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The N word


Stu Monty
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Was going to post this last week but forgot to. Did anyone see that programme that was on channel 4 with Asher D from the So Solid Crew (the one who got send down for having a gun) where he looked into the use of the word Nigger in music?

 

It was very good. He was of the opinion that by using it a lot he was trying to invert the meaning of it and make it a positive thing, also taking the word away from people who would use it against blacks and gaining ownership of it. He went round speaking to different people from different backgrounds, ages, colours and looked into the way people feel abotut the word, it's history and it's use.

 

The result was that very few blacks or whites he spoke to found there was any need to keep the word in circulation and that by repeating it he was doing just that. He also concluded that black people of his age aren't aware of the history of the word and the history of things such as slavery so can't get a perspetive on what they are doing.

 

Anyhow, anyone see it? What did you reckon?

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Didn't see it - but heard Asher D being interviewed by James Naughtie on R4 Today about it - surreal intro "thank you Rabbi for thought for the day - next up in da broadcasting house it is the main man Asher D" ! He sounded like a decent intelligent and thoughtful lad - must have clashed with some bland mind numbing shit that the wife was watching.

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Was going to post this last week but forgot to. Did anyone see that programme that was on channel 4 with Asher D from the So Solid Crew (the one who got send down for having a gun) where he looked into the use of the word Nigger in music?

 

Been used for years by Jayz, Nas, NWA, Tupac, PE etc. Suppose they hope its continued use will make it less offensive and exhibit they won't be intimidated by verbal abuse.

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This got done to death on the FF and my opinion still hasn't changed, although it is good to see a formerly wayward young man trying to straighten up and fly right by engaging his brain, after behaving like a tit.

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It's used in music to get attention for talentless "acts".

 

 

Hear hear, at least in the late 80's early 90's when Public Enemy and NWA where the kings of Rap it had a meaning and a point to what was happening in America ata that time. Nowadays if those new Bling-Bling Hip-hop crews who have escaped the ghetto and feel the need to rub everyone's face in it, dont use the word they dont make it coz they aint keeping it real.

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It's used in music to get attention for talentless "acts".

 

But it wasn't for attention though. I'm aware that you are probably more in touch with the UK garage and hip-hop scene than I am but believe me Dave it wasn't for attention.

 

It was being used as it is a term they use to praise someone. Their closest friends are their Niggaz, it's like thier blood or thier brethren that they trust amd rely on.

 

And you'll find that the american breakthrough artists such as NWA and Public Enemy were all about confronting it's use and reclaiming the power of the word.

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But it wasn't for attention though. I'm aware that you are probably more in touch with the UK garage and hip-hop scene than I am but believe me Dave it wasn't for attention.

 

It was being used as it is a term they use to praise someone. Their closest friends are their Niggaz, it's like thier blood or thier brethren that they trust amd rely on.

 

And you'll find that the american breakthrough artists such as NWA and Public Enemy were all about confronting it's use and reclaiming the power of the word.

 

Sounds like an intersting programme Stu, but seriously, did PE use the word ? I cant remember them using it at all, and not till ICE T and NWA slightly later in the early 90s did we hear the N word.

 

Maybe my old brain is getting it wrong though.

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Sounds like an intersting programme Stu, but seriously, did PE use the word ? I cant remember them using it at all, and not till ICE T and NWA slightly later in the early 90s did we hear the N word.

 

Anti Nigger Machine and Burn Hollywood Burn from Fear of a Black Planet, loads of others too.

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"yo, yo, yo, keepin it real wiv ma niggaz on da street. Got my Mercedes Benz and my gun toting freinds. I gotta big house and I squeak like da mouse"

 

Fuck off. Talentless cock ends are every last one of todays "hip hop stars".

 

Isn't that what I said? :whistle:

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  • 13 years later...

White professor investigated for quoting James Baldwin's use of N-word

 

The Pulitzer-nominated poet Laurie Sheck, a professor at the New School in New York City, is being investigated by the university for using the N-word during a discussion about James Baldwin’s use of the racial slur.

