The N-Word

Last night I was peacefully curled up on the couch, reading "The Templar Legacy" by Steve Berry, and watching my kids wrestle on the floor. Suddenly, my eldest was next to me, poking me in the arm.

"Excuse me, I have a question for you," he said. There was an expectant look in his eyes, the look that only six year-olds can give. The look that says, "Drop everything and pay attention to me, right now."

So I asked him, "What's your question?"

"What's the n-word?"

Whoa. I wasn't expecting that one. It felt a little like those moments folks talk about when their kid says, "What's sex?" Yes, I should be prepared for this kind of question, because, let's face it, discussion of the word is all over the TV and radio these days. I don't even need to listen to an old NWA track to hear it. All I need to do is keep the radio on NPR. (Damn that NPR!)

I needed to mentally readjust my brain from the fiction of Rennes le Chateau and Templar treasure. So, I stalled for time by answering his question with a question.

"Where did you hear that?" I asked.

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe on the radio or something," he responded.

Yes, damn that NPR! So I asked another question, to see what he think he knew. "What do you think the n-word is?"

He leaned down, a gleam in his eye, and whispered in my ear, "It's "nasty", isn't it?"

"Um, no, it's not "nasty"", I replied back. My suppressed laughter faded as I immediately recognizing that my truthfulness was just going to open the door to another flood of questions.

"Well, what is it then?"

And I didn't want to tell him. I know I should have, but I just couldn't do it. I know I should have because if I don't, someone else will. But, dang it, I really didn't want to.

I told him to ask me tomorrow. Well, today is tomorrow and he hasn't asked me yet. But that kid has a memory like a pit bull gets lockjaw. He'll remember.

I have an idea about what I'm going to say, but I'm curious, what do you all think I should say?

He's Abusive And Doesn't Love You!

Sometimes I have those days where I'm unwilling to get off the couch. Saturday was one of them. I was still in a bit of pain from Friday morning's trip to the dentist, where I got my first four cavities ever drilled and filled. But, I can't say that my lack of enthusiasm was solely caused by that. I also can't say that I was especially tired since I didn't go anywhere on Friday night. My Friday night merely consisted of beginning to write a letter to a friend and then falling asleep, fully dressed on the aforementioned couch. Major action, right?

I knew I had to get up eventually because we needed to be at my friend Maisha's Easter egg hunt at three and I still needed to go to Walgreens to get eggs. Not real eggs. No, I needed the fake plastic Easter eggs that you can put jelly beans and chocolate in and then hide around a yard for the kids to find.

I finally set out, eager to escape my kids who were harassing me with their non-stop inquiries of, "Is it time to go to Maisha's yet? Did you get the eggs yet?" By the time I left, I was in such a bad mood that I walked out of the house in the same clothes I'd slept in, without brushing my hair, without washing my face. I threw a newsboy hat on to hide my disarray and screeched out of the driveway, Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence" on full blast in the car.

The traffic heading down Vermont to 6th Street was typical LA nightmare and it took me fifteen minutes to go the two miles to the Walgreens. Once inside, I found the plastic eggs, no problem. Choosing the candies proved to be more difficult. There were half a dozen varieties of jellybeans and just as many kinds of chocolates. I'm sort of a cheapskate when it comes to stuff like this and I'd spent ten minutes comparing prices on generic chocolate vs. name-brand chocolate when I heard a woman's heavily accented voice.

"WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME?" she yelled. And then her voice broke into incoherent sobs. I looked around me and noticed that almost every other shopper in my aisle was staring intently at shelves of speckled jelly beans, chocolates wrapped in pastel foils and stuffed-animal Easter bunnies. I didn't hear a reply to her question, which meant that this was either a phone conversation or mental illness. She continued talking, her central-African accent drawing my feet toward her.

"I was only two minutes late! Please, those are my children," she continued to cry. "You can't take them away from me." I turned the corner and there she was, a black woman on a cell phone, standing in front of a display of patron saint candles, tears streaming down her face. A boy, maybe nine or ten years old, was sitting on the floor behind her. A second black woman stood a couple of feet away, shaking her head and holding the hand of her toddler daughter.

