CHRIS ROCK: “But the question remains the same: Can white people say “nigger”? And the answer’s the same: not really. But wait a minute, there’s one exception. There’s one exception. There’s one instance where white people can say nigger. And I’ma let it out tonight…The one time that white people can say nigger. White people are like “this is what I paid for! It’s a fuckin’ great night now!” The one time white people can say nigger: here it goes; listen closely. ‘Cause I may never say this shit again. The one time white people can sat nigger, OK: if it’s Christmas Eve, and it’s between 4:30 and 4:49 in the morning. If you white, and you’re on your way to Toys ‘R’ Us to get your kid the last Transformer doll, and right before you walk into Toys ‘R’ Us, some black person runs up beside you, smacks you in the head with a brick, knocks you to the ground, stomps on your face–”take that, you cracker-ass motherfucker!” Riverdances on your head–”take that, you cracker-ass motherfucker!” Takes your money, pisses on you, and runs away–if you white, at that moment, you can say “Somebody stop that nigger!” Matter of fact, if you white and that happens to you, you can say nigger for a whole month! But you gotta walk around with the police report in your pocket. In case any black people catch you sayin’ nigger, the police report will act as your freedom papers. “Hey, I heard you saying nigger; let me see your fuckin’ papers. Gimme the papers; show me the papers!” [pretends to read a sheet] “Christmas Eve! 4:48! You just made it, motherfucker! Pissed on you! …I hope they catch that nigger!”“
I’m not sure there is anyone who’s publicly expressed a lack of enthusiasm about the Gillibrand appointment quite in the manner I have–meticulously documenting her position as heir, in every sense, to an old-time political machine, which was not only corrupt, but racist. I expressed my amazement that David Paterson, the son of one of that machine’s victims, would appoint to the highest of offices, the granddaughter of one (or more) of that machine’s pillars.
Since taking office, I'll admit that Senator Gilly’s mostly been OK. When one gay blogger complained that she was opposed to same sex marriage up until the moment she was appointed, and that she should therefore be opposed, all I could think was “isn't the idea to reward people who switch to your side, to encourage others to do the same?”
Sort of defeats the purpose to punish them for it.
Though I know Rock Hackshaw and Larry Littlefield will disagree with what I’m about to say, to me, if an incumbent votes right and is productive to the legislative process and/or a community asset, it is a rebutable presumption that they deserve re-nomination.
Chuck Schumer goes even further; he apparently does not even consider the presumption to be rebutable–unless the incumbent is being challenged by a former member of his staff.
By contrast, I don’t even think a Senator in Gilliband’s position should be considered an incumbent. As far as I‘m concerned, an unelected Senator, appointed to an unexpired term by an unelected Governor is miles away from being sacrosanct. To me, this an open seat, and since it is also unlikely to be a picked up by Republicans, I think all candidates for the opening should be considered on to be on exactly the same footing.
I want Gilliband to have a primary, even if it is very likely that I will ultimately vote for her.
The latest prospective Gillibrand opponent to depart the race, Carolyn Maloney, makes a good case for why this is so. Her rationale came down to two points: that Gillibrand is too conservative, and that Maloney is more qualified.
The conservative argument is made problematic not only by Gillibrand’s re-positioning, but also by Maloney’s. Confronting an opponent who has proven she will expediently do whatever is necessary to win, Maloney tired to argue that she would be a better bet for liberals. Maloney essentially said that she would not need to retain a pollster to determine when and whether to take the progressive position, because she will instead come to those stands by instinct, even in those instances where it does not poll well.
Her record tells a different story.
Though she attacked Gillibrand for not aggressively opposing the war in Iraq, Maloney herself voted for the war, although she did break down in tears while doing so. It was a tough vote, and Maloney clearly thought she was doing the right thing at the time, but if one concluded that such an error would make her circumspect in smugly attacking Gillibrand on the issue, one would be wrong.
And it is not merely on international issues where one can call Maloney’s liberalism into question.
In 1993, Maloney deserted Bill Clinton in his hard-fought effort to pass his first, deficit-busting budget, which included a tax increase. Arguably, it was this bill that lead to the Clinton triumph of a balanced budget and eight years of prosperity. It also arguably led to the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994.
Thank to Maloney’s election, the Republican in the House most likely to support the bill, S. William Green, was now out of office. No other Republican support was forthcoming.
