White musicians and "artistic" use of the N-word: A Discussion and Social History

^^^can't be said enough, really

i'm out of my depth on this discussion, its not intellectually elegant or anything, its just more a life pro tip for myself.

(tho sorry if i offended dan, see even posting in this thread violates the rule, and i'm sinking already)

in general I don't like when white ppl drop n-bombs, but you can't keep artists from using certain words.

I do find it odd that the least offensive example in this thread so far is "holiday in cambodia", mostly for the reasons dan points out. I guess "bragging that you know how the junkies feel cold" or any number of less offensive variations could work, but it comes off as savage satirical indictment rather than a lame attempt at being shocking. also it doesn't have the "hey I'm saying THAT WORD" space cleared around it, the delivery is off-hand, it's placed so well in the lyric.

there's nothing wrong with questioning why social rules exist and whether they should. "you can't say the n word, JUST ACCEPT IT" isn't a good way to go about it. the end result of a long and nuanced discussion - still gonna be white people not using the n word, but this "JUST ACCEPT IT. CASE CLOSED" philosophy certainly doesn't help. people should think about it and have discussion about it!

During the first Lollapalooza tour, Jane's Addiction brings out Ice-T to perform a rendition of Sly & the Family Stone's "Don't Call Me Nigger, Whitey (Don't Call Me Whitey, Nigger)". Perry Farrell sings the white part, Ice-T sings the Black part. Black quartet Living Colour comes onstage afterward and bandleader Vernon Reid announces "I'll never be anyone's nigger for entertainment..."

Backstage at a Rolling Stones show in 1989, Living Colour confronted Rose about "One In A Million" (both bands were opening the show). Rose said, "I didn't mean you guys were n*ggers!"

"you really shouldn't get involved in a discussion with a black person about whether its okay for them to say it or not. that's the rules."

I'm with you if it's someone going around uninvited like pushy church witnesses, but my understanding is that the majority of NWA, Body Count records were bought by white people, so there's a natural relationship where they as the consumers get to tell the producers what's bugging them about their otherwise fine product.

'discussions' xp

I thought the Elvis Costello mention referred to the incident when he (allegedly) (drunkenly) applied the "n" to Ray Charles/sorta disqualifies him, no?

― lifetime supply of boat shoes (m coleman), Tuesday, June 22, 2010 11:02 AM (41 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

nah, the so-called 'Columbia incident' happened on the tour in support of the album "Oliver's Army" is on, a few months after the single's release. the 33 1/3 book on Armed Forces gives a lot of detail/context/analysis about the incident and the lyric.

― neal page (some dude), Tuesday, 22 June 2010 16:03 (30 minutes ago)

I've read that Get Happy! and its Stax/Volt influence were seen as an attempt to redeem Costello for the Charles comment. Sort of like "hey, look, I love Black people so much I will now rip them off."

its status was just different in the past -- e.g., the 70s, when it was still enough in common circulation that people might feel like they could redirect it. (I mean, as of the late 70s you could hear it on television, in certain circumstances

Is this really true, though? Seems to me you're way more likely to hear it on the street now, from say young white males addressing each other. In New York, at least. Growing up in suburban Detroit in the '70s, I remember it mainly being a "shock" word that kids used once in a while -- calling Detroit "N___-town", say. But it was always grandstanding, not commonplace, which is how it often seems now. If anything, I'd say its ubiquity in hip-hop has made it less off-limits for young whites. (I'll take your word about '70s TV, though I can't think of examples -- maybe it was used occaisionally by Archie Bunker or somebody, to make a liberal point about racism?)

that's the rules

what interests me is at what point this rule was set (and perhaps you would measure this by the judgement and reaction of people, black and white, in the media?) and at what point will it be redundant, if ever. which is more likely - a distant future where the word and any words like it are barely in use by any artist (ie significant decrease in rap, reflective of socio-cultural changes), or a world where they continue to be used casually tho less often by any artist to ever-increasing indifference (without an actual increase in use, which surely could not happen)?

"where are the obligatory niggers" vs. "Jew on a motorbike!"

have read numerous well reasoned interpretations of the former, never seen any defenses/explanations of the latter. m.e. can be confusing.

