against the Niggers, man…”

HEARD: “Damn, we got a tough schedule.”

(Laughter.)

STANLEY: Niggers are fearless, niggers are cutthroat, niggers will do anything to win the fight. They’ll throw dirt in your eyes, they’ll steal you, you know?

HEARD: Yeah.

MILLS: And they’ll survive.

STANLEY: And survive.

ALEXANDER: Actually, when the Knicks were all-black in ’79 – when they had the first all-black one-through-12 – they were being called the “Niggerbockers.”

HEARD: Yep. “New York Niggerbockers.” I remember that. Only the white folks. White folks would call menthol cigarettes “niggerettes.” You never heard that?

STANLEY: (laughs) I like that.

HEARD: Had a white boy tell me that. I looked at him, said, “You know, you are a very brave man to say that.” “Oh, I never say it. I just want you to know this is what they call ’em.”

STANLEY: You talk about Sly Stone, “Don’t Call Me Nigger, Whitey.” There is no comparable term that hurts white people the way “nigger” hurts black people.

ALEXANDER: Exactly.

STANLEY: Nothing. You can call ’em “honky” all day and they’re like, “What does that mean?”

MILLS: “Honky” wasn’t a word I ever heard in D.C.

HEARD: I used to hear it all the time. They was honkies.

ALEXANDER: I heard “cracker.”

MILLS: I heard “cracker.”

STANLEY: I heard “cracker.”

MILLS: Thomas, you got called “nigger” in school. I got called a “white cracker” one time in elementary school by another kid, and he was yellow. He called me a white cracker, and I remember the teacher stepping up to correct him, pointing to somebody’s shirt and saying, “This is white. And a cracker is something you eat.”

That’s my thing: The whitest guy in a room full of black people, the blackest guy in a room full of white people.

Larry, when I was looking for songs on iTunes, I typed “nigger” in the search engine, and the results come up “n****r.” Do you appreciate that? Do you resent that? Do you think it’s silly?

ALEXANDER: All those are sort of emotional terms. I say: “Set all that shit aside. It is what it is. All of this shit will happen.” That’s what “nigger” is. It’s the most unique word in the English language. I’m not surprised. This has to happen.

STANLEY: To me, the whole “N-word” – that stuff explains why we’re in Iraq.

ALEXANDER: Of course!

STANLEY: It’s like, if you can buy that – if the country can buy that – we’ll buy absolutely anything. It’s that fucking stupid.

MILLS: Where should we rank the impact of “nigger” at the end of “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song” – that on-screen message?

STANLEY: My question would be the film. It left such a – I was ready for something, and it almost took me where I was ready to go, which would’ve been this very, you know, progressive –

And it didn’t hit me like that. I hit me just as a bunch of distasteful stuff. There was something distasteful about it.

HEARD: Well, when did you see it? Did you see it in a theater?

STANLEY: I was grown. I watched it on TV.

HEARD: You saw it much later. You saw it after the impact of this film had died down. But it was a very, very bold thing to do. It was bold for [Melvin Van Peebles] to distribute this himself. Everything about this movie said: “I’m just gonna do this. I don’t care what the white man say.”

This is what folks at the time liked about it. Even white critics actually got it. It was a statement. I still love this film.

ALEXANDER: I will say this for “Sweetback” also. If you consider the film industry and its role in shaping images, it really was a turning on its head of 60 years, going back to D.W. Griffith.

Here’s my problem with “Sweetback”: For all those things I think the film itself represents, I’m wondering about that specific usage, as a lingering moment on a Top 10 of all time.

MILLS: How high should Richard Pryor’s epiphany in Africa be? What was the impact of that, when he rejected the use of the word?

ALEXANDER: To me, the whole idea is that here’s the guy who’s more responsible than anyone for the proliferation of this word through the culture, the broad proliferation. He’s an incomplete person anyway, so he’s trying to become a little bit more whole.

STANLEY: I don’t know necessarily that Richard’s conversion in Africa argues for or against the use of the word. It’s just a beautiful expression of him dealing with the consequences of language and looking at words deeper, looking at his own origins deeper –

HEARD: My problem with it is that it had no effect on the black community whatsoever.

MILLS: That’s what I was getting at by asking. What was the impact of it?

ALEXANDER: I agree with that. I think given his position in the culture relative to that word, it is significant. But I don’t think that his conversion has made anyone else drop it.

