John Lennon, Patti Smith, and the N-word

Last.fm

This picture has been making the rounds of the feminist blogosphere, along with some much needed discussion about race and privilege that white feminists are eager to point out in others, but often miss in themselves. (source: Racialicious )

(I have nothing add other than to tell my fellow white feminists that it doesn't matter what the intent was. If something is racist, it's racist. There's no defending it, and I'm incredibly disappointed in those out there who insist on defending it.)

When I first saw that photo, I knew exactly what it was referring to: the John Lennon/Yoko Ono song of the same name. I assume the sign maker thought she was being clever, and since the N-word was in the title of a well-known song written by one of the most critically acclaimed songwriters of the last fifty years, it must be sanctioned. It must be okay.

Except it's not.

And if you have any reason to question why it's not okay, just read Latoya Peterson's post :

But can you appropriate a term like [n-word] if your body is not defined/terrorized/policed/brutalized/diminished by the word? Can we use it in a context that is supposed to belie gender solidarity, without explicitly being in racial solidarity?

John Lennon would have turned seventy-one yesterday. In light of what's happened, it feels wrong writing a post that praises him. The song itself was recorded almost forty years ago, and peaked at #57, making it Lennon's lowest charting single to date. The single pulled in Britain and banned from the airwaves. In an article for PopMatters last year, Rachel Johnson said:

Although Lennon contended on The Dick Cavett Show that usage had ‘changed’the song actually returns the word to its awful origins: a viciously racist term intended to denigrate and dehumanize. Used politically to express identification and alignment with oppressed people of color, it is then universalized to underscore the condition of all women everywhere. Of course, the moral and artistic right of non-black men and women- particularly those gifted with power and privilege- to use such a word and to further imply that white women have been as equally victimized as black people throughout history may be questioned if not damned.

Patti Smith used similar reasoning defending her song, "Rock and Roll N-word." In the liner notes she "frames it as a badge of honor for anyone 'outside society'" (source ), while ignoring its historical context. Sadly, critics overlook it also. I could find very few bona fide criticisms of that song within the many things written about her, and I say this as a long-time Patti Smith fan. However, her appropriation of that word is inexcusable. That goes for Lennon, too.

I wish there were more discussion around this, and other artists who think it's their right as an artist to use anything within their grasp without thinking how their power, their privilege, hurts others.