I Want You to Shut the F#ck Up

by D. L. Hughley

  Now, LaDonna is very religious and very PC. She doesn’t just see the world through rose-colored glasses; she grows the roses that you can see through. When we used to drive past the building that housed the Burbank Center for the Retarded, it upset the hell out of her. It’s not like it was the Center Against the Retarded. That’s just her way of seeing things. In other words: She and I are polar opposites, and that’s why I adore her.

  So LaDonna came up to me all upset one day, and I took it with a grain of salt. “My father called our son, Kyle, a bitch,” she said. “I want you to say something to my dad.”

  I have a very good relationship with my father-in-law, so I wanted to let him explain himself and hear what he had to say. He was happy to tell me what had happened. Apparently Kyle wouldn’t help my wife, his mother, with the groceries. He wouldn’t hold the door open for her. My father-in-law is seventy, so he can’t always be helping my wife with heavy bags. Instead, he chose to criticize my son in the bluntest way he could.

  Rather than telling the man off, I wanted to shake his hand. I immediately went to go talk to my son. “What did Grandpa say to you?” I asked him.

  “That I was acting like a bitch.”

  “Next time you see your momma or your sister struggling with groceries, or you sit down before they do, that’s exactly what you’re acting like.” My son definitely got the message after that. Now he races to hold the door and helps my wife carry things. He walks her to the car and opens it for her, and he walks into the house first like a gentleman should. He gets it. If my father-in-law didn’t call him a powerful word, he wouldn’t have changed his disrespectful behavior.

  There are words you’re not supposed to say, ever. I don’t even mean curse words like “fuck” or “shit.” I mean the fact that you can’t refer to “bitches” or “hos.” You’re not supposed to say “retarded” and you’re not supposed to say “nigger.” The argument goes that these words are so powerful and hurtful that they should never be used. But power isn’t always a bad thing. Power is what you use to make a bad situation into a better one. Jennifer Aniston said “retarded,” and she got in a ton of trouble for it. Then Lady Gaga said it, and she got in trouble. Every other week a celebrity gets in trouble for saying “nigger.”

  But how can we avoid words when the living embodiments of them exist? That’s the whole point of having words—to refer to things that are out there. In 2010, Alvin Greene was the South Carolina Democratic candidate for the United States Senate. The man still lived with his father. Instead of answering reporters’ questions, he danced. His idea of fiscal responsibility was to sell dolls that looked like him in order to pay off the national debt.

  Isn’t he a retarded nigger?

  I know niggers. I know a lot of them. Every black person does. If a fight breaks out, I don’t want an “African-American.” I want a nigger—with tight skin, ashy hands, and a bad attitude. It amazes me that it’s often people who are not black who want to ban the use of that word. They don’t know what it feels like—but I sure as hell do. I’ve been called a nigger more than once in my life. But is there anyone who hasn’t been insulted in a nasty, below-the-belt way?

  The only time being called a nigger hurt was when it came from a famous black comedian. He told me during a conference call, “You wouldn’t have this show if it wasn’t for me, nigger.” This wasn’t nig-ga: I wasn’t his boy. It made me realize for the first time that someone could use the word not to be hurtful, not to be insulting, but out of the literal belief that you are somehow inferior—and the clearest way for this comedian to express that to me was to call me a nigger. In his view, I was a second-class citizen who was beneath him, and supposedly the two of us both knew it. But calling a black man a nigger is like saying “Bloody Mary” in front of a mirror. Say it enough times, and that is exactly who will appear. I told the comedian that if he called me that when I was around, I would slap the shit out of him.

  When Dog the Bounty Hunter got caught using that word on a voicemail to his son, I thought the outrage was way out of proportion. He didn’t want his son dating outside his race and expressed it in a coarse way. Well, my mother always said, “If she can’t share our comb, don’t bring her home.” My wife says the same thing. Is my family’s version better than Dog’s because it rhymes? The sentiment is pretty much the same. We’re more comfortable opposing “racism” in the form of certain words than we are acknowledging actual racism when it exists.

