The N Word, By Ralph Nader
by Big Dog on Jun 18, 2005 at 22:05 Political
Ralph Nader, career loser, has been using the N word. You know, the word that got Mark Furman branded a racist. The word that is only allowed to be used by black folk when they refer to each other. Yes, Ralph Nader uses that word at fund raisers.
Speaking Wednesday night at a Washington fund-raiser to retire the debt from his 2004 presidential campaign, Nader complained that Democratic Party powerbrokers had kept him off the ballot in such Southern states as Georgia and Virginia – which reminded him of the oppressive Jim Crow laws that denied African-Americans equal rights.
“I felt like a [n-word],” remarked the 70-year-old white multimillionaire graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School.
It is funny that Al Sharpton says Nader is not a racist by any stretch of the imagination for using this word but is the first to jump on any conservative who uses racial epithets. As discussed, Furman-racist. Trent Lott saying “we would not have all these problems”-racist. Yet Nader is not a racist by any stretch. That Al Sharpton does not have double standards.
There is another disturbing thing in the article.
Democratic operative Harold Ickes – a former civil rights activist who lost a kidney in 1965 after being beaten to a pulp by white racists in Tallulah, La. – was also troubled by Nader’s use of the epithet.
“It’s not something that I would say,” Ickes told me yesterday. “Having grown up in the 1950s and 1960s, I think it’s not a word that whites can use.
Does Ickes mean that whites should be denied their right to freedom of speech. Does he mean it is not a word that whites can use but blacks are free to use. How about it is not a word people should use. “Should” being the operative word since this is a free country. I am reminded of the movie Coach Carter in which a few black basketball players were calling each other the N word. Coach Carter (Samuel Jackson) told them that he did not ever want to hear them using it. He said that when they called each other that it showed the white man it was OK for him to do the same. So Mr. Ickes, take coach Carter’s advice and espouse the idea that no one should use it. I would add that if we take Ickes’ tact then there are words that blacks should not use like Hymie (Jessie Jackson) or Redneck (various sources). I found this here and it fits perfectly with Ickes’ comment: “It’s odd how liberals drop their stalwart defense of the first amendment whenever race becomes a factor.”
As for Nader, I know what he was trying to project. I think it is funny that we say the N word (as I am doing here) when we are relating what others said. You can go to court and repeat all kinds of vile words if you are saying what a person said. When it comes to this one word people avoid it. I could use it to describe the story and it would be non inflammatory because I would not be directing it at anyone but kids might happen through here and I do not want to give them the wrong impression but to hear adults dancing around using the word is just a funny thing.
Tags: Political