09.10.06
my nigger
i was watching "Rush Hour" on my local television station the other night; an amusing "East meets West" buddy film, it exploits motor mouth comedy and rubber-limbed acrobatics in equal measure.
in a comic faux pas designed to show off the bloodless martial arts prowess of Jackie Chan, while waiting for Chris Tucker to conduct what ends up being a mock interrogation, Jackie attempts to mimic Tucker’s casual greeting, extending his fist in the modern equivalent of hand slap and utters… "what’s up my negro?"
what the fuck? a raucous confrontation ensues, with Jackie scarcely avoiding a severe beat down by all the black guys in the pool hall… because he addressed one of them as negro? C’MON! Twelve-year-old midwestern white kids know that what he said was the typical urban-youth greeting "what’s up my nigger"…
who did the assholes in standards and practices imagine they were protecting from being offeinded: black folk like me?? Truth be told, I found the PC-euphemized censorship to be triply offensive:
- it imagines that i am so sensitive that — what? i’ll start a riot because, for the umpty-jillionth time in my life, i’ll hear a black man referred to as a nigger?
- it ruins the comedy of the fuckin’ scene!!! the whole joke is a typical comedy of manners, a play on the fact that an outsider can’t be as casual with such a phrase as "one of us"…
- most offensively, it makes the black guys in the scene out to be complete and total idiots. they destroyed the pool hall attempting to kick some chinese guy’s ass because he called one of them…. negro??
this wasn’t the first time the revisionist timidity of broadcast TV ruined a pivotal scene in a well-known movie… in the mindlessly re-edited version of "Die Hard III", Bruce Willis’ John McClane character is compelled by a mad bomber to strip naked and walk through the streets of Harlem, wearing nothing but a sandwich board that says… "I Hate… Everybody"????
yeahright!!! that’s why when the Harlem youths see him, one throws a switchblade into the the sign across his chest, another bounces a basketball against his face, a third smashes a bottle against the side his head, and Samuel L. Jackson’s black militant character risks his life and pulls McClane’s gun on his own neighbors… to rescue this man from being killed… because he’s a misanthrope???
are we supposed to be fuckin’ stupid? the sign said "I Hate NIGGERS", dammit!!! the whole point of the scene was that the mad bomber wanted McClane to commit public suicide.
if you walk around Harlem with a sign saying you hate everybody, you’ll hardly raise an eyebrow, and laughter will be the most energetic reaction you’ll arouse….however, if you are a naked white guy with a sign that says i hate niggers, those niggers will kick your fuckin’ ass…
when did ameriKKKa become so chickenshit about what was once its favorite word? i remember as a youth watching what was then the most watched, most controversial television event in American history: Roots. Never before, and never again until the heyday of Yo! MTv Raps was the word nigger heard with such frequency…
it was an attempt to accurately portray slavery, to get beyond the bullshit white-boy fantasies of Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind, where the darkies cozied up to masssah’s side, wanting nothing but to shuck, jive, sing spirituals and nurse the white babies that would grow up to score their backs with bullwhips.
Black Americans should stand by others seeking freedom today, she went on, and shun the "condescending" argument that some races or nations were not interested in or ready for Western freedoms.
"We’ve heard that argument before. And we, more than any, as a people, should be ready to reject it," she said. "That view was wrong in 1963 in Birmingham and it is wrong in 2003 in Baghdad and in the rest of the Middle East."
- Condoleeza RIce, addressing the National Association of Black Journalists in Dallas.
nowadays, you’d think that the word has always ended with an "a", and was never anything other than a urban-youth term of endearment… as long as it’s used in this "see, they use it themselves!" manner, TV seems to have no problem with it…
you almost forget that it is a word created to dehumanize a people, justify trading in their flesh, mudering them for sport — all the while allowing the words creators to sleep peacefully, imagining themselves decent christian men…
the offense of editing those scenes is that it denies the power the word still has when coming from the mouth of the oppresor: that the sight John McClane’s sandwich board would still be enough to incite young black men to riot.
the offense of censoring those scenes is that it excuses white ameriKKKa for its sins, pretends that racism no longer exists, ignores the "us" and "them" mentality that still prevails in all corners of this country…
it trivializes the effect of race in ameriKKKa… and allow a blackface shill like Condoleeza Rice to use it as just another metaphor to setup the same old Republicrap justifications for this insane ameriJihad.
"Condi", suddenly embracing her roots, in order to lecture a group of Black Journalists that "We… as a people" must reject criticisms of Dubya’s mad war?
nigger, please…
