The Popularity of the N-Word: An Update

I'd like to think that some terms of hatred as so vile, so weighted with painful historical memory, that we'd see a consensus on the word's banishment from common usage.

The "n-word" is one of the top candidates, but for the strangest reason its use continues as some kind of badge of honor in the black community, and among those generally on the left of the spectrum. This episode below, from the View, shows Elisabeth Hasselbeck repudiating the private use of the word - and, note carefully how she's mercilously attacked by "holier-than-thou Whoopi Goldberg, who lays the racism guilt-trip on Hasselback - saying, "You have just got to understand..."

It's really sick:

Goldberg defends the use of the n-word with statements like "my own mother could not vote in this country," with the logical extrapolation being white people still owe, white people must give blacks a pass on using the n-word "in private."

But Hasselbeck's argument's the most compelling, where she says "in my home we were raised not to use words of hatred...", and that's the way it should be.

But Goldberg speaks for many on the left, and for an example, see the Tennessee Guerilla Woman:

Sparked by the media's shocked outrage and moral superiority at the discovery that civil rights leader Jesse Jackson uses the "N" word in private, Whoopi Goldberg tries to explain to Elizabeth Hasselbeck why context does indeed matter! Elizabeth might get it if only she listened as much as she talks.

I don't understand why people don't get this. For me, it's the stark difference between men using the term bitch and women using the term bitch. It simply does not mean the same thing.

And as to the harshness of Jackson's critique of Barack Obama, the civil rights leader is not the only one irritated by the fact that lectures on personal responsibility aimed at Blacks make Barack Obama sound far more like Clarence Thomas than the liberal Democratic candidate many of us were hoping for...

There's so much revealing in this passage, that, when added to Whoopi Goldberg's guilt-mongering attacks, reveals exactly where much of the left resides in its hypocrisy of victimology.

The only one who really gets it is Elizabeth Hasselbeck, bless her heart!

Allahpundit at Hot Air has more:

I too was in tears after viewing it, so excruciatingly inarticulate is our cast. Newsbusters has a transcript, but trust me, it won’t help. Hasselbeck’s point is a simple one: We all share a common culture, so in the interests of commonality, how about everyone agrees to quit dropping the N-bomb, yes? Whereupon Whoopi, seizing the opportunity for a righteous show of Absolute Moral Authority, duly pitches a fit about how we’re different and that’s the way it is and Elisabeth simply doesn’t understand the “frustration” over the “huge problems that still affect us,” even though, please note, in calling for everyone to stop using the word she’s making the same argument as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Consider this a punctuation mark on a week that began with that Obama New Yorker cover, the intent of which was clear but declared to be beside the point because it was unhelpful to the left’s agenda. Whoopi and Sherri Shepherd have a plausible intentionalist defense of their position available to them here — when blacks use the N-word the intent will almost always be innocent whereas it’s much more ambiguous when coming from whites — but that ends up being exploded when Walters asks Shepherd what would happen if she said the word, presumably in a friendly/jokey manner to Sherri. Answer: “I don’t want to hear it come out of your mouth.” So much for intentions.

Anyway. Hasselbeck ends up in tears, Whoopi ends up basically arguing that the gulf between the races is too great for them ever to understand each other (or at least for whites to understand blacks), and they end up quickly moving on to talk about something else. Is this the sort of great national conversation Barry O had in mind?

The gulf it is too great because many blacks will not give up their (falsely) assumed moral stranglehold over white people.

As I've noted before, my dad couldn't vote "in this country," and his parent and grandparents could not, with many of them by contrast working in the fields, or as domestics. But we never used that word in my house, and polite company never used it either, on holidays or weekend visits to the 'hood.

I'm ashamed of Goldberg's defense, and I applaud Hasselbeck for saying the word's totally inappropriate, "because I love all of you all so much"!

Love ... now that's something that's certainly lost in this election season.

See also, "The Popularity of the N-Word."

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UPDATE: Via Memeorandum, Fox News has picked up the story, "Elisabeth Hasselbeck in Tears After 'View' Discussion on N-Word":

"View" co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck was in tears Thursday after a discussion about the use of the n-word, in which fellow co-host Whoopi Goldberg told her the two "don't live in the same world."

During a segment covering Jesse Jackson's recent use of the n-word while preparing to tape an interview on FOX News, Whoopi and co-host Sherri Shepard, who are both black, contested that the word has a different meaning for black people.

"It's something that means something way different to me than it does to you," said Shepard. "I can use it as a term of endearment."

Shepard also said to co-host Barbara Walters: "I don't want to hear it come out of your mouth."

Hasselbeck contested that "We [blacks and whites] don't live in different worlds, we live in the same world."

Goldberg, who used the n-word repeatedly during the broadcast (it was bleeped out), said that "We don't live in the same world. What I need you to understand is the frustration that goes along with when you say we live in the same world. It isn't balanced."

Hasslebeck tearfully replied that "when we live in a world where pop culture then uses that term, and we're trying to get to a place where we feel like we're in the same place, where we feel like we're in the same world ... how are we supposed to then move forward if we keep using terms that bring back that pain?"

You sing it, sister!