  People are so scared of slurs that they freak even when the words are taken completely out of actual context. Max Bretos was suspended for thirty days from ESPN because he was discussing Jeremy Lin and used the expression “chink in the armor.” That expression is so popular that it’s a cliché. That’s how expressions become clichés—they’re such a convenient shorthand for a recurring concept that people use them all the time. Bretos, whose wife is Asian, was clearly not making a racist reference. The term in that context has nothing to do with Chinese people. What possible harm could it have caused? Some Asian people winced when they heard him? I don’t bug out when British people talk about their knickers. What’s a bigger threat to Chinese people: an ESPN anchor’s nonuse of a slur, or the massive human-rights abuses perpetrated by the Chinese government? Ain’t that a “bitch”?

  The NBA made an example of Kobe Bryant when he told the ref, “Bennie, you’re a faggot.” Obviously Kobe wasn’t really commenting on the ref’s sexual orientation, and no one in his right mind would think that he was. But the NBA instantly charged him $100,000 anyway. $100,000. There’s people who fight, who do bodily damage, who don’t get a $100,000 fine.

  After Kobe’s comments, the Lakers had to apologize to the “gay community.” Who’s the guy who they had to contact to apologize? Who’s the ambassador for all gay people? Did the Lakers have to wake up Richard Simmons and get him out of his pink glittery bed to let him know that Kobe called the ref a faggot? Meanwhile, we live in a nation where until very recently it was okay to openly discriminate against gay people. It was not only okay, but it was the official policy of the United States government! It’s so hypocritical.

  We make people apologize for something that they clearly aren’t sorry about—and they are apologizing for something they didn’t even intend to begin with. Growing up, if two kids got sent to the principal’s office for fighting, the principal would make us shake hands in his office—but we knew we were getting it on at three o’clock. We’d smile and apologize to your face now, but we all saw what happened after school. Those false apologies made things worse. They’re not just hypocrisy; they’re forced hypocrisy.

  Eliminating certain words is part of an attempt to sanitize history, to pretend we solved the racism issue so there is no context for certain words to ever be spoken again. It’s sweeping uncomfortable things under the rug. It used to be “offensive” dialects. Amos ’n’ Andy was satirically brilliant. Groups like the NAACP thought it was so divisive and so stereotypical and so incendiary that they got the show kicked off the air. Those same civil rights groups laud Tyler Perry. How many NAACP Image Awards has he won? These people saying Amos ’n’ Andy was extreme and dragging down our race are the exact same people saying that what Tyler Perry does is art.

  Once they took care of “racist” dialects, they turned their sights on “racist” words—even if they made sense in context. Look at what they’re trying to do with Mark Twain’s children’s books. Mark Twain was a progressive guy. He said, “Not only did you free the slaves, you freed the white man.” He gave money to liberal colleges. He was raised a Presbyterian, but he was against religion. He said, “Faith is believing what you know ain’t so,” and, “If Christ were here now there is one thing he would not be—a Christian.” So now they are taking out the word “nigger” from Huck Finn and replacing it with “slave.” That’s not the same thing. If you call me a nigger, I could still be very offended as I go back to my house in my car. If you call me a slave, I gotta go with you. The educators are saying
they have no choice, since they’re not allowed to teach from books with that word. Clearly, then, they need to change that rule and not tinker with a great classic that puts things in a historical context for kids.