Democrats like Pennsylvania‘s Marjorie Margolis Mezvinsky, who should have been let off the hook to save their careers, instead had to provide every last vote because a few selfish Democrats who could have bitten the bullet took the coward’s way out. One of them was Carolyn Maloney, who seemed most interested in pleasing her contributor base and the sorts of donors she met and socialized with through her investment banker husband, rather than following the wishes of her constituents, who overwhelmingly supported the President on whose coattails Maloney had won.
Maloney was on her strongest ground attacking Gillibrand for opposing TARP, an issue where the financial interests of Maloney’s district and New York State coincided with those of her financial backers, and where Gillibrand’s parochialism was at its most voter-wise and economy-foolish, but faced with a far easier vote in 1993, Maloney showed a remarkable resemblance to Gillibrand in her elevation of expedience over the greater good.
Not that Maloney is incapable of pandering to her district. When she first ran for Congress, in a district which included Astoria, she practically promised to ride in on the first tank should the Greeks ever feel the need to invade Macedonia for their crime of calling themselves Macedonia. Maloney used to do a targeted piece in every campaign which created the (false) impression that she was Jewish (it always included her maiden name, so she appeared as the subliminally suggestive “Carolyn Bosher Maloney”. Insiders referred to it as “the Carolyn Kosher Baloney piece”). In that spirit, the Presbyterian Maloney would also (scandalously) take communion in Catholic churches, go all prep-school Episcopal WASPY on the Upper East Side, and sound like she was raised on a turnip farm when she spoke at a Harlem Baptist church.
Then there is the matter of qualifications.
Maloney is a more experienced legislator, whose hard-driving style seems a good match for the rough and tumble of the House. But she’s hardly quick on her feet; her idea of originality is to be the first to poach someone else‘s idea. Conversely, Gillibrand is a cum laude graduate of an Ivy League school, who holds a Juris Doctorate and speaks fluent Mandarin and French.
By contrast, sometimes Maloney sometimes seems barely functional in English.
During a press conference, Maloney has an uncanny ability to focus like a laser and make only the points she wants to make, and answer only the questions she wants to answer, even if no one has asked them. However, she is incapable of adlibbing a fart after a Hungarian meal.
Hence, the problem with Maloney having to submit to the sort of extensive personal interviews reporters expect to receive from candidates for statewide office:
CONGRESSWOMAN CAROLYN MALONEY: It’s the NRA, it’s immigration, it’s all these other things. In fact, I got a call from someone from Puerto Rico, said [Gillibrand] went to Puerto Rico and came out for English-only [education]. And he said, ‘It was like saying nigger to a Puerto Rican…I don’t know—I don’t know if that’s true or not. I just called. I’m just throwing that out. All of her—well, what does she stand for?
The response was immediate and deadly.
REVEREND AL SHARPTON: No public official even in quoting someone else should loosely use such an offensive term and should certainly challenge someone using the term to him or her…If in fact this quote is accurate, Congresswoman Maloney should issue a public apology for allowing that kind of dialogue to go un-challenged by her and for repeating it. Congresswoman Maloney should reveal the person that she was talking about so we know that in fact this conversation did occur and the way in which it occurred.
And here are some typical responses from Politico.com:
“The woman is looney and has no chance of being a Senator, even in the liberal haven of New York.
“WOW! Carolyn Maloney hates black people and Puerto Ricans. Maloney is a racist and a liberal. Is anyone surprised? I'm not.”
“Carolyn Maloney is a racist no matter how you slice it: she thought that racist quote sounded so good that she decided to use it herself.”
It has been truly awful to watch Chuck Schumer and President Obama do everything they can to dry up the money and support of all of Gillibrand’s potential opponents, instead of requiring Gillibrand to follow their own examples and sell themselves to the voters.
Their actions practically compel one to believe that Gillibrand does not have the stuff to close such a sale.
But, one’s pity for Carolyn Maloney must have its limits. Chuck and Barack may indeed have been the ones to douse Maloney in gasoline, but it was Maloney alone who lit the match and immolated herself.
