Bill: Good evening.
Welcome to "Politically Incorrect." Let me give you the panel tonight.
Dave Navarro is here.
Thank you for coming back.
This is your record, "Trust No One." Terrific record, I said that the last time.
You know him from Jane's Addiction, Red Hot Chili Peppers and that's his solo.
Okay, Tempest Bledsoe, we watched her grow up on "The Cosby Show." She's now a talk show host.
Thank you for coming back here.
Randall Kennedy, this is your book.
I hope you can see that, because it's a word I can't say here on TV.
We're going to talk about that and why and other things related to that.
You are a Harvard law professor.
Thank you for being here.
And Mo'Nique, of course, one of "The Queens Of Comedy." Star of "The Parkers," which is on Mondays at 9:00 on UPN.
Give a hand to this panel.

[ Cheers and applause ]

All right.
Now, I do want to talk about your very controversial book and that word.
But a breaking story today.
Abner Louima, who I am sure you remember from the New York City situation a few years ago.
I am sure there are black people in New York who think that there was terrorism before 9/11, and it had to do with a plunger.
And they weren't selling a lot of those NYPD caps back then, were they? Anyway, the appeals court overturned the convictions of three of the cops involved.
Not the main guy who did it.
Let's get that straight.
Volpe, he's the guy who actually did it.
He's in jail for 30 years, which, to me, is a light sentence for what he did.

[ Applause ]

But, Al Sharpton is all mad about this.
However, I did read a lot about this one cop, Schwartz, who they say --
this is one the guy's whose conviction was overturned.
They say he really wasn't there.
And Al Sharpton is still mad that they overturned the conviction.
Now, Al Sharpton, I love Al.
He's here a lot.
He's always all about, "We got to get it right." Doesn't that work for the white side, too? I mean, if this guy really wasn't there --

Mo'Nique: If he really wasn't there, then he should walk.
If he really wasn't there, his conviction should have been overturned, and he should walk.
The other two guys, if they were there, no, their convictions should stick, they are found guilty.
Let them deal with it.

Bill: Because you think they were there, but they didn't do anything.
And that's enough to go to jail.

Mo'Nique: They were there.
You saw the horrible crimes --
they did nothing? No, lock them up.

Dave: That makes them an accessory, doesn't it?

Mo'Nique: Exactly.

Bill: Right.
Okay.

[ Light applause ]

Mo'Nique: I mean --
it's like.
I think people are puzzled.
Like, "Well, they really didn't do anything, how come they were found guilty? The only thing we were so afraid of another Rodney King break out, we just had to give them this verdict so people wouldn't riot." Well, they were there.
They were an accessory to a crime.
I'm sorry if you feel like another Rodney King's gonna break out, but they need to be punished for what they did.

Bill: Yes, but that is --

[ Applause ]

Mo'Nique: Yes.

Bill: I agree with you.
I agree with you.
And I wrote down something I remembered from ten years ago.
I read this in the paper when the Rodney King thing happened.
As you remember, we all saw that tape, and we could not believe the verdict because they were beating this guy to the ground.
And juries, I guess, just like the public, you can sell them anything if you market it right.

Mo'Nique: I think they all had glaucoma on that jury.
Something was wrong with their vision.

Bill: They convinced them.
They kept saying, "You didn't see what happened before the tape started." And Anna Quinlan wrote, she said, "The lawyers told the jury they had to pay attention to what happened before the videotape started rolling." Here's what came before.
Ronald Reagan, Willie Horton, rotten schools, no jobs, falling plaster, broken boilers, David Duke.

[ Light applause ]

I guess we don't get that here.

[ Laughter ]

Dave: You lost me.

Bill: I lost you there? She is saying --
no one understands what that means? Professor, you're a Harvard guy.
She's saying you have to see what came before the tape.
She was saying a lot of other miscarriages of justice --

Randall: The issue is whether we trust the administration of justice and --

Tempest: No.

Randall: Well, okay.

[ Laughter ]

On the basis of what I know, I'm certainly not prepared to attack three judges who I'm sure watched this very carefully and looked at this very carefully.