― in my day we had to walk 10 miles in the snow for VU bootleg (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, June 22, 2010 12:24 PM

always took the latter to be a skewed variation of the wellworn epithet "christ on a bicycle", there's loads of religious imagery in the song and the clash of ancient/modern times is a theme throughout the album so

Backstage at a Rolling Stones show in 1989, Living Colour confronted Rose about "One In A Million" (both bands were opening the show). Rose said, "I didn't mean you guys were n*ggers!"

if I lol at this does it mean I'm a racist

I never felt bad for vernon reid before but lord give him strength

I always thought that "Holiday in Cambodia" seems to be addressing the semantics of the thread topic, am I alone in this viewpoint? (nb: i'm not a DK fan btw)

I'm not sure I'll ever understand why a lot of white people are weird about whether or not they get to use this word. It strikes me as an incredibly easy word to not-use. Like, harder to use than otherwise.

Yeah I think if I was writing a song and really really needed to use that word I'd make damn sure I knew why I was doing it and could explain myself beyond the old holding up a mirror shit.

I quite like Country Teasers and can understand the irony/paradoy/in-character thing they're doing but I still (maybe wrongly) feel a bit uncomfortable hearing them live, like there's a room full of white people nodding and tapping their toes and getting a wee cheap thrill from the white man dropping the n-bombs it's ok to sing along to.

I dedicate this smh to corey glover

It actually took me forever to realize that some white people might hear this word a lot, used casually, and then wind up thinking of it as a casual word they can "reframe" in a song. That honestly took me a while to realize. Because, you know ... if you are black, you're not really going to hear white people use this word in person in a way that's not extremely non-casual and/or aggressively pointed at you. I'm not sure white people who choose to use it have, like, a reciprocal realization along those lines.

^^ (For the record, part of this is that I don't really think there's a single word that some people can say and some can't. I think there are two different words, one of which is hateful and one of which isn't. Your latitude to use the second one depends less on your race and more on whether you actually speak the language it's part of. I don't use it; plenty of non-black people in my city do. I kinda think that anyone who even needs to ask whether they can say it or not shouldn't say it -- if you're asking, that means it's not really authentic to your language/experience in whatever context you're in.)

well, i guess, for me, what am i bringing to the discussion? do i really understand (like REALLY understand) the cultural forces that resulted in the situation? am i invested in or knowledgeable about it in a real way? do i have something to contribute to the discussion? or is there just a great chance i come off condescending or a dick or whatever?

for me, the answer is no, i don't think i really know enough to contribute

Wait, where did M@tt do something that could have potentially offended me???? As far as I can tell, nothing like that has happened...?

man i don't even know!

i was just basing it on this:

david allen coe is the third rail of american politics

― m@tt h (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, June 22, 2010 4:29 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

well so much for giving you the benefit of the doubt

― HI DERE, Tuesday, June 22, 2010 4:29 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I thought that was in regard to sexyDancer posting the DAC video.

( who Dan had already been a bit taken aback by for posting those The Fall lyrics)

oh shit, that was to sexyDancer re: a previous thread ban and almost immediate revocation

sorry! should have actually made that clear

Matt's all like "guess I'm just out of my depth here...(sigh)"

but i am! seriously, black people don't need to hear me talking out of my ass about cocorosie!

I interviewed Biafra about that Holiday in Cambodia line recently and he said that it was a late substitution:

"[Producer Geza X] thought it would probe deeper into the mindset of the bourgeois, comfortable, spoilt white kid that the song focusses on. When D.H. Peligro joined the band I vaguely remember asking him about the line and I believe I changed it back to 'blacks', which I’ve used ever since.”

Ian MacKaye on "Guilty Of Being White":

"I say 'bitch', and that means a girl asshole. I might say 'jock', which means an athletic asshole. But you say 'n*gger', which means black asshole, everyone flies off the handle. That's where the racism thing is kind of fucked."

full interview/context (such as it is) here: http://www.operationphoenixrecords.com/maximumrocknrollviciandave.html

Granted, he was, what, 19 or 20, but still.

ugh

Granted, he was, what, 19 or 20, but still.