HEARD: Amongst the black intellectuals, it was a big deal. Amongst the common folks, it wasn’t. By this time, folks were considering Richard a sellout in the neighborhood. Folks weren’t talking about Richard Pryor anymore. They were talking about Eddie Murphy. Eddie Murphy and “Saturday Night Live.”

STANLEY: These things all stand as documents in their time and speak as their time. And what’s neat about Richard’s thing is it does add some perspective.

He was like, “I was in Africa. And I saw people that looked a whole lot more in charge of their own destiny than we look back in L.A. and New York and D.C. They’re running shit. So maybe they’re not niggers. Maybe we’re niggers and they’re not niggers, but the word isn’t fitting this context.”

And it’s not that his conversion has to be adopted by anybody else. It’s just that that perspective is valuable.

HEARD: But his reasons never rang true to me, because nobody I know ever referred to Africans as niggers.

STANLEY: Oh, I disagree. I used to hear that all the time.

HEARD: I never did. Nobody I know called Africans niggers. I never thought Africans were niggers.

MILLS: Well, that wasn’t what he was talking about anyway. He said, “I see them and I realize I’m not a nigger.”

HEARD: Why did he have to go to Africa to realize that?

ALEXANDER: Because he’s dealing with the bullshit here all his life coming out of black Peoria. I mean, he never got to be whole as a person all along. I think it’s a closing of the circle.

HEARD: If you’re talking about the completeness of Richard Pryor, I understand it. In the context of the word, I still don’t get it.

ALEXANDER: His conversion is almost like an extension of his life as performance art. It doesn’t matter whether everyone else agreed with it. He was bleeding for us professionally.

Roundtable: The 'N' Top 10 (pt. 2)

Here’s more of me and my associates and our discourse on the cultural life of the word “nigger.” Much of this segment deals with white artists’ use of the word. (For example, John Lennon’s “Woman Is the Nigger of the World.”)

When we sat down, we had the notion of doing a companion list to our “Nigger” Top 10 – a Worst 10, a place to put Michael Richards and Mark Fuhrman and the like. We never got around to that. But I had it in mind when I played the Patti Smith tune “Rock ’n’ Roll Nigger” (1978) for the fellas. (Click here to hear it on my Vox music stash.)

UPDATE (03/13/07): Monday night was a big night for the “N-word.” Patti Smith performed the song after she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And I’m told Chris Rock kicked some advanced niggerology on “Inside the Actors Studio.” Damn... time for me to change the name of this blog or what?

THOMAS STANLEY: Did [Patti Smith] say Jackson Pollock is a nigger?

DAVID MILLS: Yeah. Now, I don’t like that use of the word. To just say, “I want to be a social outsider so I identify myself as a nigger” –

STANLEY: You can’t make yourself a nigger.

LORENZO HEARD: I thought she was commenting on how punk was looked down on as this inferior music form. I could be wrong. That’s the way I always took it, so I was never offended by it.

LARRY ALEXANDER: (to David) You said you don’t like the word being used that way. Again, is there another word in the English language that rises to that level of scrutiny? The word is completely unique. It’s a live grenade. And if you understand that context, you’ll never have a problem.

MILLS: Does that mean you’re not bothered by any use of the word?

ALEXANDER: I think it’s a waste of time, just for me personally. I’ve come to the point of thinking it’s a waste of time to be bothered, because it’s so unique, if you don’t understand that it’s a loaded grenade, someone’s always gonna be offended.

It just doesn’t fit with the rest of language. It can do things no other word can do. So it has to be understood uniquely.

MILLS: Is it worth scrutinizing Patti Smith’s use of it in this song?

ALEXANDER: To a point. Only to a point. Because when you make it a term of endearment, and then you broadcast it and it gets commodified, when it comes back and bites you in the ass, you’re a fool if you go, “I didn’t know you were gonna bite me!”

MILLS: Here’s another thing about ramifications. She makes this song, she becomes an icon. That gives a license to the next generation. Marilyn Manson covered it. Did he cover it just because it’s an excuse to yell “nigger nigger nigger” because he’s a shock artist?

HEARD: But check this out. When this song came out, there wasn’t a big uproar about this.

MILLS: Dave Marsh slammed her for it in Rolling Stone when he reviewed the album.

HEARD: I remember that. But that’s as far as it went.

