Will They Invite Quentin Tarantino To The Funeral?

The NAACP plans to bury an old adversary and, unfortunately, for some an old friend. Chairman Julian Bond says that the group plans to symbolically bury the N-word on Monday at its annual meeting in Detriot:

Julian Bond wants people to understand that when the NAACP symbolically buries the N-word on Monday, the effort will be led by the younger members of the venerable civil rights organization.
“Seven young people are on our board of directors, and they are spearheading this initiative,” said Bond, the group’s chairman. “This is the continuation of a long fight against the denigration of African Americans in popular culture. If it’s someone black or someone white, it’s equally wrong.”

I agree, but most of the word’s use over the past few decades have come from the rap industry, which seems to have a love affair with the word. It didn’t start with rap, though; that started with its acceptance in the black community as a term of rough endearment, the same as in rap today. I recall discussing this with African-American co-workers over twenty-five years ago at my first full-time job, who explained to me that it meant something different when Caucasians said the word. I understood their point, but I never understood why anyone would want to perpetuate such an ugly slur, even for the irony.
So good for the NAACP, but it’s interesting that it took this long for them to stand up to the rap industry, which is the subtext here. It wouldn’t have happened at all if it hadn’t been for the fallout from Don Imus and his use of racially-charged insults on the air. Imus didn’t use the N-word, but when the outrage of his bone-headed quip peaked, people began asking why Imus got such harsh treatment when rappers said much worse on almost every record. Under that pressure, chief Imus antagonist Al Sharpton attacked the recording industry, and the word finally got the disgust it deserves.
It’s worth pointing out that it isn’t just rap that has a problem with the word; Hollywood does as well. For some reason, Quentin Tarantino seems to regard the word as a talisman for authenticity in his overblown and mostly overrated grindhouse genre flicks. Other indie producers have followed suit. I loved Pulp Fiction, but nothing in that movie makes me cringe more than when Tarantino as Jimmy keeps barking the N-word at Samuel L. Jackson in their scene together.
Perhaps Bond should invite Tarantino to the funeral, as well as rap producers, singers, and filmmakers. The most ironic point of this burial is that the people who used it most in the last couple of decades are those who exploited it for financial profit, rather than for any racial animus. That’s why, despite this well-intentioned and long overdue burial, I expect to see the Night Of The Living N-Word shortly thereafter, as the term is simply too lucrative to stay dead for long — which is another sad commentary on our culture.

15 thoughts on “Will They Invite Quentin Tarantino To The Funeral?”

  1. I seem to remember this was a plank of the Million-Man March platform, back in 1995.

  2. I’m a writer of web fiction, in addition to being a blogger. Just recently I wrote a story where the ‘N’ word was used some 20-30 times by a single character in a story of mine. The setting of my fiction was mid 1990’s but this character clung to the race views of when he grew up, which were from the 40’s and 50’s Deep South. It did put him at odds with his family, including his wife however. Mostly in a subplot in my story that involved the man’s son dating a mixed race girl.
    The N word is offensive, no question in my mind. As to censoring its use, I believe in free speech. Offensive or not, people can say what they want. They can also be subject to riddicule for anything they say, which I feel is the best way to counter offensive speech. The freedom to express ideas, offesive or not, is one of the many rights citizens of this country have.
    Use of the N word should die out, hopefully on it own but without censorship.

  3. Captain,
    As Morgan Freeman so succinctly put it, when asked about the best way to stop racism, he said “Stop talking about it.”
    The best way to stop a great deal of the problems we currently face is to bury the hyphen. Nothing is more devisive, more anti-assimilation, more un-American than using a ‘something” hyphen American as an identifier. Irish-American, Hispanic-American, African-American. It doesn’t matter. All are equally denigrating and repulsive, as if Americans could be divided into subsets.
    The use of such heritage/ethnic monikers is the favored tool of liberals to destroy our melting pot. It divides one group against each other and makes race/ethnic identity more important than the principle identity of “American”.
    Unless and until we can start talking about “Americans” without additional identifuers, we will never get beyond our current multi-cultural morass. Either we are a melting pot, or we ought to just call the whole thing quits.
    Respects,

  4. Fact: If you can control your opponent’s vocabulary, you can win every debate. Brings to mind Allen’s McCacca incident. What’s that mean? Was he calling the man an Irish turd? I’m sure the press didn’t check with Allen as to the proper spelling of the word and my spelling is just as accurate as their’s is.

  5. I am truly in agreement with the words stated by Gwedd. “Stop talking about racism and it will die off” I do use the hyphen or front slash in describing races in our Country. But if we all are American’s this divides the Country. Look beyond the color of one man’s skin and look at their accomplishments. If Al Sharpton would just stay in his house and stop speaking, all American’s would be better off. But he won’t and we are left with a racist gone wild.