And it does not matter that Maloney, who first achieved elected office representing a majority/minority city council seat she won, in large measure, by capturing the black vote, is no racist. At worst, Maloney might be a paternalistic liberal, which only seems bad until you consider the alternatives most frequently present in the white political world. Gillibrand, by contrast, is a racial tabula rusa–a clean slate effect achieved largely by never representing any people of color before her elevation.
And it matters not that there is nothing in Maloney’s statement that indicates any ill-thoughts about African-American. In fact, there is identification–Maloney articulates (to the limited extent to which she is capable) a position of Gillibrand’s that Maloney clearly disagrees with strongly; and then Maloney quotes a Latino third party to the effect that Latinos find Gillibrand’s position highly offensive–Maloney then goes on to quote the third party‘s use of the racial pejorative for African-Americans, which he had used to illustrate the degree of the offensiveness to Latinos of Gillibrand‘s position. While Maloney demurs (to the limited extent to which she is capable) as to whether the offense is indeed of that gravity, it is crystal clear that she thinks that it is, and she is appalled, or at least pretends to be.
Maloney is not being insensitive to Latinos and African-Americans, she is feeling their pain.
In fact, if Maloney is guilty of anything here, it isn’t lack of sensitivity, but encouraging oversensitivity. Maloney was using the most highly charged word in the English language as fuel to encourage a political conflagration, in an effort to burn her opponent. She was trying, without saying it in so many words, to encourage the perception that Gillibrand is a bigot.
Instead, she got hoist upon her own petard, which is poetic justice, even if she was hung out to dry for the wrong reasons.
Of course, we are better off. The next Republican bigot caught dancing the Macaca is going to cite Carolyn Maloney in his defense–thank goodness she’s not going to the Senate, which would only make matters worse.
And, of course Maloney should have known better. Two years ago, a body she used to serve on, the New York City Council, passed a resolution, symbolically banning the word “Nigger,” which could not even bring itself to mention the word. As City Council Members will sometimes pass an unpopular law, but see no percentage in the passage of unpopular symbolic resolutions, this was clearly a reflection of the state of the local political zeitgeist of which Maloney should have taken some notice.
Moreover, Maloney should be familiar with a man named Mark Green who once ran and lost for the seat in Congress Maloney now holds. Back in 2001, Mr. Green ran for Mayor. As I’ve pointed out, during the 2001 runoff for the Democratic mayoral primary, the campaign of Mark Green’s opponent, Freddy Ferrer, distributed flyers in black areas reminding voters that Ferrer was endorsed by Al Sharpton, while in white areas, Green’s campaign distributed flyers which did the same.
No one questioned Ferrer’s right to do this, but if it was racist to point out that Sharpton was supporting a candidate, then the leading Klansmen in 2001 would have been Freddy Ferrer, who, in front of the right audience, never failed to remind folks who Sharpton was backing.
Was it racist to remind white voters of the same? Al Sharpton is a polarizing figure among white voters, not because of the color of his skin, but because of the content of his character. Let’s consider a few examples from his track record: Fat Freddy's fire; Tawana Brawley; “Diamond merchants”; etc, etc. Al Sharpton is a sleazebag (and often, and not coincidentally, a Republican shill); it was not racist for the Green campaign to raise this issue.
What it was was stupid and, ultimately, counterproductive. The lit itself featured a NY Post cartoon of Ferrer kissing Sharpton’s ass, and the images were so grotesque as to be arguably racist themselves. The flyers were clearly distasteful to the point of nauseating, and, as any idiot could have forseen, the backlash they created cost Green big in the end. Green’s campaign made efforts to hide their involvement in the flyers because they knew that distributing a Sharpton piece would cause outrage, some feigned and some sincere. That alone should have stopped them from distributing it.
I believe that this was done without Green‘s knowledge, and that, with or without that repulsive cartoon, any piece raising the Sharpton question, even if it featured quotes from, and a picture of, Michael Meyers, would have generated the same outrage.
Was any criticism of Sharpton per se racist? Anyone who says no makes the piece's purported racism a matter of debate over increments. Anyone who says yes has pretty much removed themselves from the rational world and need not be answered.
But, in the end, it does not matter, and in the end, Maloney should have known better. Hell, if she needed a reminder, then Al Sharpton’s effort this year to remind voters of the long-forgotten incident, during his endorsement of one of Green’s opponents, should certainly have refreshed her memory. That, and the fact that Sharpton had already endorsed Gillibrand, and had associates at her trough, should been more than enough warning, although, in all honestly, had Al Sharpton never existed, it is hard to see how any pol smart enough to be worthy of nomination could have made such a grievous error.
