Use Of The 'n' Word - Uk Rapper Changes His Mind After Tv Doc (asher D - So Solid)

[funky4u]

Last night on UK TV - UK Rapper Asher D explored the use of the 'N' word - increasingly found in UK Hop Hop as previously found in USA Hip Hop.
The research and making of the programme changed Asher D's mind on the subject.


Here's the link to the story . Click:

http://www.scratchnspin.net/main/modules.p...order=0&thold=0


IMO It's never been cool for anyone to throw this word around lightly, so much hip hop records have it in it is impossible to avoid. Thats a view I've stuck with through the years regardless of whether it is fashionable or not. I didnt actually see the programme, but read with interest Asher's comments.

IMO:
There are some descriptive / documentary reporting / story telling situations where the use is justified, but the light use as a compliment and throwing the word around around sucks to me. different ppl using the word has different effects, but again anyone throwing the word around lightly is not good. IMO much more awareness and education is needed.

It would be easy to get into heavy censorship regarding this, but I dont think that would help this issue. My feeling is many records would be better records without it.


What are your thoughts?


P

[Jarman]

Personally, I'd like to see our societies to a point where it was just a word, with all the power it has taken away from it, and I think a way towards that would possibly be by the over-use of it, desensitizing people to it. However, until there are no more people who use it in a degrading, demeaning way, that will always remain a pipe dream, like communism actually working. Its such a sticky situation....I've listened to gangsta rap since grade eight. there are still points in time where I hear someone say it, and look around to see if someones running to beat them down, and I'm rather ashamed to be assosciated with that person (example: times at shambhala this year.....), and there are other times when it's use just breezes past me, and I take almost no notice of it. By marketing rap to white suburbia, did russel simmons ever intend for such a level of de-sensitization, and semi-normalcy of the use of this word?

such a sticky damned topic.......i wouldn't even want to come close to a tv project on this, cause you know people will disagree, no matter what stance.....

[Goat]

How does one go about approaching a touchy word or issue? It seems to me that two approaches are being taken. The first, being taught in highschools, is the ultra politcally correct approach that tends to suggest "out of sight, out of mind". I remember having a discussion in a class concerning the absolution of removing issues of racism in Social Studies text books. Out of a 400 page book of the establishment of Canada, the word racism isn't mentioned once.
Is it that people don't like the idea of associating shortfalls or growing pains our country has gone through? Racial issues have and continue to be an essential part of our growth process as a Country. How does our future, the youth of today and tomorrow, approach an issue as sticky as racism without being properly familiarized with what actions and events have taken place leading to existing circumstances?
I don't know why this is but it baffles me.

The second approach, mostly taken up by media outlets and politicians, is the desensitization of a word, using a word or phrase so often it becomes synonymous with another meaning entirely. People begin to hear a word and dismiss the importance OR give a larger credence then is deserved. This approach leads me to fear the evolution of the English language and effects/consequences they will hold for our future as a, for the most part, metropolotin nation. .

Anyway, just food for thought.

[-evil-duerr-]

but people DO make a big deal about the n word.
and its funny that its usually the same people who go around talkin about dirty indians, wetbacks, ragheads, and chinks.

I think there is a huge awareness of the word. People in general seem to fall over themselves these days trying to be accepting of african americans and their coulture.

People need to focus on the bigger problem which is racism in general.
Is the n word the main issue here?
You wouldnt care if people said wop, or indian? Maybe you would.

my concern is most people dont, and yet they tippy toe around the n word like the rest of the world's minoritys dont matter one bit.

multiculturalism is great as long as your gonna be true to it, and be accepting of ALL the world's coultures.