  It doesn’t stop with slurs. Even now, Texas wants to rewrite its history books so they don’t call slavery “slavery.” The slave trade would be called the “Atlantic triangular trade.” I’m aware of a lot of slurs against blacks, but “triangle” is a new one to me. They want to make it antiseptic because that makes them more comfortable. When Congress recently had a reading of the Constitution, they didn’t want to include the three-fifths compromise. Yet the compromise was to lessen the effects of slavery, not to increase it. Those slaves could not vote, but were represented in Congress by pro-slavery congressmen. If they let slaves have full representation, then the South would have sent more representatives to Washington, and it would have become that much tougher to get rid of slavery. Failing to discuss this and forbidding certain language makes us fail to acknowledge how far we’ve come. History makes you look at the mirror—and unpleasant language is an important part of history. I’m not uncomfortable with words. I’m uncomfortable with people pretending to be who they aren’t.

  It goes without saying that of all the slurs out there, there is none more incendiary and yet more perfectly constructed than the word “nigger.” If something can stand the test of time, fighting off weather, erosion, and social upheaval, then you know it’s well built. The Great Pyramid was the tallest building in the world for close to four thousand years. You don’t need to be an engineer to know that building is well constructed. That’s what the word “nigger” is. It’s like the Mona Lisa of slurs.

  The only thing I don’t like about the word “nigger” is that we haven’t found a word that makes white people just as uncomfortable. When America and Russia didn’t get along, they had enough nukes to kill each other off if shit went down. The policy was called “mutually assured destruction.” That’s the sort of weapon black people need. We don’t need detente. Instead of working to eradicate the word “nigger”—which will never happen—we need to get linguists together to find a word that’s just as incendiary for white people. “Cracker” is not going to cut it. White people from the North don’t get it, and it sounds too old-fashioned everywhere else. Meanwhile, “nigger” keeps feeling new and improved. By my math, we’re up to Nigger 4.0.

  People forget that the definition of a racist isn’t “someone who uses the word ‘nigger.’ ” I knew a black dude who said that he was going to stop using the word “nigger,” or even “nigga,” because it made him sound ignorant. What is that, a baptism? “I’m going to dunk you in this water, and all the shit you did before is going to be washed away”? Only a kid believes something as stupid as that. If you stop saying “nigger” but still keep treating people like one, you’ve just gone from being racist to being a racist hypocrite. That’s not an improvement.

  It works the other way as well. There are plenty of despicable racist jokes that people circulate around e-mail. Those people then say with a straight face, “I didn’t mean to be offensive. I had no idea that a black person would get upset that I said he looked like a gorilla. I mean, it’s not like I used the n-word.”

  Racism is an attitude, not a vocabulary test. People want things to be different from the way they are. Well, that’s life! It’s not what you want it to be sometimes. This PC shit is new, but slurs are old. How can a four-hundred-year-old word still be so controversial? “Nigger” has stood the test of time. It’s outlasted civilizations—and, I guarantee, it’ll be in the dictionaries long after all of us are in the ground.

  Using the word “nigger” is the easiest way for a racist to identify himself. It’s like a badge of honor for them to say because they’re breaking a taboo. They feel strong and defiant—so why the fuck should we be giving these people tools of empowerment? Suppressing the word won’t suppress the thought. But expressing the word might be an opening for a conversation. How can we change minds unless we know their contents?

  From a selfish perspective, I’m glad that people are so uncomfortable around slurs and stereotypes. It makes my job as a comedian that much easier, since discomfort is such grist for the comic mill. The entire show The Office, for example, is based on awkward, uncomfortable moments. It’s like that old line about stand-ups “saying what we’re all thinking.” When I discuss slurs or stereotypes and people laugh, that’s a bit of their tension being released. They are acknowledging thoughts they don’t like having but nevertheless cannot deny. Nothing makes Americans more uncomfortable than race. I experienced that firsthand when I came to the defense of Don Imus—and instantly became a black sheep.

  TO me, saying someone is a “black comedian” can mean one of two things. It can either mean that a comedian is of African descent, which is simply a genetic fact. But it can also mean a comedian who plays solely to a black audience—and that is not something I ever wanted to be. To be a black comedian in the second sense would really be like being a “black chef.” A good chef, just like a good comedian, can tailor his product to a variety of audiences. He should be able to improvise and not have a narrow purview to draw from. Thankfully, I’ve never been a “black comedian.”

