December 15, 2004
by
Mark Goldblatt
The sidewalks of Fifth Avenue are jammed this time of year, so when I found myself hemmed in by a cluster of shoppers and sightseers recently, I resigned myself to keeping pace with the crowd. I was walking for half a block behind an elderly black woman when we passed a pair of thirty-something men in expensive suits talking loudly at the edge of the curb.
“You are playin’ me, nigga!” one of them yelled.
The other shook his head. “I f---ing swear to God!”
The elderly black woman shot them a glance but said nothing and kept walking.
Did I mention that both of the men were white?
For those who have questioned whether hip hop has made a lasting contribution to American culture, here then is a pointed rebuttal: Through sheer repetition, gangsta rap has made it permissible for well-dressed businessmen to cry “nigga” in public, thus adding to the arsenal of casual obscenities at their disposal. Indeed, thanks to P. Diddy, Snoop Dogg, Jay Z., Missy Elliot, Lil’ Kim and their ilk, men and women who witnessed first hand Jim Crow segregation, who lived through the Civil Rights era, who can recall the assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, men and women who have reached their sixties and seventies and eighties, now get to have the n-word hurled in their faces, without the slightest malice, by young white people.
Quite an accomplishment.
You know what I’m sayin’?