Nigger Doesn't Live Here Anymore

This nig..um African-American might as well start looking for a new job right now.



Apparently, not even black people can use the "N-word" anymore.

That's what Eddie "Undercover Brother" Griffin found out during a performance at a Black Enterprise Magazine sponsored event in Doral, Florida last week. Griffin, who's built his career on embracing and fleshing out embarrassing racial stereotypes, was pulled off of the stage after repeatedly dropping the N-bomb in front of a crowd presumably comprised predominately of middle and upper middle class black folks. This episode comes fresh on the heels of the NAACP holding a mock funeral for the word. I guess Eddie didn't get the memo.

Wow. OK. My first reaction to this news was wishing I could have been there to see the look on Eddie Griffin's face. PRICELESS, I'm sure. He's probably still wondering what he did wrong. 'What kind of topsy-turvy world am I inhabiting,' he must be saying to himself, 'when I can't repeatedly refer to my fellows as n-words?' My second reaction was wondering what the hell the organizers of the event were expecting. I mean, they booked him right? I can't imagine him just happening to be there, milling around in the crowd, and deciding to jump on stage and nigger it up, for lack of a better description. Hadn't they seen any of his stand up? Did they find him in the yellow pages? Were they expecting him to pull out a sledgehammer and start smashing watermelons? Honestly, I almost feel sorry for Eddie Griffin. For going on two decades he's been allowed, no encouraged (rewarded with money, fame, movie roles, etc.) for doggedly sticking to his routine. He's never bothered evaluating himself about his usage of the word, or any of his other coonery, because, for one, he hasn't had to and for two, he's not a top-tier comedian.

All of the great stand-up geniuses, at one time or another, come to a point at which they question their own integrity. The dearly departed Richard Pryor, in whose godly image current black comedians have unsuccessfully attempted to mold themselves, went to Africa at the height of his popularity, came back home, publicly retired the word from his vocabulary, and said simply "I didn't see any niggers in Africa." Chris Rock, whose penetrating, Bring The Pain routine, "Black Folks versus Niggers," regenerated his career in the mid-'90s, decided that he would no longer perform it because he feared it was being misinterpreted. Most recently, Dave Chappelle, the man whom Pryor said reminded him most of himself, completely abandoned his show once he began feeling that some (himself included) were confusing his art with minstrelsy. Ironically, in Griffin's best work, DysFunktional Family, he pays homage to Pryor and refers to him as the greatest comic of all time. Yet, apparently, although Griffin was heavily influenced by his idol, he and other black comics of his generation failed to pick up on one of Richard Pryor's most important lessons.

One More Thing: In this Post-Nigger World of mock funerals, bum-rushed comics and almost daily Al Sharpton grandstanding, I can't help but wonder if we're fighting the wrong battle. I know, of course, the power of hate words. They are, as Saul Williams articulated "shards of metal DROPPED from eight story windows." But I'm still left cold by this suddenly amped up movement to cull the word from our collective vocabulary and cast it down the memory hole. Perhaps it's because it seems to be yet another way for the black middle/upper middle class - who're at the heart of this campaign - to police the actions of the people beneath them. Maybe it's the dull realization that eliminating the n-word won't put the kibbosh on white people's usage of it. Or maybe it's because, as Breez (she's brilliant, check her out) puts it, "Zero tolerance almost always equates to zero Negro tolerance." Just ask Eddie Griffin.