As my friend Roscoe Conway likes to say: “The reporter can be your friend. But he won't.”
So refrain from using the word “nigger” in front of him.
As it is, it got me thinking of my own N-word usage and whether it would ever come back to bit me on the bum.
Once, about a decade ago, I was having lunch with Tish James, a mutual firend, and a black Republican of their acquantance, who I'd been making fun of. He was bitching fiercely about Arthur Bramwell, then Brooklyn's African-American Republican county Leader.
"Bramwell'," he said, "want to be HNIC." He then glared at mean. "Do you even know what that means?"
I did, the H was for head, the I for in and the C for charge. Yo can guess what the N stood for.
He tried to goad me into response. Either way, I was going to lose this challenge to my masculinity.
I replied. "I'm sorry, but if I'd of ever used that word growing up, I'd of gotten my assed whipped."
Still, less than a month into “Room 8”’s existence, I published “If New Yorkers Wanted to be Part of America We Would Live There,” a perhaps too optimistic piece about New York exceptionalism to American jingoism. I making this point I wrote:
The difference between New York and the rest of the country is the difference between our non-elites. In America beyond the Hudson, the working class is largely native born blue collars with necks of red and black. The native born white working class is about as friendly to open borders as they are to gun control; the dirty little secret is that the native born black working class may be even more militant on the issue. New immigrants have been depressing the wages of native born African-Americans since the time in the 1850s when much of the abolitionist movement supported the anti-immigrant Know Nothings. And this has continued through time. In the 70’s, Richard Pryor drew laughs calling Vietnamese immigrants “New Niggers” and portraying them as taking jobs from black people.
Earlier this year, when writing a two-part piece about the cultural underpinnings of the Republican Party of Michael Steele, I told the tale or record label owner J.D. Miller of Crowley, Louisiana, who in addition to producing some of the greatest blues records of the postwar era, used the same integrated band of backing musicians for a unusual sideline:
In 1966, he formed Reb Rebel Records, with a label featuring Confederate flags. The first releases were "Flight NAACP 105" by the Son Of Mississippi and "Dear Mr.President" by Happy Fats. Each sold in excess of 200,000 records. He followed this with "Kajun Klu Klux Klan" and "Looking For A Handout" by Johnny Rebel. Rebel, the label’s most popular artist, followed up with such toe-tappers as “Move Them Niggers North,” “Nigger, Nigger,” “Stay Away from Dixie,” “Some Niggers Never Die (They Just Smell That Way”) and “Nigger Hatin’ Me’, while James Crow hit with the soulful “Cowboys and Niggers.”
And only a week ago, my column contained these words:
“People do bad things, things they know that are bad, for what they feel at the moment were good reasons. One is to institute speech codes. Trample all over the First Amendment, the right of free speech, because we decide that using certain language hurts our fellow human beings–it demeans their humanity. While that might seem like a good idea, the long-term consequences on the right to free expression are far greater than whatever immediate hurt or pain a woman would feel for being called a bitch or a black would feel for being called a nigger. If we're talking about actual physical harm, laws against that exist already. It's not worth it to me to assuage the pain by killing off the First Amendment.
Speech codes are symbolic acts. They let a group of people say, "This symbolizes that we at the University of Wisconsin are not the sort of community where we would tolerate someone saying the word 'nigger."' Well, big deal. But there are other symbolic consequences, like what's the effect on freedom of inquiry. I think we're all bigger and more secure than that. I think we have to allow people to say even unpopular things and nasty things in order to protect the right of us to attack our government and say whatever's on our minds.”
The author of that particular digression was one Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
In each case, I would contend that no others words would do, but the words I quoted. The power of the points being made could only be made using that word in that sentence. Pryor as simultaneous empathetic victim and less than emphatic bigot; J.D. Miller, exposing by his own acts, capitalism’s ugliest underbelly as he pursued both black and white in search of green; Gates’ eloquent triumph over both ignorance and ineloquence.