STANLEY: I’ll tell you a musical one that may not rise into our Top 10, but it always meant something to me. Public Enemy’s “Anti-Nigger Machine” – I like that. I think it had a certain edge to it. Especially for that message to hit this generation.

HEARD: The wild thing about it is, [with] that generation, it had no impact.

STANLEY: They didn’t get it.

HEARD: No. They didn’t get it at all.

ALEXANDER: That’s sort of my point about the word. I mean, you can get bent out of shape based on what you know because you experienced something else. But every generation [doesn’t] have actual cultural education on the word. You know, Jews and Japanese have cultural education.

This word – you let it take its own shape, you ain’t gonna like what it turns into.

HEARD: We don’t have the cultural education because too many of our people want to forget that it ever happened. It’s like the slavery thing –

ALEXANDER: Jewish and Japanese kids have cultural education on Saturdays. We ain’t going to school on Saturday.

(Laughter.)

HEARD: When I was in the fifth grade, my history teacher and my math teacher got together and combined our two classes to teach us black history. Now, we had to swear that once we left the class, we couldn’t tell anybody what they were teaching us.

And because we had this forbidden knowledge, man, we thought we knew something. We’d be in the street, “Frederick Douglass was a black abolitionist!” You know, just out of nowhere. And the other kid was, “What?” “That’s right, you don’t know. Read a book some time!” This is me being the smart-ass kid I was.

ALEXANDER: This one probably can’t get Honorable Mention, but this is worth mentioning in the conversation. The black history documentary that Bill Cosby did? When he had the leather jacket on –

HEARD: I saw it.

ALEXANDER: – and he said, “See, white folks wasn’t worried about niggers back then.” Bill Cosby saying that line. I was like, “Ohhh shit!” This was 1968.

Then he takes you to a school for black kids run by black educators in Philadelphia. This was pre-first-grade. It stuck with me.

HEARD: I think [Dick Gregory’s autobiography “Nigger”] is significant because it is a book. But isn’t there another book on the word? Didn’t someone else do a book about the word?

MILLS: Yeah, a few years ago. Randall Kennedy at Harvard. [“Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word.”] That book gave David E. Kelley an excuse to use the word in “Boston Public.” And that’s another thing I hate is when they say: “A very special episode of ‘Boston Public.’ We’re going to talk about the N-word.”

HEARD: I think the “Boston Public” episode is significant, because it was about the word.

MILLS: But it was such a shallow understanding of the nuance of –

ALEXANDER: That is the point. How overblown this “very-special-episode” shit is goes hand-in-hand with the phrase “the N-word,” with “Let’s forget about it, let’s not talk about it.” It is that superficial understanding of the word that’s the problem.

HEARD: It might’ve been shallow and superficial, but [Kelley] did it.

MILLS: So what?

HEARD: It took nerve to do it. I mean, come on, Dave –

MILLS: No no no. What was the downside? He knows he’s gonna get every critic in the country writing about it, and he knows he’ll be saluted for his candor or whatever. What price was there to pay?

HEARD: My point is, this is something no one was doing. I got to at least give him props for that.

MILLS: No. It was only because Randall Kennedy had written the book. The discussion on the show was literally about that book. Michael Rapaport assigned it in class.

HEARD: But see, being a TV show, you actually reach more people than that book did. I know a lot of people who saw that episode [and] wanted to talk about it afterwards.

ALEXANDER: Let me mention one negative, just to see what comments there are. I personally thought that, among the Michael Richardses and the Mark Fuhrmans, I was ready to put Damon Wayans at No. 1 [among the worst].

STANLEY: Really?

ALEXANDER: Number fucking one. I don’t mind him turning that into a children’s clothing line, as long as you don’t complain every time some white kid runs up on TV, “This is my nigga over here.”

MILLS: What did Damon Wayons do?

ALEXANDER: He wanted to have a children’s clothing line, and he wanted to call it Nigga.

STANLEY: No he didn’t!

ALEXANDER: You heard about this, right? Here’s the article right here. (reads) “Patent offense: Wayans’s hip-hop line. Officials reject actor’s bid to trademark racial slur.”

STANLEY: (laughs) That’s slick, though. Guy tried to trademark the word.

ALEXANDER: I’m not asking black folks to come up with one concept. But goddamn, we keep asking to have it both ways, and complain when we get it both ways.

STANLEY: Right.

