I really enjoyed your column addressing the N-word. There are few words that can be used in an acceptable manner in one setting and unleash a firestorm in another. SNL had viewers bent over with Chevy Chase doing word association with Richard Pryor on a job interview (White? Black. Negro? Whitey. Colored? Redneck. Tarbaby? Peckerwood. Spearchucker? White trash. Junglebunny? Honkey. Nigger? DEAD honkey.) To the brothers, it rolls off the tongue with ease. Honkey and cracker don’t bother me, although I don’t hear too many black folks saying them anymore (and I’m quite sure no white folks use them either). Spic, wetback, slope, squaw, and chink all carry some kinetic energy. The point is, there is no other word so offensively charged that is embraced by the same culture who become enraged by it. I can’t see any valid use of the word from a Caucasian perspective or otherwise. The black community seems to want to hang onto it as some sort of trophy to be waved around in front of everyone: We can use it but you can’t. Fifteen years ago, my buddy and I went to a film at Galtier Cinema in St. Paul. There were about thirteen people in the theater, nine African Americans near the front rows, me and my friend in the middle, and two African Americans in the back row. As the movie was starting, the group up front was talking and joking aloud. After awhile I hollered up, “Hey, could you keep it down, it’s hard to hear the movie.” Then, a voice from the back piped in, “Yeah, shut up niggers!” Well, my buddy and I turned a paler shade of white as five angry guys came crawling over the tops of the theater seats on a beeline straight for us. I raised my hands in the air and said with a shriek, “Look, man, we didn’t say it!” Just then, the voice from the back started laughing at his friends who he had just stirred up. They realized they’d been had and everyone was howling. Well, almost everyone. Put it this way: I don’t remember the movie, but I got my six dollars’ worth of adrenaline that day.
Peter Christensen,
Minneapolis
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