Sunday, January 16, 2011
Cee Lo's Secret Exposure
Ever since I wrote my first post about Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and the N-word, I've continued to think about it a lot and see connections all over the place. The other day I was listening to Cee Lo Green's song "F**k You" and singing along and all of the sudden I heard the N-word come out of my mouth. This is one of my favorite songs and my friends and I sing along to it all the time, but I had never noticed that the song had the N-word in it, yet I had been singing it at the top of my lungs for weeks. It makes me wonder why people pay attention to the word in Huck Finn (a time when it is used for an actual purpose) but don't complain about its overuse in rap music (for no apparent reason at all). Personally, I think it's better for kids to be exposed to the N-word in a classroom environment where a teacher can tell them that it isn't a word to use and teach them about the historical significance of the word rather than just hearing it in their favorite music. What do you think?
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Ellie - I don't know if I agree that rap musicians use the word "for no reason at all." It is a way that they choose to express themselves, and they might find it to be the best word in the song. It's kind of like poetry, where a poet agonizes over each word in the poem, because in my opinion, rap music is a form of poetry. I do agree that it is better for students to be exposed to words like the N-word in class, that's how I know that I shouldn't just say it, that it is condescending and vile and cruel. When we read that article in class the other day that referred to the N-word it referred to another word that I had never heard before. One that is just as demeaning as the N-word but instead of describing African Americans, it describes Chinese people. I had no idea what the word meant when it was read nor did I know that it was such a bad word, and neither did the five or six people sitting around me. Imagine if the definition hadn't been explained to us, and we went around saying that word, trying to add a new word to our vocabularies...
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ReplyDeleteI agree with you in the sense that it is interesting to see where the "N" word is used and questioned. But I also agree with Carolyn in the idea that it is not used "for no reason at all". I agree that it is an expression for them and a word that for most of these artists may hold deep meaning. It is not something that they can avoid and they express it through music.
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