ALEXANDER: If you ask to have it both ways, then take it both ways and shut the fuck up. Or – you don’t have to have it both ways.

HEARD: I actually thought it was funny myself.

ALEXANDER: Which is fine. ’Cause you ain’t complaining when white boys run around calling each other niggers.

By the way, there’s one documented case, supposedly, of Eminem having used the word, and he had to do this profuse apology. He doesn’t use that word at all. Which I think is a significant non-use, given his place in the culture.

STANLEY: If we need a token white boy, I’d go with Lenny Bruce over John Lennon. But the problem with the Lenny Bruce thing is that it’s fundamentally a flawed premise. Speaking the word doesn’t make the power of the word go away. It just moves it around or something.

MILLS: Let’s plug in another word. How would he have sounded saying, “How many cunts are in the audience tonight? Oh, there’s a cunt… We need to use the word ‘cunt’ more to weaken its impact.” It’s idiotic.

ALEXANDER: The Lenny Bruce [routine] turned out to be a flawed premise, but it’s not completely insignificant for the time, in terms of what people thought could happen.

STANLEY: If we’re going by good intentions, I think that maybe Lennon’s whole thing was a little better-formed than Bruce’s thing.

HEARD: Lenny Bruce caused a dialogue with that routine. I remember this.

STANLEY: You ain’t that old, Lorenzo. Shit.

HEARD: I’m 48.

STANLEY: But he remembers everything since when he was 3. That’s the difference. (laughs)

HEARD: Yes I do. I’ve never smoked weed, I’ve never had a serious head injury. So I remember it all. I remember the dialogue about this, which is how I got into Lenny Bruce.

Frankly, I thought he had insight much earlier than most folks, even a lot of black folks. But that’s ’cause I understood where he was coming from.

ALEXANDER: I like Lenny more than Lennon because, even though it didn’t hold water, it kind of shaped the idea of a solution to this whole fear-of-words thing. It also ultimately pointed out how unique this word is.

STANLEY: And also, his whole career is defined by problematic words. So, yeah, there’s a lot to Bruce.

HEARD: It was a beautiful failure.

[TO BE CONTINUED]

Roundtable: The 'N' Top 10 (pt. 1)

This is us: (from left to right) me, Larry Alexander, Thomas Stanley and Lorenzo Heard.

When we gathered a week ago to compile our “Nigger” Top 10, the discussion got good and deep. And it was hard to limit the list to 10. So here are a few “Honorable Mentions”:

TV producer Norman Lear deserves special commendation (the Golden Nigger Award for Lifetime Achievement?). When he put black American life at the center of his sitcoms “Sanford and Son,” “The Jeffersons” and “Good Times,” he was bold enough to realize that he couldn’t ignore the existence of this word in the black vernacular.

You didn’t hear “nigger” often on these shows, but when you did, it made an impact. As it did whenever the word was uttered on “All in the Family” (once from the lips of Archie Bunker himself, in the classic “shoebootie” episode).

Filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles gets a nod for his triumphant on-screen text message at the end of “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song” (1971), when his black hero evades pursuing cops and crosses the border into Mexico: “Watch out! A baad assss nigger is coming to collect some dues.” Lorenzo Heard recalls the theater audience cheering those words.

Thomas Stanley hails H. Rap Brown’s autobiography/Black Power manifesto “Die Nigger Die!” (1969).

I tip my hat to comedian Paul Mooney for his early-’90s routine “Dial-a-Nigger.”

And Larry Alexander emailed me a couple of days ago to salute “South Park” for last week’s Michael-Richards-inspired niggerthon episode. “Trey Parker and Matt Stone served up a typically hilarious spoof on the whole word-banning issue, once again flashing their first-rate satirical credentials.”

Now, to the roundtable discussion, which began with our listening to “Niggers Are Scared of Revolution” by the Last Poets…

DAVID MILLS: Thomas, what’s the value of this piece?

THOMAS STANLEY: It’s complex. It’s real complex. The whole rant is about what’s fucked-up about niggers, and at the end, we’re taking ownership of that. That’s who we are. You gotta love who you are.

If I use the word, I always try to stipulate what I mean by the word “nigger.” For me, a nigger can be anybody, black or white, any race that has been extracted out of their own historical line and thrust into someone else’s historical line.

