Ferguson confronted James about the “divisive” nature of the word and said rappers are “afraid that they’ll lose out on money and sales” if the n-word goes away. He even told James, “You’re making money off it!” James shot back that he’s giving the n-word too much power, arguing that he gets money from his music and creativity and not the n-word alone.
Ferguson even told James that the n-word is the only reason he’s on the show. Hill piped up that he’s actually on the show because a white woman used the n-word first, and also that “white people were saying the word nigger before Trinidad James was born.”
I am just about done with the supposed oppression of white people not being “able” to use the n-word without somebody saying, “Jesus, dude, it’s 2015, shut your fucking cakehole.” I do not understand my fellow pales’ need to stake some kind of claim here. We have the whole of the English language available to us. We can let this one go.
We can let black people have this word, and use it or not, without feeling the need to horn in like a bunch of damn drama queens all “I GET TO SAY IT TOO YOU KNOW FREE SPEECH ARGLE BLARGLE FLAP FLAP FLAP.” Everybody on TV understands the difference between the language used within a historically oppressed group and the language used against it from the outside.
They all get it. Probably most people who grew up in the 2000s and belong to a college frat get it, too. Everybody gets that nobody kicks my little brother but me, so this is just slapping your linguistic dick around. It’s needy and gross. Let it go.
A.
“You’re making money off it!”
Um, for a long, long time — you could argue to this day, given the nature of the system — white people “[made] money off it” as well, either by outright ownership or legally defined second class citizenship for anyone so defined (if I remember, the “one drop” rule).
Indeed, get the hell over it…or if it’s THAT important to Ferguson, he should say it loud and proud…and deal with the consequences. Christ. Wingnuts constantly tout their (alleged) rugged, intrepid individualism, but when their own comfortable privilege is put on the line, turn into delicate little shrinking violets.
“Let it go”? “Let it go”?! Where do you get off – quoting show tunes? We can quote show tunes, too! It’s our constipetutional right, it is! “No one mourns the wicked”! So there.
So damn much of “free speech” demands these days involves, basically, the “right” to offend with impunity.
Perhaps there should be some kind of accord wherein rappers agree to forego any variation of the n-word in exchange for pop-“country” artists’stipulation that they not write any songs about their pickup trucks.
Sorry, meant to reply to post in general, though I wholeheartedly endorse the comments preceding mine.