I think the world is better served by the truth, as articulated by the eloquent words of a young journalist named Alan Cranston, who later went to the US Senate:
“While I was doing my foreign correspondence work, I read Adolph Hitler's Mein Kampf, the book he wrote while he was in prison before he became the dictator, outlining his plans for Germany and the terrible things he intended to do in the world. There was no English language version of it. When I quit journalism and came back to try to get involved in activities in the United States, one day in Macy's bookstore in New York I saw a display of Mein Kampf, an English language version, which I'd never seen before, which hadn't existed. I went over to look at it out of curiosity and as I picked it up, I knew it wasn't the real book. It was much thinner than the long book that I had read, which is about 350,000 words. So I bought it to see how come. And delving into it I found that it was a condensed version, and some of the things that would most upset Americans just weren't there as they were in the version I had read, the original, in German.
So I talked to an editor friend of mine in New York, a Hearst editor named Amster Spiro, and suggested that I write and we publish an anti-Nazi version of Mein Kampf that would be the real book and would awaken Americans to the peril Hitler posed for us and the rest of the world. So we did that. I spent eight days [compiling] my version of Mein Kampf from the English language version that I now had, the original German language version, and another copy that had just appeared. A book was then selling for around three dollars normal price. Hitler was getting forty cents royalty for each copy that somebody bought that wasn't [even] the real thing. We proceeded to print in tabloid the version that I wrote, with a very lurid red cover showing Hitler carving up the world, and we sold it for ten cents on newsstands. It created quite a stir…We sold half a million copies in ten days and were immediately sued by Hitler's agents on the grounds we had violated his copyright, which we had done…a Connecticut judge ruled in Hitler's favor. No damages were assessed, but we had to stop selling the book. We got what was called an injunction. But we did wake up a lot of Americans to the Nazi threat.”
As Eugen Weber, noted in "The Hollow Years: France in the 1930's":
In general, I prefer sins of commission to those of omission.
Back in 2006, a Danish newspaper printed a set of cartoons, some of which were seemingly bigoted against Muslims, and others of which merely offended with their sacrilege. There were worldwide outbreaks of violence, including the burning of embassies. I didn’t much like the cartoons, which weren't very funny, insightful, or tasteful, and they certainly wouldn’t have seen the light of day on my editorial page (I've been offended by the equivalent stuff about Jews); but, once they became news, they were worthy of being reprinted on the news pages. However, in a stunning epidemic of cowardice, almost no news outlet reprinted them. How could we understand what all the fuss was about if we couldn’t see the items in question?
It was like a real life version of "Waiting for Godot".
The cartoons were dubious speech, but printing them would have been journalism as it should be practiced. The cartoons were hardly of the level of hatred of Der Sturmer (or of the stuff many Arab papers print about Jews on a daily basis), but even if they were, I would have advocated printing them. One has to see this stuff to truly understand its nature. To see a Streicher cartoon is to understand what Nazism is all about. The diluted version or a description just won't do.
And I would extend that even further. Perhaps an elementary school student needs to be shielded. My fifth grade teacher thought so, reading us “Huckleberry Finn,” but changing the name of his slave companion. Being 1969, in Paramus, New Jersey, Huck’s friend was renamed “Negro Jim.” Today, Mr. Malatesta would be probably accused of turning Huck Finn’s raft into “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”
But an older student should learn the whole truth. The truth about slavery which is only conveyed when a grown man is called “NIGGER.” Also, the essential truth of Twain being a product of his age, which was one when even what passed for enlightened liberals still regarded black people as their dumb but noble inferiors.
Like educated readers, we can judge Twain both from the context of his times and the context of our own, and thereby judge both his times and our own, rather than giving everything the Tom Sawyer-style whitewashing that censorship would provide. And we can be thankful that Twain, warts and all, recorded these ugly truths while calling them fiction, and made them entertaining enough so that we don’t even now avert our eyes as we learn about our ugly past and reflect upon our no always so pretty present.
I conclude with some thoughts about a song by JOHNNY OTIS AND HIS ORCHESTRA, which I’ve attached http://undercoverblackman.vox.com/library/audio/6a00cd970f81104cd500d09e662b32be2b.html.
Almost 25 years after I first heard the 32 year old recording of “Nigger, Please!,” it still shocks. More so than almost any gangsta rap using the word “nigga.“
It is an ugly tale, written by Lermon Horton, Sonny Craver and Otis Hayes, who also arranged the tune and played the piano. It is sung in the voice of a probably middle-class, possibly church-ified, black woman lashing out at a pimped up, loud-mouthed, jeri-curled, woman beating, heavy drinking, welfare recipient she blames for “holding all of us down.” The title is sarcastically repeated again and again to indicate both her incredulousness and her derision.
