February 28, 2007
N-WORD RUN OUT OF TOWN TODAY
Wait, the headline came out all wrong. What I meant to say is that the New York City Council symbolically banned the racial epithet with a long and ugly history.
The nonbinding measure, approved unanimously, calls for New Yorkers to voluntarily stop using the word, which comes from a long past as a derogatory epithet against blacks but has more recently been adapted among entertainers and youths as a term of endearment.
"People are using it out of context," said Councilman Leroy Comrie, the sponsor of the bill. "People are also denigrating themselves by using the word, and disrespecting their history, disrespecting the history of a people and a country and also putting themselves in a negative light that we need to correct."
With a touch of irony, NY1's online version of the story is accompanied by a picture of an anti-N-word t-shirt that is actually emblazoned with three separate spellings of the word, but they're in a red circle with a slash through it. That type of parsing makes for some dicey distinctions.
I just listened to a cut off Public Enemy's Apocalypse 91 . . . The Enemy Strikes Black called "I Don't Want To Be Called Yo Niga". Pen in hand, I counted Flava Flav say the N-word 56 times in three minutes and 20 seconds. That's not counting the backing vocals, which I estimate repeated the word about 200 times.
Tagged:Posted by Lexiphane at February 28, 2007 4:50 PM
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