 

The investigation has been condemned by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (Fire), which is calling on the New School to drop the “misguided” case because it “warns faculty and students that good-faith engagement with difficult political, social, and academic questions will result in investigation and possible discipline”.

 

Sheck, who is white, was teaching a graduate course this spring on “radical questioning” in writing. She assigned students Baldwin’s 1962 essay The Creative Process, in which the black American writer and civil rights activist argued that Americans have “modified or suppressed and lied about all the darker forces in our history” and must commit to “a long look backward whence we came and an unflinching assessment of the record”. During the class, Sheck pointed to the 2016 documentary about Baldwin, I Am Not Your Negro, and asked her students to discuss why the title altered Baldwin’s original statement, in which he used the N-word instead of negro during an appearance on a talk show.

 

Sheck told Inside Higher Education that a white student had objected to her language. According to Sheck, she questioned the student about her objection, who said she had been told by a previous professor that white people should never use the term. At the end of term, the student gave a presentation about racism at the New School.

 

Sheck told IHE that she used the word because Baldwin – a New School alumnus – did, and “as writers, words are all we have. And we have to give [Baldwin] credit that he used the word he did on purpose”.

 

In June, months after the class, Sheck says she was called to a meeting where she was questioned about her choice of reading assignments, and how she had prepared students for discussing Baldwin’s essay. She told the university that graduate students on a literature course “should reasonably be expected to be able to discuss painful or offensive language and the various implications of altering the words of an iconic writer”. As the meeting ended, she was given the university’s guidelines for dealing with issues of discrimination and told to familiarise herself with them.

 

But Sheck told the Guardian that the university is proceeding with an investigation despite its regulations stating that complaints of discrimination must be lodged within 60 days of the incident, which had passed by the time the complaint was made against her.

 

“I have been left completely in the dark with the accusations against me still actively in place, and classes starting in two weeks,” she said. “Having taught at the New School with an impeccable record and consistently stellar student evaluations of my classes for nearly 20 years, this drawn-out approach appears to many as an unnecessarily callous and insensitive treatment of a devoted and long time faculty member.”

 

The New School’s response to Fire’s letter said only that it is “proud to be a place that embraces rigorous academic inquiry, diverse perspectives and respectful debate”, and that it “maintains confidentiality regarding personnel issues”. When asked by the Guardian if the investigation was proceeding, it said that open discussion of often difficult issues was central to its mission to provide an effective “learning environment”.

 

“In the context of the current political and cultural climate, we are bringing together faculty and students to use these principles to guide a pedagogical approach that respects academic freedom as well as an inclusive and respectful learning space,” it added.

 

PEN America has now joined Fire in calling for the investigation to be dropped. “Some words are so heinous that one can never expect to say them without some risk of offence,” said Jonathan Friedman, PEN’s project director for campus free speech. “But this is a case where intent matters. There is a distinction to be made between a racial slur wielded against someone and a quote used for pedagogical purposes in a class on James Baldwin. The New School cannot and must not discipline a professor for speech that is protected by the principle of academic freedom.”

 

Sheck said that she is prepared to teach her classes when term starts in two weeks, despite not hearing from the university.

 

“PEN has warned them that to act against me would be to violate academic freedom. If a university can censure a teacher for quoting James Baldwin and raising with graduate students – students who are aspiring writers – the issues involved in changing the words of an iconic American writer, then surely much is threatened and much is at stake, for thousands of people teaching throughout this country,” she said.

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On 09/10/2005 at 17:38, cochcaer said:

 

Anti Nigger Machine and Burn Hollywood Burn from Fear of a Black Planet, loads of others too.

The first is the only one I can remember - the use in the Burn Hollywood Burn verse is Kane not Chuck

 

Few and far between where Chuck uses it compared to his contemporaries - and he was against profanity for its own sake. 

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