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Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy and Chris Rock have all traded on demystifying nigger. And in doing so, they have advanced the racial debate further than a thousand roundtable discussions populated with the best Ivy League minds. Pryor and Chevy Chase's Saturday Night Live "word association" sketch was a prime example of comedy's power to explore racial interplay in the workplace, the constant questioning of blacks as to when a comment is harmless and when is it racist. Chase is the white human-resources executive. Pryor, the black job applicant. What begins with Chase: "White," Pryor: "Black," devolves through Chase: "Negro," Pryor: "Whitey," Chase: "Colored," Pryor: "Redneck," Chase: "Jungle bunny," Pryor: "Honky!" Chase: "Nigger," Pryor: "Dead honky!"
1976. Silver Streak, Pryor and Gene Wilder's comedic take on The Defiant Ones. In the penultimate moment, Pryor's character, camouflaged as a lowly train porter, flips a gat on the uppity white villain, demanding to know, in a brilliant combination of anger and comic timing, "Who you callin' nigger?" Yeah. That was all of us. That was all of black America wanting to know from any race baiter as we moved through the Establishment: Excuse me, who exactly are you calling nigger?
And a couple of mollycoddles out there want to put the kibosh on that? Line 'em up, man. Line up pop culture from The Nigger of the Narcissus to The Birth of a Nation to To Kill a Mockingbird, right on through N.W.A. and "Niggas vs. Black People," and on to comedian Dave Chappelle playing a blind Ku Klux Klan member who ends up yelling "nigger" at himself.
In an era of enlightenment and free communication, do we really want to wipe out the work of the satirists who shove and cajole, who take language and thought by the throat and force us to confront with wit and guile what most refuse to face? We need this word. Relax. Take a deep breath. It's gonna be cool. Two syllables. Six letters. It's not the word, only the fear that needs to be put aside.
John Ridley is a commentator and author of The American Way, a graphic-novel series to be published in February