The NAACP buried the N-word at its 98th annual convention on Monday. A simple pine casket was brought about a quarter mile to Hart Plaza in Detroit. It was adorned with a single bouquet of fake black roses and surrounded by people calling out against what was symbollicaly inside. “Today we’re not just burying the n-word; we’re taking it out of our spirit,” Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick said. In 1944, the NAACP held a funeral for Jim Crow, and they are hopeful that this funeral will be as successful. By burying the n-word, the NAACP hopes to start a move towards a more positive self-image for young African Americans. We just have to see if this public burial is something that will actually make a difference. After Michael Richards’s outburst on stage and after Don Imus’s comment about the Rutgers University women’s basketball team, NAACP leaders and others soon challenged blacks and the entertainment industry to stop using such terms.
Take a quick trip down to the Billboard Hot Rap Tracks and see how their previous requests have worked. While the NAACP has said that this move is not an attack on rap or pop culture, it does seem to be an affront to them both. This is a good start and a noble gesture. I’m just skeptical on how successful it will be, and how pure the intentions behind it are. It seems to be along the lines of declaring a war on a concept. It is really hard to kill or bury something intangible. A problem the NAACP may face will be some division created by their chief, Julian Bond. In Bond’s convention address, he compared the devastation of Hurricane Katrina to a lynching and that it “is resulting in a deliberate effort to dispossess black landholders.” Whether it is Katrina or the n-word, making it a black problem and only a black solution simply won’t work. These are things the nation as a whole needs to address and solve. The problem is that burying a symbol doesn’t bury its meaning. To get rid of symbols like the n-word, we have to have a conscious push in the majority of society to call for its removal. We can’t depend on an exclusive organization to lead the charge in change for all members of society. If it was a true push for removing the word from our society, representatives from parts of society outside of the NAACP should be present.
——-Contact Geoff Whiting at [email protected]