  Early on in my career, I was supposed to go on a twenty-city tour opening for Harry Belafonte. The first gig was at the Melody Fair in Buffalo, New York. The venue was theater in the round, and to get to the stage I had to walk down this very long ramp. As I was making my way to the stage, I looked over at the crowd. I had never seen so many old white people in my life. It was like a Golden Girls rally. Finally, I made it up to the mike. I stared at them, they stared at me. “What the fuck are we gonna talk about?” I said.

  I killed that night. I probably did end up actually killing at least one person there. Statistically speaking, someone must have died during my thirty-minute set. But after everyone had a great time and they were all applauding, Harry Belafonte called me into his dressing room. He sat there in a chair, with his back to me. “You’re a funny man,” he said in that famous raspy voice. “A very funny young man—but you’re not for my audience. You won’t come back with me for the rest of the tour. I put a call in to Jeffrey Osborne. Tomorrow morning, you’re going to get on a plane and you’re going to go to Vegas to perform at the Golden Nugget.”

  The next day, I was staying at a suite at the hotel. I brought LaDonna out with our three small kids, and my mother-in-law came too. I wasn’t going to be making much money, so when we ordered room service we were very conservative. When the food came and I went to sign the bill, the room-service dude waved it away. “It’s gratis,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked him.

  “It’s gratis,” he repeated. “You don’t have to pay, as long as you’re performing here.”

  After that, all fucking bets were off. We ordered so much shit that the manager of the Golden Nugget called the room. He gave me an intervention, and that too was gratis. “We love that you’re performing here,” he said, “and feel free to order what you want, but you have got to relax. Just relax.”

  That Harry Belafonte show was a learning experience for me. First off, I learned what words like “gratis,” “prix fixe,” and “per diem” meant. But I also proved that I could perform in front of an entirely white crowd—an entirely white and old crowd—and make them laugh. So when I got approached to do a part on Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, I wasn’t scared at all. The show was produced by Aaron Sorkin and was supposed to be the Next Big Thing. The series was very insider and was trying to appeal to the type of urban sophisticates who read the New Yorker. Clearly, it was going to be a show only watched by white people.

  I was on the road when my manager gave me a call. Sorkin was casting the series, and he was red hot after the success of The West Wing. “But he can only meet you today,” my manager said. They didn’t even send over the script. Aaron’s assistant called me while I was on the treadmill at the gym. I put
my cell on speaker and the guy read me the sides, which was basically the breakdown of the character and the overview of the series as a whole. After I was done with my workout and with the call, I quickly grabbed a shower before heading down to meet Sorkin in his office. I was excited because the cast on the show was spectacular. They had Matthew Perry in there, Amanda Peet, Steven Weber from Wings, and Brad Whitford from The West Wing.

  Sorkin and I talked for about an hour, and he reiterated what the character was. I knew that I could deliver what he wanted, so I bullshitted my way through the conversation as though I had read the whole script. After it was over, I not only got the part but I got named as a producer. I’d be writing some of the comedy, since the series was about comedic actors. I never had to audition, and I know that there were a lot of actors who were hungry for the part. I actually didn’t end up reading the script until the first day of shooting, and that fact got out somehow. Even now when I take meetings, people will sometimes ask if I read the script this time for real.

  One of the highlights of the run was working alongside John Goodman. Everyone knows that John is a tall, huge dude, but he is also a superb actor in every way. His character was this racist judge who kept disrespectfully calling my character “Sammy” when his name was actually Simon. This was when John was close to his heaviest, and he kept falling asleep in his chair as we filmed—but it worked for the character. It was a two-part episode, so he and I ended up working together a lot. I thought he was going to die in the middle of shooting because he kept falling asleep and sweating so much; it was horrible. But not only did John not die, obviously, but that performance of his was so outstanding that it garnered him an Emmy nomination.