Niggah, please.

For Valentine's Day, I offer you a little candy heart. A piece on language from Lenny Bruce, as portrayed by the actor Dustin Hoffman in the movie "Lenny." You can find this clip on YouTube if you are so inclined.

Are there any niggers here tonight? Can you turn on the house lights, and could the waiters and waitresses just stop serving for a second? And turn off the spot. Now what did he say? ''Are there any niggers here tonight?'' There's one nigger here. l see him back there working. Let's see. There's two niggers. And between those two niggers sits a kike. And there's another kike.That's two kikes and three niggers. And there's a spic, right? Hm? There's another spic. Ooh, there's a wop. There's a Polack. And then, oh, a couple of greaseballs. There's three lace-curtain lrish Micks. (getting in the face of a large black man in the front row, who glares stoically) And there's one hip, thick, hunky, funky boogie. Boogie, boogie. Mm-mm. l got three kikes. Do l hear five kikes? l got five kikes. Do l hear six spics? Six spics. Do l hear seven niggers? l got seven niggers. Sold American! l'll pass with seven niggers, six spics, five Micks, four kikes, three guineas, and one wop. (to the black man in the front row) You almost punched me out, didn't ya? l was trying to make a point, that it's the suppression of the word that gives it the power, the violence, the viciousness. Dig. lf President Kennedy would just go on television and say ''l'd like to introduce you to all the niggers in my cabinet.'' And if he'd just say ''nigger, nigger'' to every nigger he saw, ''Boogie, boogie, boogie, nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger,'' till it didn't mean anything any more! Then you'd never be able to make a black kid cry because somebody called him a nigger in school.

Did Lenny get it right? In the 1950's, when segregation and Jim Crow laws were still prevalent, he probably did. However, today, we have experienced what Lenny talked about. The "N" word (so vile that we dare not speak it's name) has become workaday, commonplace, and no black kid comes home from school crying because someone called him a nigger. Because someone probably did, and it was most likely another black kid. And it doesn't mean anything in that context. Now if I, as a white man, used the word, I might get a few seconds grace as my intent was decoded, but for the most part, it is not allowed. And it shouldn't be allowed. The "N" word is a sword in the hands of a white person for which the black person has no equivalent. I'm Italian, but if a black man called me "wop," I would feel nothing.....that pejorative has it's roots in an immigrant situation of over 100 years ago. The same goes for "Dago," or any other slur. In fact, the worst thing you can call a white man of any extraction is "racist," which conjures a profile of low breeding and lack of education.

The NAACP (an anachronism in itself...blacks have rejected the label "colored" generations ago) held a funeral for the "N" word a few years ago, in an attempt to discontinue it's use by blacks. By and large, the funeral was a failure, because we continue to hear blacks desecrate the corpse in everyday conversation. Does that mean the "N" word is a ghost, risen from the dead? And if it is a ghost, is it fair to call it a spook?

Ouch.

And dropping the final "r" is no tonic, either. Proclaiming to someone "that's my niggah right there" is only a bastardized (white) attempt at using the word without saying it (or sayin' it), and it is false in it's conception and in it's usage. You cannot have your cake and eat it too, chocolate or otherwise.

One thing is for sure, the word is never going to go away. It is part and parcel of a situation that exists in American society, one that declares that what whites want from black people and what blacks want from white people are two different things; whites want blacks to assimilate (talk like us, dress like us, live like us) and blacks want whites to get out of the way (give us our own culture, our own style, our own slang, our own ways). It is uncomfortable when a white person uses black slang or adopts a black style, because it is seen as stealing (and it is). We chide these people as "wiggers" (white niggers) and their company is enjoyed by neither whites nor blacks because they are offensive on two fronts; to whites, they refuse to assimilate and to blacks they refuse to get out of the way. Eminem managed to cross the cultural barrier, (but only with Dre' holding his hand and helping him navigate the stormy waters) while Kid Rock did not, and instead became embraced by lower-class, disenfranchised white kids from the cornfields of Iowa (where such culture must be adopted because surely no reasonable substitute exists).

Richard Pryor famously visited Africa and was asked "Do you see any Niggers here?" (the unspoken answer being "no"), and the reason the answer was no was because they did not have the sense of wretchedness present in the black underclass of America (now largely joined by poor, uneducated whites in large numbers). I have no cure for this condition. Until we find a way to raise everyone up, in education, economic status, and human dignity, we will continue to hear the "N" word, and every funeral, mispronunciation, or hip, comic treatment won't do us a bit of good.