So you got Palestinian niggers, you got Armenian niggers, Native American niggers, you got all sorts of people that aren’t wearing their own history, and we’re all niggers. That [poem] is a way of dealing with the duality of that identity in a way that’s revolutionary.

LORENZO HEARD: It’s funny, because as a kid I didn’t know “nigger” was a negative word. I had no idea. Because where I grew up, it either meant the male of the species or it was a term of endearment.

It wasn’t until “All in the Family” that I found out that white folks used this in a negative connotation.

STANLEY: I went to Leland Junior High School… Montgomery County. Back then – this is like 1972, ’73 – the average mean income could’ve been, I don’t know, whatever would’ve established upper-middle-class. This was Chevy Chase, right? This wasn’t Olney or someplace out in the sticks.

I was one of three students of color in the whole [school]. The other one was Megumi, the Japanese kid, and somebody else, the Indian kid.

I got called “nigger” every day for, like, months. Months. And fought daily. “Call him ‘nigger,’ see what happens.”

Finally, it was David S----, David S---- was maybe like 19 in the eighth grade. Dude had a beard. And we were sitting at the top of this long flight of stairs, right in front of the school. David snuck up behind me, couldn’t even say that shit to my face – “Nigger!” – and he kicked me down this long flight of concrete stairs. One of those things that happens where, because you don’t expect it, you can just get up and [say], “Oh, I’m not all busted up. That’s cool.”

So by the time I had thought about “How am I gonna get back at this motherfucker?” they had already expelled him. He wound up someplace else for some other reason.

But these kids didn’t know – Their whole thing was: Here’s a word and it has this powerful effect when you use this word. They didn’t know what they were saying. (laughs) It just got this effect out of me consistently.

LARRY ALEXANDER: It’s an incantation.

HEARD: Where I grew up, there were no white folks [so] I never got that.

Now, as a teenager, when we moved into a neighborhood that actually had some white kids, these white kids thought they were black. These white kids said “nigger” all the time. But to us it wasn’t no problem ’cause we looked at them as being black. It wasn’t a skin thing. It was a nigger thing.

I’ll never forget, James S------. It was James and Greg, father was black, mother was white. First day in junior high school, we’re all together and James [said], “Hey, man, what y’all niggers up to?”

And one of the guys that went to Sousa – which we had to be bussed to – one of the guys from that neighborhood heard him, and he jumped on James. So we had to jump on him.

Teacher [said], “Why were you fighting?” “That white boy called me a nigger.”

I said, “First of all, he wasn’t talking to you, he was talking to us. Second of all, he ain’t no white boy.” Then I thought about what I had just said, and I looked at him [and thought], “Damn, I guess he is a white boy.” But he always been cool with us. I had never thought about that in a different context.

Now, he was blond, blue-eyed. His brother Greg looked like David, to be honest. So you never thought they were brothers unless you were from the neighborhood. [James] had to transfer; Greg had no problem. It was the wildest thing.

MILLS: Let’s talk about the Chris Rock routine, “Black People vs. Niggers.”

HEARD: I’ve always had problems with that routine. I always thought it was Chris Rock relating his self-loathing. Because, to me, Chris was placing black people in classes.

ALEXANDER: But it wasn’t purely economic. It was behavioral.

HEARD: His whole routine, to me, might belong in the Hall of Shame. I’ve never liked it, I’ve always thought it was offensive, I never thought it was funny.

To me, what I got out of it: if you’re black and you’re poor, he’s calling you a nigger.

MILLS: No. If you’re black and you’re a criminal –

HEARD: But what he said [was] that everybody who’s black and poor is a criminal. See, I got no differentation from his routine. I never did.

STANLEY: “Niggers’ll put rims on a toaster.” That’s funny shit.

HEARD: That’s funny. But that has nothing to do with socioeconomic state.

STANLEY: It’s a mental state.

MILLS: Let me speak in defense of the routine. A great piece of comedy can act like a pressure valve and release some steam. Chris Rock did not invent the class tension in black America. It’s the eternal schizophrenia of being black in America; whose standard of behavior is in play? There’s this judging of one another.

And beyond that, there’s just the day-in and day-out of black people fucking up, and everyone feeling ashamed for the black people who fuck up. [Chris Rock’s routine] was the truth, and it acted as a pressure valve for someone to acknowledge this truth.

