FraserWords

Warning: this week’s article contains a frank discussion of language, so if you’re easily offended it’s best that you f*ck right off, Now then:

Nigger.

That was easy, wasn’t it?

Nigger. Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger.

Nope. No matter how many times I say it, I still experience no desire to repatriate Lenny Henry or vote UKIP or buy any of Jeremy Clarkson’s loathsome books or dislike anybody, anybody at all, based on the colour of their skin.

I loved the joke on the satirical website Newsbiscuit, when movie-makers planning a remake of The Dam Busters announced they would have to change the name of Guy Gibson’s dog for political reasons. The real hound was called Nigger, of course. Newsbiscuit suggested the film change the dog’s name to ‘Cuntface’. I laughed for hours. And there you go. Two forbidden words in one sentence.

Words have power, of course they do. Secret words have even more power. Words you’re not allowed to use have even more power than that.

I don’t believe in taboos. I don’t believe in not using words. I’m not scared of words.

I am, though, scared of what words can do if they’re not used with clarity, if people using them are not educated in their multiple layers of meaning and use. I’m scared of the way words are used. Me writing the word ‘nigger’ can never be racist, because I have never been, am not and will never be a racist. Me writing the word ‘nigger’ is not racist because I am using it in a way that is not abusive.

A white guy at a pub bar sharing a pint with, oh, say, Nigel Farage, using the word ‘nigger’ in a pejorative sense, is racist. But what’s the damaging part of the phrase “We should send niggers back where they came from”? The word ‘nigger’ or the idea that we should not allow people to live with us because of the colour of their skin? I know which problem I would tackle first.

So don’t ban the guy at the bar from using the word. Try – and yes, the attempt may well be doomed to failure – try to teach him to use the word in a non-abusive sense. Teach him why it’s controversial. But ban him using it and you will feed his dullard sense of imagined injustice, of unfairness, that in turn feeds his casual, ignorant racism. You’ll make the problem worse.

Many will say the word can never be non-abusive, but I don’t believe that. I believe people can be better than that. I believe that’s why queers and queens are rightly celebrating the splendid victory of Austria’s Conchita Wurst in the Eurovision Song Contest. I believe Conchita’s comment on the victory podium – that people who believe in freedom and equality are “unstoppable” – was absolutely right.

I believe that David Cameron would never use the word ‘nigger’, but I also believe that he would vote for removing people’s rights to legal aid when in trouble with the law, that he would impose a tax on poor people with the effrontery to have a spare room, that he would raise NHS prescription charges, that he would cut benefits, that he would force the unemployed to clear shit off the streets for nothing, that he would defend a corrupt minister’s expenses spree, that he would defend a multi-millionaire tax-dodger, that he would fight in the courts for bankers’ rights to their bonuses, that he would cut taxes for the rich, that he would do a hundred other things that do more damage to people of any colour than one single use of the word ‘nigger’.

This utterly ridiculous fuss over Clarkson’s use of what newsreaders purse-lippedly refer to as “the n-word” – they mean ‘nigger’, that’s n-i-g-g-e-r – is infuriating because it enables people to posture in a righteous fashion without doing a single thing about the real issues.

For example, if we sack Clarkson, stitch his lips together (a tempting thought, admittedly) and succeed in forever banning the use of the word ‘nigger’? Will that put a black politician in the Conservative Cabinet?

It’s all media froth, of course. The media sets a totally arbitrary agenda for the nation, based on visual matters and factors such as attractiveness of participants, celebrity rating, ease and cheapness of coverage, and how quickly any issue can be summed up in a couple of clichés.

This week, the media has noticed that a couple of hundred Nigerian schoolgirls have been abducted by terrorists. This actually happened weeks ago, but the Oscar Pistorius trial was much more interesting and much easier to cover. And Ukraine had guns and explosions and everything. And anyway, the Nigerian schoolgirls were, ahem, black.

The world was so useless that the best our alleged leader of freedom, America, could manage was a picture of the President’s unelected wife holding up the Twitter hashtag #bringourgirlsbackhome – surely her husband could have actually done something rather than leave it to his unelected wife to make pointless gestures? What a terrible disappointment Obama has been.

Despite my cynicism, though, social media outrage has achieved something: it has made governments think about action and it has persuaded the media that the abduction of 200 schoolgirls from their homes is indeed a story, no matter what their colour.

But whatever now happens, there is no escaping the fact that the ignoring of this story was far more racist than any use of the word ‘nigger’.

Going missing

While on the subject of the media, you will have read acres and acres of newsprint about the ongoing events surrounding the tragic deaths of 96 Liverpool fans at Hillsborough, not just in this anniversary year, and seen the football world show respect in nationwide shows of sympathy. You will have seen very much less coverage, and very much less commemoration, of yesterday’s 29^th anniversary of the Bradford City stadium fire that claimed the lives of 56 of their fans. I think that’s shameful.

Going great guns

Congratulations to Sterts Theatre Company, our wonderful open-air theatre on the edge of Bodmin Moor here in Cornwall (link on the left) – their home-grown production of Calendar Girls has won the Tim Firth Award for best amateur production of 2013. Richly deserved.

Going to the pictures

Thank you to those of you who commented on dear Captain Kay’s beautiful photograph as shown in last week’s column. I’m pleased to say that the majority find it as moving as I do, though a few did say it was depressing or gloomy. Small sample though. Whatever the views, I am going to have it framed to add to my collection of the Captain’s work.

Going underground

Break a leg, Brother Fiddle. Tony Hazzard totters north to his home city, Liverpool, this weekend to play the Cavern, some 50 years after deciding his then trio weren’t up to the gig and turning it down. He’s decided to make amends with two slots at the International Pop Overthrow festival this Friday, and if you’re online on Friday afternoon you can catch him on the Billy Butler afternoon show on BBC Radio Merseyside. The full story is elsewhere on the site – http://www.stuartfraserwords.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/publicity/tony-hazzard-press-release.pdf