Dyson’s points
I want to give some ink to Michael Eric Dyson, who did a fairly good job of holding Maher’s feet to the fire in their interview, despite Maher’s attempts to pull away. These points do bear on what we should be trying to do when making jokes about race. I’ll try to lay out Dyson’s points without repeating myself.
Late in the interview, Dyson points out,
Black people ourselves are at war with each other about whether we use the N-word or not, some people think we should, some people think we shouldn’t.
Indeed, Dyson seems at war with himself, as he seems to be arguing against it’s use, but then he uses it twice (once in telling a story about the first time he heard it, he makes air quotes as he says it; the second time quoting a character from Curb Your Enthusiasm, who used the n—a form). I don’t question Dyson’s right to use the term for any reason; just note his performative contradiction. As an academic and student of word use, I find both of his uses to refer to the term in a way that doesn’t seem to replicate the hurt the word can cause. However, Dyson might have convinced me otherwise.
False allies
Dyson talks about “people who are consciously the allies of black people but who may also, inadvertently, unintentionally but nonetheless lethally participate in a culture that ends up hurting… black people in a way that has to be grappled with.”
One of the first rules of being an ally is to help – not hinder – the movement, and we need to avoid doing anything that will cause problems.
Crashing consciousness
Dyson tells a story from his book, about when I he first heard the word said to him.
And it’s real because that kind of crashing consciousness, that I am different, that I am forever consigned to a different box, relegated to a different reality.
This “crashing consciousness” the word might evoke – whether or not we were “using it properly” – might give us pause.
The timing
Dyson points out that Maher’s – or anyone else’s – intent doesn’t enter into it, and that it’s partially a problem with the context – this particular moment in history, the age of the 45th president and his administration, with its resultant resurgence of racism. At the end of the interview, he expands on this, noting,
[S]o many people speak about race and they have racial amnesia, they’re caught in a fog of dis-memory, they want to see the world the way they want to see it… and what they fail to understand is that this new age in which we live has certified and legitimated the resurgence of some of the most heinous expressions of anti-blackness that we’ve seen.
So perhaps now is not the time to align yourself with these groups inadvertently through language use.
Unconscious white privilege
Dyson’s notes that it’s Maher’s (and others’) unconscious white privilege that allows him to unproblematically and casually use the word.
But the reality is that there are so many people who are vulnerable out here, who are black people, brown people, red and yellow people who are vulnerable who don’t have the protection of a culture, so that their comedians might make jokes. Think about it…
I am thinking about it. Some would argue that white comics can’t joke about race – that Bill Maher is just the most recent example of a comic who tried to go there and had his hand smacked. They would further argue that COC (comics of color) can joke about anything, but in my experience we have to question that. My comic interests are diverse, so I can think of a lot of COC’s, and Kevin Hart is the reigning champion right now, but we can’t let that token example overshadow the struggles of coming up through the ranks. It’s already hard. We know it’s harder for women. Is it harder for COC’s?
Better off not
Quoting a text from his son, Dyson says, that some white people can use the n-word, but are better people for not using it “[B]ecause they understand the history, pain and insensitivity behind the use of the n-word.” He then gives the aforementioned example from Larry David of Curb Your Enthusiasm, talking about lines that shouldn’t be crossed. I don’t think there should be many, but maybe for right now, this might be one of them.