Bill: Okay.
Let's get to your book, which has this controversial title, which ABC told me has again and again, "In no uncertain terms, in no context can you say this word."

Dave: We can't even say that on the show here?

Bill: I don't know.

Mo'Nique: You can't say it.

[ Laughter ]

And you can't say it.

[ Laughter ]

Okay.

[ Applause ]

Tempest: Bill, would you like for me to say the title?

Bill: Well, let's ask the professor.
He wrote the book.
Is that right? Because from what I read in this book, I have made pretty much the same case I think you're making here, which is that the word has evolved because language is alive.
Words do evolve.
And you're saying, basically, a lot of it has to do with context.

Randall: Of course.

Bill: So, is she right that Dave and I can't say it?

Randall: No, she's wrong.

Mo'Nique: I'm wrong in his opinion.

Bill: Well, yes, of course.

Dave: The thing is I wouldn't say it.

Tempest: If you want to say the word, I want you to say it.
I want you to go out of this studio --
if you feel like you want to say this word, Bill, I want you to go out today, I want you to walk the streets, I want you to say that word to every black person you see.
You have every right.

[ Laughter ]

[ Applause ]

You have every right to do that.
Don't feel hampered if you want to say it!

[ Laughter ]

Mo'Nique: I love you, bill.
Don't do that.

Tempest: No, if he's feeling restrained, if he feels like he's just bubbling over with wanting to say nigger, say it.

Bill: First of all, I didn't say I was feeling restrained.

Tempest: Okay.

Dave: Where I'm coming from, Bill, is that I could say it right here.
I could say it any time I want to.
But the bottom line is I don't want to be an insensitive jerk.

Bill: But the point is that what the professor is saying is this word has evolved.
From where it used to be, only one concept was pejorative.
It was co-opted as a term of endearment.
And now it's in every record we hear.

Tempest: It's not a term of endearment.
I don't care how many records you hear.

Dave: It's not on that record, I'll tell you that much.

Bill: No.

Tempest: I think that I --

Bill: Oh, come on, you cannot deny that it is a term of endearment among blacks to each other.

Tempest: Yes, I do deny it.
Because I don't use the word, and I don't allow other "blacks" to use it towards me.
That's how I feel about the word.
And I don't think that we can sit here and make a blanket statement that, among all blacks, "nigger" is a term of endearment.

Mo'Nique: Well, among this one, it is.

Tempest: Okay.

Mo'Nique: And I think I speak for a lot of them.
We did take a word a make it a term of endearment.
Just like the word "bitch."

Tempest: I have problem with that, too.

Mo'Nique: You're just really, you know --

Tempest: I'm really what?

Mo'Nique: But we took that word --
you know what? My girlfriend can say, "Hey, bitch, how you doing?" But he can't say it.
Just like with the word "nigger." We took a horrible word and we turned around and said, "You know what? We're going to use this as a term of endearment, however right or wrong it is." And that's how we address each other from time to time.
So, that's almost our word now.
Somebody gave it to us, we took it, and it's our word.
So, I don't particularly use the word, but when somebody says to me, "Hey, nigger, what's going on?" And they're black, I'm not offended, I'm not thrown off.
But if a white person says to me, "Hey, nigger, what's going on?" Huh-uh.
No.
We can't do that.

[ Laughter and applause ]

Tempest: What is the hypocrisy of that? You can't ignore the hypocrisy of that.

Dave: Is it a hypocrisy because the white man hasn't gone through the same types of struggles as --

Tempest: No, I'm saying it is a hypocrisy that we cannot overlook in the African-American community if we're going to use that term amongst ourselves and then have a problem with someone else using it.

Mo'Nique: Because it's ours.

Tempest: I don't want that word, it's not mine.
It is not mine! I am not a nigger.
It's not mine.
I'm not a nig-ger.
I'm not a nig-ga.
I'm not a whatever you want to say.
It's not me.

Mo'Nique: Are you African-American?

[ Cheers and applause ]

Are you?

Tempest: I feel that I am an African-American.
I'm negro, I'm colored, I'm whatever they decided I am today.