HEARD: This is the reason why it’s not the truth: Where I come from, you never had that thought. There was never, “Oh, black people always fuckin’ up.” Folks in my neighborhood didn’t say that, ’cause everybody fucked up. There was never this separation. Never.

Where I come from, Chris Rock was a nigger. There’s nothing that separates him from these guys who are quote-unquote criminals except the fact that he calls ’em criminals. Or maybe Chris never got caught. But that don’t make him any better than those guys.

STANLEY: There’s a paradox in that word. And I think the post-civil-rights, hip-hop use of the word has sort of accepted the half of the paradox that we ran from.

A nigger is somebody that’s not free. A nigger is not the president of the United States; a nigger is not, you know, Alan Greenspan; a nigger is not someone who is in charge of history in a way that non-niggers are.

But a nigger is free. Nigger fucks when he wants to fuck; nigger eats when he wants to eat. “High cholesterol? Gimme more of that shit.” Nigger smoke a Kool when he wants to, smoke some pot when wants to, and some crack if he needs to. There’s a freedom to being so outside of society that society’s rules don’t apply to you.

And Clinton was all about that. Clinton, his coarseness had a lot to do with seizing the power of that half of the nigger equation.

So when these guys talk about, “Yeah, I’m a real nigga,” that’s part of what they’re celebrating. “Yeah, I’m gonna take this version of what freedom is. That other version – the one that requires having a halfway decent education and some other stuff that I never had? I’ve defaulted back over to this one. I’ll be this nigger over here, and I’ll be free in a sense. Until I get locked up or shot.”

HEARD: Now that’s got to be the most unique point of view I ever heard, mixing Bill Clinton in the whole nigger equation.

MILLS: I wondered whether you meant Bill or George.

STANLEY: I meant George.

(Laughter.)

MILLS: I went to Bill too.

STANLEY: Now that I think about it, you know –

HEARD: I’m digging this Bill Clinton thing. “He’s got a point there.”

(Laughter.)

MILLS: So where does the Chris Rock routine belong on this list?

ALEXANDER: I vote it near the top. ’Cause I still think the piece was about behavior, not money.

HEARD: I don’t think it was about money, I think it was about class – class differentation – which I think is wrong.

ALEXANDER: Behavioral, though. Not how much money you have.

HEARD: It’s still a separation. It’s still a commentary and a judgment on a group of people.

ALEXANDER: Based on what they do.

HEARD: No matter what you do, I don’t think anybody has a right to judge another person. I don’t think Chris Rock has the right to judge.

MILLS: Judge who, though?

HEARD: Judge the people he’s judging – niggers. He’s judging niggers, this is what he says.

ALEXANDER: He’s defining niggers as the ones who robbed him at the ATM.

STANLEY: It’s more than that, though. It’s not just criminality. It’s all of those things that are maladaptive habits of culture that, because they’re our identity, we can’t let ’em go.

We gotta have the big hat. We gotta have the big hat when there’s no bread in the cabinet. “Bitch” and “ho,” whatever it is, we gotta do these things because that’s our identity, and, God, you can’t stop being black. So be a real nigger.

ALEXANDER: You just said the magic word. One of the biggest problems in all this is the idea of identity. The point I’m making is, if you get devalued by the world for being who the fuck you are, but if you become Clarence Thomas, oh, you’re a good colored guy – that’s the whole idea of the black context of double-consciousness.

MILLS: (to Lorenzo) The one thing where I see what you’re saying about that routine is, going beyond behavior and maladaptive mindsets, some of it just slides into style. Where you feel contemptuous of someone because of the way they talk –

ALEXANDER: That’s folks who embrace an assimilated sense of style, correct?

MILLS: Right.

ALEXANDER: So that’s identity. Versus the “acceptable Negro” identity which gives you your humanity in the views of the masses. Double-consciousness. African and American, never completely both.

But you’re right, it slides into style issues. The NBA, the dress code, Allen Iverson’s tattoos, braids, all of that shit. And white kids couldn’t love that shit more.

[NBA Commissioner] David Stern is catering to the middle-aged white dudes from American Express that he wants to come to his board room and sign off on a fucking commercial. And they both want to target white kids talkin’ about, “What’s up, my nigga?” It’s ridiculous.

That’s why I separate myself from the emotion of this word. Because I understand how circuitous the bullshit is. It’s not going anywhere. Use the word at your own risk. But understand the risk before you use it.

[TO BE CONTINUED]