Funeral for the N Word

We're about to approach the one year anniversary of the burial ceremony for the N word. The ceremony was held by the NAACP this past summer in Detroit. I couldn't make it but understand that a fun time was had by all in attendance.

As a jazz musician I know that every jazz riff that comes floating on the breeze, every drum cadence that causes our feet to dance is the legacy of creative black musicians, starting with those first slaves who were whipped onto the docks of Southern port cities.

Blues and jazz are productive legacies of black history in America, but what about that other legacy of early black America - the left-over, self-hating N word.

Some folk were so up in arms over the continued use of the N word that this radical move was undertaken - a public burial.

It’s surprising that the would-be leaders of a dinosaur civil rights movement have coalesced around a push to abolish the N word. It’s an interesting goal, one that may ultimately succeed. It’s an important goal even, but surely not as important as some of the more pressing issues that face blacks in America. You know the litany: drugs, gangs, incarceration,chronic debilitating medical conditions.

But those issues don't generate such a wonderful photo-op as a mock burial with the usual black media in attendance.

There have been varied responses to the "burial" of the word from it's most ardent users, the rap stars and black comedians. Several comedians have vowed to remove it from their routine while certain rap stars have upped the ante by claiming the right to use the N word as their first amendment right.

Since we’ve now pronounced the demise of the N word, what will become the new N word? Is there any word that would be an effective replacement for a word that can mean so many different things, that can be applied to friend or foe, lover or ‘hoe, and can be applied equally to the good, bad and indifferent. That word can be said with a hand extended in greeting or a hand extended with a gun.

The new N word(s) would have to be as weighty with bloodshed, dead ends and dead eyes as the word we’re now using.

It was always part of my growing up. The first time I ever heard the N word, it was spat out of my father’s mouth when describing a lazy co-worker. But, my father was old-fashioned, so behind the closed doors of our home, everyone in our town with whom he had a beef was described with some derogatory name. So it was them Paddies, or that Dago, and of course the N word was in constant use. My father was an equal abuser.

How did it happen that my people took to themselves and made a part of our history and heritage a word that slave-owners and racists used to demean us, to make us sub-human?

Was it a sophisticated sub-conscious form of reverse psychology? If I call myself and my friends the N word, then the word becomes less poisonous and has less effect on me. If this was the intent, did it work? I don’t think so, ‘cause if it had succeeded it would not still be such a troublesome specter to deal with and it’s continued use be the cause for so much strife.

Whose heritage do we honor by wanting to hold on to the word? How do we explain to our children why we continue to use that word after they’ve had an opportunity to Google the N word and see it coupled with pictures of black men being lynched .

That word belongs on a museum wall along with faded pictures of cross-burnings and white-sheeted riders in the night. This is its’ true historical context. It does not belong in our mouths or the mouths of our children.

As far as a replacement – Don’t worry, language is alive and ever evolving. When it comes to language we’re a gifted people. We’ll come up with something . But we may dislike the replacement as much as the N word. Can you say "what's happening my Bullsh**ter?"