In August of 1998 Ruthless Records released an album titled “Straight Outta Compton” which was written and recorded by N.W.A. (Niggaz Wit Attitudes).  The group included Ice Cube (birth name of O’Shea Jackson) and Dr. Dre (birth name of Andre Young).  N.W.A. is widely credited with popularizing the gangsta rap genre of hip-hop music.

The lyrics of the title song are jarring to many, glamorizing gun violence and misogyny and include the following:

[Verse One: Ice Cube]

Straight outta Compton! Crazy motherfucker named Ice Cube             From the gang called Niggas With Attitude

…Niggas start to mumble, they wanna rumble Mix em and cook em in a pot like gumbo… …Here’s a murder rap to keep ya’ll dancin’ With a crime record like Charles Manson AK-47 is the tool Don’t make me act like a motherfucking fool Me you can go toe to toe, no maybe I’m knockin niggas out tha box, daily Yo weekly, monthly and yearly Until em dumb motherfuckers see clearly…

[Verse Two: MC Ren]

Straight outta Compton, another crazy ass nigga More punks I smoke, yo, my rep gets bigger…

So if you’re at a show in the front row I’ma call you a bitch or dirty-ass ho You’ll probably get mad like a bitch is supposed to But that shows me, slut, you’re not opposed to A crazy motherfucker from the street…

[Verse Three: Eazy-E]

Straight outta Compton Is a brother that’ll smother your mother And make your sister think I love her Dangerous motherfucker raising hell And if I ever get caught, I make bail…

So what about the bitch who got shot? Fuck her! You think I give a damn about a bitch? I ain’t a sucker!

The B-side of Straight Outta Compton included a song title “Fuck The Police” which prompted the FBI to send a letter complaining about the inflammatory nature of the song. That letter boosted album sales which eventually reached triple platinum status.

I grew up in the 1950s in Washington DC which was, at that time, not a cosmopolitan city but rather a small southern town. Like all southern towns, it was very segregated. My mother, on hearing the term “nigger,” was adamant that the term never be used in our house or by us. The correct term, she said, was Negro. In later years, Negro became black which became African-American which became black again and which has now become, according to the style mavens at the New York Times, capital B Black (A current “woke” suggestion I am refusing to follow; I’m not sure whether the term brown referring to Hispanic people is now a capital B Brown but I’m pretty sure Asian people will not be referred to as Yellows nor Native Americans as Reds).

Within the last few weeks, Netflix released a movie known as “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” which was produced by Denzel Washington and starred Viola Davis and the now departed Chadwick Boseman. Davis played Ma and Boseman played Levee, a member of Ma’s band. Set in 1927 at a recording session where all the performers are black, Ma and Levee are at odds and Levee is at odds with the other 4 band members. Levee and the band members regularly banter back and forth using the word “nigger” along the lines of “you are one dumb nigger.”

All of which brings us to Mimi Groves (New York Times Dec. 26, 2020, “A Racial Slur, A Viral Video and A Reckoning”). Last school year, Mimi was the captain of the cheerleading squad at her high school in Leesburg, Virginia. She dreamed of attending the University of Tennessee as its cheerleading team was the reigning national champion. By May, she learned that she had been accepted and placed on the cheerleading team. Her mom threw a celebratory party complete with a cake and decorations in orange which is the Tennessee school color. 

But then Mimi’s world was turned upside down. There surfaced on social media a three second video made a number of years before when she was 15 and had just received her learners permit . In a private Snapchat to a friend, Mimi looked at the camera and said “I can drive, nigger!” In a matter of a few weeks, Tennessee caved to the Social Media frenzy, removed her from the cheerleading team and convinced her to withdraw her application for admission. She now attends a local community college.

It turns out that one of Mimi’s classmates, Jimmy Galligan, had posted the video. Indeed, he had the video for some time but waited to post it until it would have the maximum effect on Mimi. Once she had been accepted at Tennessee, he decided that it was the time.

Galligan has a white father and a black mother. He had complained to high school officials about the use of derogatory racial and ethnic slurs at his high school but to no avail. At the same time, he admitted that at social gatherings on his mother’s side of the family, the forbidden word was used. However, when his father joined in on one occasion, Galligan had taken his father aside and told him he could not use that word.

Now 19, Mimi Groves says that she did not understand “the severity of the word… because I was so young…” It was “in all the songs we listened to, and I’m not using that as an excuse.”

As for Jimmy Galligan, he is pleased by what he has done. According to the NYT story: “I’m going to remind myself, you started something,” he said with satisfaction. “You taught someone a lesson.”

So what lessons do we learn from all this?  I think that there are a number including the following:

1. Jimmy Galligan’s time would have been better spent educating his black relatives as he did his white father about the use of the word.  Indeed, he could have changed the world for the better by reaching out to Mimi as he did to his father rather than lying in wait for a “gotcha” moment that changed nothing except Mimi’s life.
2. My mother was right and the nursery rhyme is wrong. There are certain words that should never be spoken because these words are extremely hurtful.  Free speech allows us to say the word but respect for social cohesion tells us not to exercise that right.
3. Social Media is inherently cruel and unreliable as it takes the frenzy of an ignorant mob and multiplies it endlessly through the internet.  In order to quell the Social Media mob, the University of Tennessee sacrificed a young girl who, at 15, had been hopelessly adolescent but not knowingly malicious.
4. This last Sunday (January 3^rd) Chris Rock, in an interview with Gayle King, when asked if he still gets angry about bullying he faced as a child, replied as follows:  “I do, but I forgive… [because] it made me who I am.  I’m also, like, people get better, and people change.  So, I mean, right now we’re going through this thing where we’re punishing people for thinking and feeling and saying things 20, 30 years ago.  You know how easy it would be for me in one of my specials to, like, name a name or show a picture and go, this person called me a nigger (bleeped on TV) in 4^th grade and ruin someone’s life? I’m gonna assume all my bullies are better people [now] I’m gonna hope to, pray to God, and I’m gonna hope that what they did to me shames them on some level, and that they teach their kids better.”
5. Alexander Pope wrote that “to err is human; to forgive, divine.”  Jimmy Galligan should listen to Tyler Perry:  “It’s not an easy journey, to get to a place where you forgive people.  But it is such a powerful place, because it frees you.”

PostScript

I had originally intended to make this blog about music which is so common during the Holiday Season.  I quickly decided to abandon that notion because I am not musically literate.  However, I did find a number of music videos which I liked for different reasons.

For Christian believers there is Jordon Smith’s rendition of “Mary Did You Know” which is a perfect song for the Christmas season. 

Leonard Cohen wrote the song “Hallelujah.”  The most downloaded version of this song is by Jeff Buckley.  While the lyrics have biblical roots, the song itself is not particularly religious and because Leonard Cohen is Leonard Cohen, this is his rendition of Hallelujah. 

Finally, for those who want to believe that “the last will be first,” and that small miracles are possible, look at Susan Boyle’s audition on Britain’s Got Talent.