Quote:
Originally posted by ThurgreedMarshall
Because he's incapable of changing his mind? Some would argue that his joining in with the abandonment of the word, given his history with it, speaks volumes.
TM
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I'm hoist on my own petard a bit there. It's hard for me to cite anyone for a lack of consistency.
I guess the queerness I see in his change of heart is that I still believe that the shit he wrote earlier, using the word, was funny, and opened a very honest race dialogue. There's a huge pile of great comedy that pours out of making fun of the way races perceive one another stereotypically. Walking away from a valid legacy of that humor, which I think requires a subversive embrace of the word, is an overreaction.
The better course, in my opinion, is to make fun of people who use the word stupidly. If black performers would start skewering blacks who use the word recklessly and cheaply, the word would fall out of vogue, or at least be used in a funnier, smarter way.
I don't think you can just kneejerk to giving it up. It's far too potent ammunition for good satire. And if black performers did give it up, it'd just regain its old racist meaning among diehards who still use it. Why give them back the word? This "ban" smacks of good intentions gone overboard. Debate is good; bans of any sort are usually failures. That the "solution" to such a complex matter could be so simple indicates it's probably not a solution at all.