He was 19 or 20 in, like, 1981. It's a pretty ignorant thing to say, but it seems like it would be a more excusable opinion to hold thirty years ago...not because racism was excusable thirty years ago, but because he was only half a generation removed from the civil rights era at that point and 20 year-old punk dudes didn't have three decades of writing from which to pull their opinions on things.

athletic asshole
athletic asshole
athletic asshole
athletic asshole

Yes, "jock" and "n*gger" are completely equivalent words, thank you Ian "Useless Dipshit Who Should Have Been Ignored From The Very Beginning" McKaye.

Reading a lot of this commentary reminds me of why I went industrial and goth instead of indie in the first place; it wasn't that similar hangups didn't also exist there, but it wasn't at the foreground of every other conversation around the music.

Fwiw, Minor Threat also covered the Standells' "Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White," a song whose line "the white collar worker or the digger in the ditch" was sometimes changed (maybe not by MacKaye, but by some other bands -- the Count Bishops, for one) so the word "digger" seemed to start with an N. No idea whether that's a coincidence or not.

Like, a lot of punk and indie kind of aggressively went out of its way to alienate black people; I give Jello and The Dead Kennedys a lot of credit for not going that route and for doing songs like "Nazi Punks (Fuck Off)".

er, and Bad Brains too. (lol)

"bitch" is also not ok imo but that's a lost cause I fear

I don't disagree, but at least he is drawing a genuine correct equivalency between "bitch" and "nigger" in his stupid argument; wtf is "jock" doing there?

Oh right, it's there because Ian McKaye is a useless moron.

I kind of wish there was a de-humanizing word for jocks on the level of bitch even.

money over jocks

I don't think being strong and athletic is a bad thing.

Signed, someone who used to be strong and athletic. ;_;

"jock" at some schools means "the rich white kids who beat you up and call you fag"

"jock" is basically another failed attempt at coming up with an abusive term for the people who have all the privilege; such attempts are doomed to failure, because racist terms are there to remind their targets of their less-than status, whereas aimed-at-the-privileged terms can easily be rebutted "yup, I'm a jock asshole, guess what, I get all the good jobs & am allowed past the velvet rope"

this use certainly wasn't "artistic" but there was that old eminem track from when he was like 18 that said iirc that he wouldn't date n-words anymore

OK, I don't know why I'm even getting into this facepalm of a quote, but...

"I say 'bitch', and that means a girl asshole. I might say 'jock', which means an athletic asshole. But you say 'n*gger', which means black asshole, everyone flies off the handle. That's where the racism thing is kind of fucked."

McKaye you're a fucking idiot. The reason it's OK to say "jock" meaning "athletic asshole" but it's not OK to say "Bitch" or "N*****" is because people can *choose* to be the kind of person who values athletic prowess or to be indifferent to it. You cannot *choose* to be female or to be black.

Someone may be an "asshole" for the choices that they make. They are *not* an asshole for the things that they were born as.

"Jock" in this case is specific that the assholedom is reliant on a lifestyle choice. The assholeness of a person has nothing to do with their gender or race, and to flag them up as being somehow reliant upon or qualified by that is a dick move.

that mackaye quote is pretty O_O... like it's okay to call a woman an asshole if you want, you don't need a new word

i don't think i've ever heard the word "jock" used in a derogatory way

guys i don't disagree at all but he was 19 and had a public forum and said some dumb bullshit (which is utterly non-shocking except i guess the content of the bullshit)--not sure why a pile-on is needed.

Although some kind-hearted scholar athletes will definitely be collateral damage under my new, scorching jock-epithet, there is probably no worse mentality than the macho bullshit it targets, so please consider yourselves martyrs for the cause.

McKaye you're a fucking idiot. The reason it's OK to say "jock" meaning "athletic asshole" but it's not OK to say "Bitch" or "N*****" is because people can *choose* to be the kind of person who values athletic prowess or to be indifferent to it. You cannot *choose* to be female or to be black.

I actually kind of hate this reasoning. It smacks of a certain condescension, the same reason gays have this weird vested interest in proving we were "born this way." We deserve rights and respect not because we were born this way, and who would choose that. It thus destroys the logic of for eg. gay pride, black history month, etc.

i don't think i've ever heard the word "jock" used in a derogatory way

― لوووووووووووووووووووول (lex pretend), Tuesday, June 22, 2010 1:27 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

it's pretty outdated tbh