Mo'Nique: We are so quick to pick up what someone else says we are.
"First ya'll were negroes, and then you were colored, now you're niggers, and then you're African-Americans." Who gave us that? Now, I say that I am --
you know what? I'm black-American, so I do my history and find out who I am and where I came from in Africa to take that title.
So we're supposed to take that title because it sounds good.
African-American.

Dave: Isn't it that by nature, that word came from a derogatory term made up by the white man?

Bill: Yes.

Tempest: Yes.

Mo'Nique: Nigger?

Randall: Yeah, of course.

Mo'Nique: I'm not denying that at all.
We took the word.
You gave it to us, we took it.
So now we use it.
And we use it as a term of endearment amongst us.
But because the white man gave it to us as a bad thing, you still use it as a bad thing.
If I'm in a supermarket and a white woman hits my cart, and she says, "Excuse me, nigger." Everything in my cart, I'm gonna hit her with.

[ Laughter ]

Trust me.
I totally understand what you're saying.
But that is what it is in our community.

Tempest: I think that his book, if you read the book from cover to cover, the argument that the word is evolving, that it's taking on new meanings, that it's taking on new context puts a responsibility on me that I will not accept.
You all are saying, "Look, the word has evolved." So if someone comes to me and calls me a nigger, I've got to sit here and take the responsibility to figure out, "What did he really mean? What it his experience? Where is he really coming from?" And then let me then decide how I'm going to react to this.
Am I overreacting? Is this a friend? Is this a girlfriend?

Randall: We do that all the time.
Imagine a stranger comes up to you and calls you "honey." You probably won't like that.
But imagine that a boyfriend or a husband comes up to you and calls you "honey." You understand --

Tempest: I am not saying that I am not capable of making judgments about words that are used to me every day.
But I refuse to take the responsibility that I need to figure out what's in your head when you come up to me and call me "nigger." I'm not doing it.

Randall: We do that all the time.

Dave: Isn't it the responsibility of the person saying it?

Tempest: Absolutely.

Dave: That's what I'm saying.

Mo'Nique: If it comes from this brother, I'm not trying to figure it out.
I know where it's coming from.
If it comes from Bill, now I got to figure out, is he being sarcastic? You know what Mo'Nique, was this a friendly "nigger." Or was this a hateful "nigger"?
[ Laughter ]

Randall: Aren't there black people who use the word "nigger" in a hateful way?

Dave: Absolutely.

Tempest: Yes.
I know blacks who sit there and say, "I don't want to live next to any nigger."

Bill: Right.

Mo'Nique: I don't know those black people.

Tempest: I have met them, and I have been amazed.
I'm talking about what kind of self-hatred are you coming from?

Mo'Nique: I agree with that.
I agree with that.

Tempest: It does exist.
Just because a black person says it, doesn't mean that the word is suddenly a term of endearment full of love.

Bill: Girlfriends, and I hope I can use the term "girlfriend," I have to take a break.
We'll be right back.

[ Applause ]

An appeals court in New York has thrown out the convictions of three New York City policemen in the Abner Louima plunger handle case on grounds of insufficient evidence.
I don't know about that.
From what I heard, there was evidence up the ass in that case.

[ Laughter ]

Bill: Okay.
Now you mentioned your shopping cart.
I'm glad you did, because there was a story last week from Pennsylvania.
The giant food stores, they had a sign in the window --
"In honor of black history month, we are offering special savings on fried chicken." And there was complaints, and it made the papers.
Now, if they offered bratwurst during Oktoberfest, I don't think people would get upset.

Tempest: Wait, wait, wait, whoa, whoa.
You want a piece of this? Go ahead.

[ Laughter ]

Bill: I don't know why chicken is offensive.

Dave: Because bratwurst isn't like the vortex of a joke used to degrade those people.

Bill: It could be.

Dave: But it's not as much as fried chicken is.

Bill: But why is a food an insult?

Dave: It just happens to be --
I think it's insulting.

Tempest: "Why is a food an insult?" So you think the comment that Fuzzy Zeller made after the masters was just totally innocuous? And we all just over-reacted?

Bill: You'll have to refresh my memory.
I don't follow golf.

Tempest: When he went ahead and said at the dinner for the masters, "Go ahead, serve fried chicken, make Tiger right at home." Don't you remember that he lost his backing at Kmart, I believe? Don't you remember?

