Give Me My N-Word Free and Easily Accessible
By Tanu Henry, AOL Black Voices
Damon Wayans
For 14 months now, Damon Williams has been trying to copyright the word '****' with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. He has been turned down twice.
By now, either from the news or Internet chatterati, I'm sure you've heard: Actor, comedian, and now, barefaced businessman, Damon Wayans has filed and re-filed applications with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to copyright the term '****.' He plans to plaster the slogan on various licensed products -- from clothing to sundry media goods -- and, as a result, make a profit.
There's something real grimy about Wayans' idea. And it has nothing to do with the rightness or wrongness of white kids using the word '****.' It has everything to do with obstructing the natural evolution of a larger-than-life linguistic phenomenon.
Wayans is trying to transfer ownership of a word that he had nothing to do with creating from the free market of our collective vocabulary to the domain of his private control. It would be a brazen heist, his attempt to sucker the public out of a valuable and historical (albeit contested) piece of its intellectual property. To summon the obscure lyrics of the rapper The Real Roxanne, Wayans is trying to steal somebody's Cadillac, sell it back and keep the hubcaps.
Dave Chappelle
Comedian Dave Chappelle rocked the Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colo. Read more about the event and find out who else was there.
Read RoundupLuckily for both lovers and haters of the word, the patent office has twice rejected Wayans's claim, citing a law that forbids trademarks that are "immoral or scandalous."
Maybe Wayans wants to cause some kind of cultural storm, pulling a meta-meta version of a socially-conscious comedy sketch. Maybe, it's a publicity stunt. Or, maybe, he simply wants to make dollars off n-word usage; although I find it hard to imagine the African-American public purchasing from Wayans a word it already fiercely lays claim to. Or maybe Wayans wants to repackage '****,' like every other black idiom, and sell it to white kids in the suburbs. Unfortunately for Wayans, white kids in the suburbs' full embrace of hip-hop over the years has made them an equally cynical bunch of cultural sophisticates with discriminating tastes when it comes to their black art. They want their blackness real, too.
I am not opposed to the N-word. In my private life, it's among my favorite punctuations. Sometimes, in the town square of American public opinion, though, I sympathize with -- even repeat -- the politically correct opposition to the word because of its (here comes the cliché) "denigrating historical context."
"**** This, **** That"
Photo Gallery
The work of some artists have become synonymous with using the N-Word.
See Photo GalleryBut let's face it, from N.W.A. to around the way, '****' is here to say. We’ve seen it flung from all camps of American pop-culture and even seen random transplantations of it in remote villages in places as far away as Asia and Africa.
Beyond protectionistic instincts to hold on to the word because of its social currency (including its magical power to easily justify a beatdown), '****' has grown way too big for its britches, taking on several lives of its own. Its taboo nature, coupled with its ability to immediately communicate fearlessness or emotional detachment, make it the sweeter to use.
BV Talk
Should the government grant Damon Wayans his request to copyright the N-word?
Join the DiscussionNow Damon Wayans wants to own and dispense this unique cultural weapon at his whim. It seems like a futile and symbolic exercise because the actual benefits of him owning '****' or the ways he'll control and commodify it are not clear or convincing.
On the Pulse
What the Wayans' case does is flip the word, once again, from the periphery into the American public's mainline of sight and forces lukewarm restatements of all the sides of the argument. We’ve heard them all before. Meanwhile, '****' remains a free-floating commodity, seasoning hip-hop lyrics and selling Hollywood dialogue from here to mainland China.
No consensus is in sight as dueling opinions battle to sway public opinion and practice on N-word usage. I say, if it stays around long enough and continues to lose its power to shock and offend, -- no copyright, no licenses, no legal interferences -- '****' will die a natural death. Just remember, as it morphs into a global object, the emotions we attach to it and the meanings we make of it vary wildly from context to context. Therefore, please use it with caution. It could be as good a ghetto pass as a defensible reason to whip that ****.
