If you waste your time reading posts and comments by idiots on the internet you would be aware that many people went sort of crazy when a Black comedian, Larry Wilmore, spoke at the White House Correspondents’ Association annual dinner.
Wilmore followed President Obama’s comedic speech with his own dialogue directed at correspondents and also Americans at large. Wilmore’s comments clearly troubled some media members of the usually drunk and festive gathering of journalists, broadcasters, media moguls and politicians.
His final words at the event went viral when he ended by calling President Barack Obama “,,,.Barry, my nigger”!,
Well, the N-word police officers went ballistic!
The President looked surprised but, to me, he didn’t look offended.
And I wasn’t offended either!
Why? Because I’m smart enough to know that most Americans, of all races, have used the word before. Some have said it in public and many more have said it in the comfort of their own homes, in front of their young and impressionable children and certainly in conversations with their friends that use the N-word too!
You see, sometimes the, use of the N-word depends on who you are and, to a lesser extent, where you are.
So called scholars like Randall Kennedy, a Black man, can say nigger. He wrote the book “NIGGER, The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word”. Kennedy, graduate of Princeton and Yale, penned the book about the origins and use of the word nigger and laughed all the way to the bank as his book sold hundreds of thousands of copies and rose to become a “best seller” on the New York Times list of non-fiction books.
Entertainers like director Quentin Jerome Tarantino can’t seem to make a single movie without using the N-word he likes so much. Don’t act like you haven’t seen “Django Unchained” or “Hateful Eight”!
Black people with a bank roll can say nigger. If you can make yourself money and make white people even more money, you can pretty much say what you want.
My favorite rapper, Ice Cube can say nigger, even though these days he is careful who he says it to. Ice Cube rose to fame as a member of “N.W.A” (Niggaz Wit Attitudes).
I don’t have to tell you the many, many other highly paid rappers, comedians, actors and entertainers that use the N-word without worry.
One more group can say the N-word and have no fear about repercussions.
The smart Black man or Black woman can say it that knows that even though Fox News and other White House correspondents get upset when Blacks use the word, those same correspondents should get mad at themselves.
Those Black, white and brown media clowns say something negative or use a derogatory description about Black people every day!
If it is bad to say “nigger” why is it good to freely talk about jiggaboo, darkie or Sambo? Why can some commentators freely use the word “voodoo” to negatively describe something such as ”voodoo economics”?
Those same media experts that chastised Larry Wilmore wouldn’t go to sleep and dream about describing a cheap market, selling cheap products as a “Jew Store”!
As long as you don’t have a hateful heart or a racist mind, you can pretty much say what you want to as long as you are careful when and where you say volatile or provocative words.
What you say doesn’t bother me and I hope what I write doesn’t bother you, my N-words!
(Buy Gantt’s latest book, “Beast Too: Dead Man Writing” on Amazon.com and from bookstores everywhere. Contact Lucius at www.allworldconsultants.net. And, if you want to,“Like” The Gantt Report page on Facebook.)
Lucius is a contributing columnist to NNPA newspapers around the nation, and the author of “Beast Too: Dead Man Writing,” available on Amazon.com and from bookstores everywhere.