Bill: I'm sorry, I don't.

[ Laughter ]

Tempest: It was huge! Am I wrong? Y'all remember that?

Mo'Nique: Yeah.

Bill: Yeah, it was huge, I know.

Tempest: Fried chicken.
Why did he choose that word?

Mo'Nique: I have mixed emotions about this.
Because if you go to any black household in the United States of America and look in the freezer, you will see some chicken.

[ Light laughter ]

Dave: You're going to see Coca-Cola, too, though.

Tempest: You go to any house in America and go in the freezer, you're going to see some chicken.

Mo'Nique: If you go to any soul food restaurant in this country, and then we have a famous restaurant, Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles, that's something that we like!

Tempest: "We"? I dare you to find a majority of white people in this audience who don't like fried chicken! Who doesn't like fried chicken?!

Bill: What is insulting about chicken?
[ Laughter ]

Tempest: Because it's associated!

Mo'Nique: Nothing.

Tempest: You knew exactly what they meant when they put that sign in that window.
Somebody thought, "Ooh, this is really cute, let's see if we can get away with this."

Bill: No, no.

Mo'Nique: They also had a jazz band there.
What does that mean?

Tempest: That is our music.
I'm not insulted by use of the jazz band.
But do you think they put fried chicken in the window and meant it positively?

Dave: But they don't sell fried chicken in Africa.
You know what I'm saying.

Mo'Nique: No, sweetheart! Yes, they do! I was there! They sell it on every damn corner!

[ Laughter ]

Tempest: Oh, God.

Dave: I'm saying, that's not like a food that you associate with that country, where is bratwurst is from, you know, wherever the hell that's from.

[ Laughter ]

Mo'Nique: Let me say this, Tempest.
I do have mixed feelings, because when he made that comment at the masters --
ignorant.
And he should have lost everything they gave him.
I totally agree.
I know, all that blacks who I know --
I don't know about the blacks that you know --
all the ones I know they like fried chicken.
All the white people that I know, they like fried chicken.
When I go to Crustaceans, a very famous restaurant in Beverly Hills, fried chicken is not on their menu.
When I go to a restaurant --
a very famous restaurant in Beverly Hills, black- owned, fried chicken is on the menu.
Do you follow what I'm saying?

Dave: Well why do you think -- ?

Mo'Nique: God damn it, we like it! We eat it!

[ Laughter ]

[ Applause ]

Why is that so hard?

Tempest: Because you are giving power to a generalization.
It's a slippery slope.
Once you decide and say, "Okay, yeah, we eat fried chicken.
That's all right, y'all can talk about that.
Ha, ha, ha" --

Bill: What is insulting about a chicken?

Tempest: Because it's a generalization that's been used to demean us.
Fried chicken, watermelon --

Dave: It's a generalization that's been used to insult their community.

Bill: I don't even understand what's insulting about watermelon.

Dave: Fire the white man.

Mo'Nique: The white man is a bad mother --
shut your mouth.

[ Laughter ]

The hell with the white man.

Dave: That's what we're talking about.

Mo'Nique: Listen.
We're givin' them power, because you know what? Right now we're talkin' about it.
That's why we're givin' it power.
We've got to complain anyway.
If the chicken was $4 a pound, we're pissed off 'cause it's too damn expensive.

[ Light laughter ]

Tempest: I don't think we're givin' it power just --

Mo'Nique: Now we mad because they put it on sale in black history month.

Randall: You know what? You're right, you're right.
Let's take it back to the so-called, the "N" word.
What you just said --

Mo'Nique: Don't touch that book.
You better sell it.

[ Laughter ]

Randall: What you just said about power is right.
Don't make a totem of watermelon or fried chicken.
Well, why make a totem "nigger"?

Tempest: Because it's a hateful word with a hateful history.

Randall: Well, I understand your position.
But what's your position.
Given everything that you just said, you shouldn't be concerned about Bill or anybody else using the word "nigger," so long as they're not using it in a hateful way.

Mo'Nique: I don't care how any white person would use it.
Don't use it, period.

Bill: I understand.