I wasn't sure if I should say anything to the African woman so I hovered across the aisle, my eyes scanning magazine covers that proclaimed that Angelina Jolie is leaving Brad Pitt. I heard her offer the man on the other end of the phone money. "I will give you twenty dollars for gas if you will just bring my children back to me." He must have refused because she continued to talk and cry. "I will give you thirty dollars. Gabriel, please don't make me suffer like this."

I found it interesting that all the Latina, Asian and white people in the Walgreens seemed to have disappeared from sight. And yet me and now two other black woman were hovering, watching this woman sob on the phone. The second woman was older, her graying hair braided in cornrows, her eyes narrowed with disgust. She approached me, shaking her head with disdain as she gestured toward the crying lady. She asked me, "Can you believe this sh*t?"

On the one hand, I couldn't believe I was overhearing a woman in a Walgreens on the phone begging for her children and apologizing to her man for being angry that he brought "the other woman" home. On the other hand, I sometimes feel like I see it all in Los Angeles so there was a part of me that felt a little jaded by the conversation.

I asked the lady with the cornrows, "Do you think we should do anything?"

"I don't know, but she needs to stop offering that ni**a money in exchange for her kids." She shook her head some more and continued, "We black women put up with too much stuff from those fools. Ni**a's wanna bring some other ho up in a woman's house and then not let her see her kids... And she's gonna pay him gas money? Oh hell no!."

I didn't know what to say so I mumbled something about it being a shame and I wandered back to the candy aisle. There were lots of other folks minding their own business, trying to decide which pre-fab Easter baskets to buy. Plus it was almost 2:00. We were going to be late for the Easter egg hunt if I didn't hurry up.

I found myself thinking, "I should have stayed home on the couch," and "Why can't I be one of those people who just go about their business and don't ever walk over to see what's going on?" I started to put the name-brand chocolates into my bag and said out loud, "I can be one of those people!"

A minute later, the crying from the African woman had gotten even louder. Along with it, I could hear another voice saying, "Ma'am, I need my phone back."

Crap. I'm just not one of those people.

I walked back around the corner and approached the African woman now talking and crying even more hysterically into the cell phone. Her son was still sitting on the floor, his chin in his hands, his eyes staring vacantly ahead. The other two black women were also there. They were talking to each other and it turns out that the one with the little girl was letting the African lady use her phone. She told me that the African lady was supposed to meet her estranged husband at the Jack in the Box and get the other kids from him.

Mrs. Africa had been a couple minutes late because she was on foot. Her man had pulled out of the parking lot and left, even though he'd seen her walking up the street toward the restaurant. But, no, he'd kept driving and she'd hunted for someone who'd let her borrow a phone to call him. Now he was saying he wasn't going to ever let her see her kids again.

I heard a bit more of this background story and then looked down at the little boy sitting on the floor, listening to his mother offer more money, "Gabriel, I'll give you forty dollars for gas if you'll just bring my babies to me. Please! I'M BEGGING YOU!"

I couldn't take it anymore. I found myself grabbing this hysterical woman by the shoulders and saying, "You need to hang up the phone. He's just humiliating you and playing a game and your son is sitting here listening to you beg." She started to cry more and I repeated myself, "Hang up the phone!"

The woman with the little girl chimed in, "And I don't have free weekend minutes so I really need my phone back."

The African woman said to Gabriel, "Please, just bring them back to the Jack in the Box. I'll give you fifty dollars. That's all I have."

The older woman with the cornrows suggested, "Call the cops and have his ass arrested. No good ni**a!"

The African woman overheard her, paused the hysterics and begging, looked Mrs. Cornrows in the face and dropped a bomb. "Oh, my husband isn't black. He's not a ni**a. He's white!"

(Oh, Los Angeles and her surrealness...)

To which Mrs. Cornrows said, "Oh, you're letting a white man treat you like that? You really need to hang up the phone then and let his ass know who's in charge." She then turned to me and said, "She's married to a white guy? Hmph. I don't know what they teach them in Africa but she should be runnin' sh*t, not him!"

