Are we taking a step backwards when it comes to race in this country?
The key witness for the prosecution, Rachel Jeantel, testified today in the murder trialof Trayvon Martin. Jeantel was on the phone with Martin as George Zimmerman followed him on the night of February 26th, 2012 and “creepy-ass cracker” was used by Martin to describe Zimmerman. This has sparked a debate about whether or not the word “cracker” is or should be offensive to white people. On CNN, a reporter took to the street and began to question people about which racial slurs they were most offended by. Overwhelmingly, the word “cracker” was found to be much less offensive than the infamous “N” word by both black and white people.
The history of this word gives it a certain derogatory stigma that has carried over to our day and age. Even in writing, I myself refuse to use the word. I opt for the more sensitive “N word”. Recently, as Samuel L. Jackson was promoting his film Django Unchained, an interviewer questioned him about the controversy fueled by Spike Lee’s criticism of Quentin Tarantino’s use of the “N” word in his scripts. Jackson countered by asking “What word? Nothin’? Nobody?” followed by various attempts to get the young, white interviewer to say the word he was referring to. Finally, Jackson said “It’s not a good question if you can’t say it” and the subject was immediately changed. Not only was this one of the best question deflections I have ever seen, but it illustrated the fear surrounding the utterance of one of the strongest words in the english language.
Paula Deen has also been in the news lately for her use of the word. There isn’t any legitimate excuses for her ignorance in saying things that would potentially offend the main demographic her work appeals to. But to be perfectly honest, if I were a black housewife that loves Paula’s recipes, I would only be offended for a minute before wondering how much butter to use in Paula’s gravy recipe. In other words, Paula Deen has become an expert in her field and knows her stuff when it comes to food. Her poor choice of language and dismal efforts to be politically correct would not decrease my desire for her help in making a delicious fried chicken dinner. In comparison, even though I think Kanye West is a complete idiot and disagree with 99% of what comes out of his mouth, I listened to his new album in its entirety the first chance I had. But that’s just me.
There is part of me that wonders if not running away from certain words would improve the racial circumstances in this country. That maybe language contributes to the divide that obviously exists and seems to be a key topic in so many news headlines recently. From my experience living in Brazil, I saw much less of a cultural separation between black and light skinned people. There is absolutely no comparable word that Paula Deen could have used to offend any Portuguese speaking fans. While learning the language, I noticed that when I was in a situation where I needed to describe a black person to someone else, there weren’t any words I needed to be careful about using to avoid offending someone.
As I photoshopped the Django Unchained image for this blog post, I also considered swapping Leonardo DiCaprio’s head with Paula Deen’s, which I think would have looked hilarious. But I realized that to keep the image somewhat symmetrical, I would have had to replace Christoph Waltz‘s head as well, but I couldn’t think of another head to throw on there. Any ideas?
