So now the New York City Council wants to ban the "n" word in New York.
We decided to go to Harlem to ask people what they thought of the non-binding resolution. And found that, interestingly, not everyone was in agreement.
We found it to be a generational issue. Older people find the word to be biting, cruel and demeaning, no matter the context.
Many young people, on the other hand, say they use the word as a form of affectionate greeting.
If nothing else, the New York resolution creates discourse on the issue. But is this really the responsibility of government? To attempt to regulate good public form?
It's not really an encroachment on First Amendment Rights, because the proposed ordinance would have no effect of law. But as reprehensible as many of us find the 'n' word to be, do we want the New York City Council, or any other governmental entity for that matter, to become the thought police?
As one woman we interviewed in Harlem suggested, there are a lot more issues the City Council should be tackling that affect her daily life, than whether or not hip hop artists and comedians should use the 'n' word in their acts or whether young black people should greet each other, affectionately or not, with the pejorative.
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Sunday, April 1, 2007
Paltalk News - NYC to Ban the N-Word -- VIDEO
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Booker T. Washington said:
"There is another class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs -- partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs....There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who do not want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public."
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