The woman with the little girl crossed her arms across her chest and repeated more forcefully that she needed her phone because she needed to go.

Mrs. Africa finally handed her the phone and collapsed to the floor in a heap of tears. I found myself wanting to comfort her but also wanting to tell her to get up for the sake of her son. I asked her if she was legally married and she said yes. She tearfully explained how a month ago, her husband had brought home another woman and said all three of them were going to live together, but when she'd protested, he'd kicked her and her son( from a prior marriage) out. She's been living in shelters with her son since then. She has two daughters with this man, ages four and six, and he'd kept them and moved the new girlfriend in. He'd told her that she could visit her daughters for a few hours but now that was ruined because she'd been late.

I asked her if she'd been to Legal Aid yet. She hadn't and she asked me, "Do you think they can help me get my babies back?" I told her that I didn't know, but she probably had some grounds for custody since he was the one trying to move another woman in. I didn't know if they'd give her full custody though if she was homeless.

Mrs. Cornrows was still in shock and asked again, "You really letting a white man treat you like that?"

Then Mrs. Africa said the phrase every abused woman has said at some point or another, "But I know he really loves me. I don't know why he does these things."

I could feel the pinpricks of tears starting to form in my own eyes. And that's when I knew I needed to go. I couldn't fix this. I couldn't give this woman a place to live or the legal advice she needed. I couldn't provide relatives to go kick this man's ass. Nope, I could only suggest overworked and underfunded Legal Aid and that she document all the threats he's making and actually take him to court. But I don't even know if she'll do all these things because she believes this man loves her.

I could only tell her that she needed to leave this man for the sake of her son sitting there watching and overhearing all this, and for the sake of her little girls who were obviously listening in to the other side of the conversation. I told her I'd pray for her. Then with my basket of pastel plastic eggs and candies, I headed for the checkout lane, the incredulous voice of Mrs. Cornrows trailing behind me, "Girl, that white man don't love you. He just wants your $50!"

As the cashier rang up my last item, Mrs. Africa's voice carried clearly across the Walgreens hub-bub. "I guess white men can be ni**gas too."

Michael Richards, You Need To Call Oprah

By now, the whole of America has seen Michael Richards' n-word laced rant delivered at the Laugh Factory here in Los Angeles. Everyone is just sooo shocked that he would use the word. Americans are wondering, "Did the Kramer from Seinfeld that we loved so much have this bottled up rage and anger at black folks back then?"


There was the gathering of black leaders in LA outside the Laugh Factory saying that it's just outrageous for these kinds of things to be said in this day and age. Richards was summarily condemmed for his comments. As he should have been. Michael, Michael, Michael...Everyone declares his career is done. Finished. Finito. Kaput.

I don't know about that though. I think there is a definite way he can save himself.

Michael needs to get himself onto Oprah to have a nice l'il heart to heart talk with her. They can talk about how the n-word is used so frequently nowadays that it seems that the only real reason we're upset is that Michael Richards is white. So, while on Oprah, I think it would be a good idea for Michael to come clean and acknowledge that he's part black. Yes, that's right. You read that correctly.

It shouldn't be so hard for him to come up with a black relative from somewhere in his family tree...and his hair is kinda wavy so it's slightly believable. He can tell us how it's the hidden secret in his family and he just has always had this self-hatred that comes through at the most inopportune times.


Remember when Don Cheadle, Terrence Howard and Ludacris were on Oprah last year to talk about the movie Crash and she challenged them about their use of the n-word? Remember how they said it was a term of positive endearment? They also said that black foks could use it but white people couldn't. It's like talking about someone's mom: I can talk mess about my mom, but you better not say anything about her. So, if Richards is really part black, can we still be upset for him using the n-word? Not according to most rappers who use the same rationalization, even though somewhere around 85% of rap records are bought by white teenagers.

Yeah, if Michael repents on Oprah, he's all good. They can have a nice chat about how our double standards on use of the n-word make it hard for folks like Michael to know what they can and can't say in public...cuz we all know he'll still say it in private, right?