  6. Best way to inject energy into the word nigger?
    Have a mock funeral for it hosted by the NAACP.
    Oh please you race-card playing morons, stop before you make us hurl. Have you learned nothing from Lenny Bruce? Frankly, are you just intellectually incapable of learning anything?
    If you really must deal with the word nigger, laugh at the word and best of all, laugh at those who use it. And I don’t mean laugh with them, I deliberately mean laugh at their pathetic asses.
    Nothing disinfects like laughter and derision. You morons.

  7. I believe it was the comedian Steven Wright who said: “My dog is a Canine-American.”
    The perpetual hyphen is part of the problem though it pales in comparison to the shopworn sense of entitlement based on the NAACP fixation on 150 years ago. The equivalent of the Irish-Americans still blaming potato famines or William of Orange, the Polish arrivals blaming having been Europe’s battleground, The German settlers blaming the Hundred Years War or Bismarck etc. Every ethnic group can keep a chip on their shoulder for a generation or two. After that it becomes tiresome and puerile were it not so burdensome to Americans not living in perpetual let’s blame somebody else mode. The Chinese immigrants who built the railroads under conditions worse than slavery and the Vietnamese immigrants who fled genocide don’t seem stuck in the past or expecting special treatment.
    If the NAACP someday decides they want to be taken seriously they will criticize the Jazzy Jacksons and Al $harptons along with the Tawana Brawleys and Crystal “Duke setup” Mangum. They would question not only the OJ jurors but the Howard University law students who cheered OJ beating the rap. They’d have strong words about School Bus Ray Nagin and the post-Katrina looter-fest. They’d reject academe blowhards like Cornel West and similar hyphenated-studies faker professorships and demand they get real jobs, shun set asides and quota jobs. If the NAACP were less a joke they’d criticize rap and the culture of illegitimacy and sloth it bluntly encourages.
    That is unlikely to happen because if the NAACP’s core following were to succeed then the Jazzys and Als and Julian Bonds would be forced to get real jobs in line with their true talents. Flipping those burgers are no match for cruising the crumbling ‘hood trolling for cash in their shiny limos of victimhood.

  8. It’s somewhat fitting when you consider that the NAACP has more or less been a symbolic organization for the last quarter century. Why focus on doing actual work when you can focus on the ceremony instead?

  9. And when the NAACP completed the burial ceremonies, to the fawning of the MSM, their next move will be to remove from all libraries any book that contains said N-word. And the MSM will fawn again.
    Now, if ‘being offended’ is a justification for the idea that all humans are NOT created equal and that he who’s most offended takes precedence over all others, I now serve notice on the NAACP and the rest of the world, that their theatrical stunt to ‘bury’ one word is self-cancelling the second that the N-word is used for any purpose at all following the burial.
    And should the culling of libraries begin as a sequel to said stunt, that I myself will be so offended by it that the sum total of the offense taken by racial, gender and class ‘victims’ (including Dukes Group of 88) for the last 50 years will be insignificant by comparison. Therefore by the finest PC standards, what I say thereafter goes, and said ‘victims’ had better think again before launching any book-burnings.

  10. To black “yoots,” and others; the “N” word is like the CAKEWALK. Ain’t going nowhere. Can’t be buried. And, will still be heard.
    Not that ya need it. Language actually gives you insight into what people are thinking. It also labels your education level. No need to wear your diplomas pinned to your shirt pockets.
    Now, WHY is this word so popular among blacks? Ya know what? I have no idea, why. And, I could care even less.
    As far as I’m concerned its what Arnold “Schwartzenegger” wraps his last name, around twice.
    You think people don’t signal each other with rolling eyeballs when they see the jerks produced by affirmative action? By now, that stuff is obvious. And, stands out as the most corrosive. So, “burying” the word won’t help. Won’t hurt.

  11. It didn’t take OJ and Tiger Woods, marrying gorgeous blondes, for me to notice that lots of blacks measure success in ways that go unspoken, for the most part.
    Though I was walking behind a group of black kids, heading into the Pasadena City College cafeteria; when I caught the drift of what they were saying. Back then? Circa 1990. I was very surprised. They were using the “N” word, constantly. AND, one of the men said his parents were furious with him, because he was dating a black woman darker than most of his family members. Talk of color conscious!
    I guess it’s like a box of Crayola’s. In france? Kids ask for “noir.” So, this “N” word fixation, at best is just an English phenomena.
    And, that black kids think that darker skinned people are noticeably less desirable? Well, that’s no longer news to me. Nor can society change the underpinnings of what we consider beautiful.
    Sure. You’d think quality would count for more points than it does.

  12. The thing about the change in the meaning and use of the N-word is that now I can’t read “Huckleberry Finn” to my grandson. It’s a great book and an important part of our literature and history but the name of one of the main characters is a now a forbidden word.

  13. During the “burial”, will Bond leap into the grave, like Laertes in Hamlet?
    After all, Bond should love that word and everything it symbolizes. White guilt made his career.

Comments are closed.