Chris Rock expounds on niggaz

Bill in Maryland writes:

You write: “Whoopi Goldberg said that when blacks say ‘nigger’ to each other, it is a form of affection, so it’s ok.”

Really?

The link is to a monologue by black comedian Chris Rock on the “civil war” between black people and “niggaz.” What Rock is talking about is a familiar type of no-good, useless, shiftless, trouble-making, and, frequently, dangerous and criminal black person—the very type of people, in short, who have always been known by the word “nigger.” If black people are seriously bothered by those they call “niggers,” and want to avoid them, maybe white people ought to be bothered by them too—and not be afraid to talk frankly about them, though it’s not necessary to use the N-word in order to do so.

At the same time, given the open, public, and very contemptuous use of “nigger” by a popular black entertainer, how can anyone plausibly argue that the use of the word by white people is shocking, horrible, racially wounding to blacks—and thus to be absolutely prohibited and severely punished? It’s absurd. If any white person gets in trouble for speaking the N-word (or for saying something that remotely resembles it, like “niggardly”), all he has to do is play this Chris Rock video, and the case will be closed.

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Ken Hechtman writes:

You write:

“If any white person gets in trouble for speaking the N-word (or for saying something that remotely resembles it, like ‘niggardly’), all he has to do is play this Chris Rock video, and the case will be closed.”

Maybe and maybe not. Chris Rock did that routine 12 years ago. He doesn’t do it anymore. Something about his black fans not laughing and his white fans laughing just that little bit too much. This from the Atlantic:

As the comedian Chris Rock put it in one of his infamous routines, “Everything white people don’t like about black people, black people really don’t like about black people … It’s like a civil war going on with black people, and it’s two sides—there’s black people and there’s niggas, and niggas have got to go … Boy, I wish they’d let me join the Ku Klux Klan. Shit, I’d do a drive-by from here to Brooklyn.” (Rock stopped performing the routine when he noticed that his white fans were laughing a little too hard.)

LA replies:

I didn’t know the YouTube was 12 years old. That might affect the usefulness of that particular piece of evidence, but not undermine the overall point. Unless you are saying that Rock was the only one using the N-word in a critical way, not an affectionate way, and therefore, given that he has dropped the routine, Whoopi Goldberg’s comment that it’s only used affectionately is now true.

Ken Hechtman writes:

The only one? I doubt that …

Do you know Dave Chapelle’s stuff? He came around a few years after Chris Rock and kind of starts up where Chris Rock leaves off.

Chris Rock had other “conservative family values” routines, not just “Blacks vs Niggaz.” “Crazy White Kids” off the “Bigger and Blacker” album is the first one that springs to mind.

But he’d always be placing himself outside the parts of black culture he didn’t like and preaching and moralizing against it in his own voice.

Dave Chapelle would do his stuff from the inside, skits like “Tyrone the Crackhead,” “Reparations,” “The Real Real World.”

He’d act like he was celebrating the worst aspects of black culture, but he’d be so over the top about it as to make the parody obvious.

Larry T. writes:

You may enjoy this bit of Richard Pryor, talking about the movie Stir Crazy, which was filmed in a prison in Arizona. He said when he first went into the prison he thought all black men were innocent. He became disabused of this notion. It’s pretty funny.

LA writes (July 26):

I just listened again to the Chris Rock “niggaz” routine from 1996, and it’s clear he’s not just being funny. He means it. When he says, “I’m tired, tired, tired, of this sh*t,” that’s coming from his heart. He’s expressing a life-time of frustration. He hates the lowlifes, the “niggaz,” that make up so much of the black community. The fact that he eventually dropped the routine doesn’t mean anything; no comedian uses the same routine forever. That monolog is a valid expression of the way many blacks feel about “niggaz,” and if black people keep talking in mixed-race company about “niggaz,” it can’t be a crime for a white person to let the word pass his lips.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 24, 2008 04:17 PM | Send