Randall: But why this? "Nigger" is bad, but chicken is okay.
I don't understand your position.

Bill: Oh, come on, doc.
You don't see the difference between those two things?
[ Laughter ]

Randall: Oh, I do, but I don't understand from what she was saying.

Bill: Chicken is just a food.

Mo'Nique: What I was saying is the word "nigger" became --
give me that book.

Bill: All right.
I got to take a break.

Mo'Nique: No, not yet.

[ Laughter ]

Bill: Well, the good people of Houston have got the name of their ballpark back.
The Houston Astros will pay Enron $2.1 million to take that name off their field.
However, the peanuts you buy in the field will be called Enron shares --

[ Laughter ]

-- And the weinies will be Enron execs.

[ Laughter ]


[ Applause ]

Okay.
Now, everybody wants to get into back to what we're saying in the doc's book.
Let me clear it up again.
I do not want to say this word.
And I think you had it right, Dave, when you said that we don't have a right to, because we didn't have the history.

Dave: I just think it's a sensitivity issue.
It's an English word.
Like, I have the right to call up my --
basically, put it this way.
I call up my friend, I'm like, "Hey, what's up, [ bleep ]?" But I'm not going to say that to you guys.
You know what I mean?
[ Laughter ]

Bill: Right.

Dave: It's a respect issue.

Bill: Right.
Because you guys are gay, and we're not.

[ Laughter ]

Dave: Do you know what I mean?

Bill: I do.
But let me give you an example that I raised when this came up before that I said you were backing me up.
I was at a club one night, and this white girl was drunk, and she was singing along to the hip-hop record, which included that word, 'cause it's every third word in every hip-hop record.
And some black guy was about to punch her in the face.
And she was like, "I'm just singing along to the record." And if it's in every record, and people want to sing along, it is a little hard to make the case.

Dave: It sounds like it was his issue in that situation.
You know what I mean? She wasn't saying it to him.

Bill: No, but he got mad.

Dave: That's his problem.

Bill: In the same way you would have gotten mad.

Tempest: I'm not giving away my right to be upset with the word just because --
and it's not every hip-hop album.
But just because some rap songs use the word, some rap artists choose to use the word, lots of comedians choose to use the word, but I'm not going to sit here and act like I don't have right to be upset by it.

Bill: But how does that girl sing along? Because in this particular --

Tempest: Let her sing along.
Look, if you want to say the word, take responsibility for using it.
I have the right to react as an African-American how I choose to react to it.
And that's the risk you take.
Use the word.
You have a right it to use the word like I have a right to use the word.

[ Light applause ]

That's my feeling on it.

Mo'Nique: But would you react the same way, Tempest, when you go to a comedy show --
and you're right, we as comedians who use that word.
Now, when we get to that word, do you stop laughing? And then when you say, "Look, they have to accept the consequences that are going to follow that word," so that when we do use that word, as comics --
you know when you go to any all-black comedy show, you're gonna hear that word.

Tempest: I agree, you will hear the word.
And I'm not --
I'm voicing my opinions very clearly here.
But I'm not saying I run around with a shirt all day and grabbing every black person I know, "Please don't use that word." I'm not doing that.
I think when Richard Pryor used the word, and when he started to use the profanity in his act the way he did, he painted a picture.
He was an artist.
I am not trying to dissect his act and say, "Richard had no right to use that word." Richard was brilliant.
I'm not that centered on it.

Bill: So it's how brilliant you are using it, huh? So the dumb people don't get to use it.

Tempest: No, I said everybody can use it.
I have never said, "Hey, you can't use that word." If that's how you feel as a white person, I want you to use that so I know exactly where you're coming from.

Bill: Stop saying that to me!

Tempest: No, no.

Bill: No, all right.

Tempest: No, I'm not.
I'm not saying that.

Bill: There's the book.
I think we sold it as good as it can be sold.
We'll be right back.

Mo'Nique: Baby, I want a profit.

[ Applause ]

Bill: All right.
Thank you for coming out of your shells.
There's the book, written with stunning common sense.
And Dave's solo record out now.

[ Cheers and applause ]



Taken from the Politically Incorrect website.