The hard edge of the music is conveyed not only through the tough singing of blues-belter Barbara Morrison, but by the stinging blues guitar of Shuggie Otis, an R&B star in his own right, better known for spacey soul tunes like “Strawberry Letter Number 23,” later a hit for The Brothers Johnson. Equally stinging is the saxophone of the great Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, who later recorded a version of the song himself, with Otis in the producer’s chair and Shuggie once again on guitar.
It is the sort of tale told within the community, but not out of school, written and sung by blacks and played by an almost exclusively black band. One gathers that the genteel woman singing the song would be appalled to have it heard by my ears, or that of any other white person.
The Bandleader/Producer of the cut, Johnny Otis, who also plays incongruous Hampton-style vibes on it, is a story in himself. Otis was a talent scout (discovering, amongst others, Jackie Wilson, Little Willie John, Etta James, Esther Phillips, Big Mama Thornton, The Coasters, and Hank Ballard), producer, singer, drummer, pianist, night club owner, songwriter (Eric Clapton recorded both “Willie and the Hand Jive” and “Crazy Country Hop”) and label owner, amongst other things. He was also Chief of Staff to Mervyn Dymally, who served as Jerry Brown's first Lt. Governor (the next one was Mike Curb), and as the first Trinidad-born member of Congress. Otis also was minister in his own church.
Otis is the author of two books; the first “Listen to the Lambs” followed the Watts Riots in the 1960s, the second, “Upside Your Head,” updates the story to the Rodney King riots, but Otis does not use that term–he prefers “uprisings,” and probably taught that phraseology to Maxine Waters.
His militancy extended to music. The theory of American popular music as the product of joyous miscegenation as articulated by the likes of Nick Tosches, Griel Marcus and Yours Truly was not one embraced by Johnny Otis. “[W}here music is concerned, money is involved and the white have gotten it. It’s a racist situation. It’s not a cultural exchange; it’s long distance theft.”
“American pop has become increasingly black. Black men and women have been the innovators, breathing life into new form. Black artists have always dug the road maps; white artist shave picked up on the music, dug it, copied it, interpreted it, become the kings, and reaped enormous financial benefit. Very often, they have accepted the proffered crowns. Paul Whiteman, ’The King of Jazz’–surely not the king; Benny Goodman, ’The King of Swing’–a fine musician, but surely not the king. Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Jimmie Lunceford wore the crowns, whether they were invested formally or not. Elvis Presley, ’The King of R ’n R’–a fine creative artist and a revolutionary figure in American music, but the kings of rock ’n roll were Fats Domino, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, B.B. King.”
A fair man, certainly willing to give the blue-eyed devil his due, but ultimately, despite the joy within his musical legacy, an angry man. And “Nigger, Please!” is a song of angry black men and women. Angry at white America, but even angrier at themselves.
Who among us would deny Barbara Morrison, Otis Hayes, Horton Lermon, Sonny Craver, Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson and Shuggie Otis the right to express that anger? And, who amongst would even deny them the use of the word “nigger” if they want to use it, to express that anger?
But what about Johnny Otis?
According to R&B historian Arnold Shaw, Johnny Otis is the son of Alexander and Irene Veliotes, Greek immigrants. The Veliotes family lived above their grocery in an integrated Berkeley, California neighborhood which became a black ghetto. Early in his life, Otis, who was dark, but clearly white, decided to join that community.
Evidence indicates he was largely accepted as such.
“I did not become black,” writes Otis, “because I was attracted to Negro music. My attitude was formed long before I moved into the music field. Nor did I become a member of the Negro community because I married a Negro girl. I became what I am because as a child, I reacted to the way of life, the special vitality, the atmosphere of the black community…I cannot think of myself as white.”
So, what do we do with Johnny Otis?
Culturally, it can be argued that Johnny Otis partook of the black experience, earlier in his life, and with far more intensity, than Barack Hussein Obama.
But does that give him the right to put his name on a record called “Nigger, Please!” ?
But then again, I would never want to hear Barack Obama use the word “nigger” either.