Fox: Jackson also used N-word in criticizing Obama

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

In additional comments from that same conversation, first reported by TVNewser, Jackson is reported to have said Obama was "talking down to black people," and referred to blacks with the N-word when he said Obama was telling them "how to behave."

Though a Fox spokesman confirmed the TVNewer's account to The Associated Press, the network declined to release the full transcript of the July 6 show and did not air the comments.

Jackson — who is traveling in Spain — apologized in a statement Wednesday for "hurtful words" but didn't offer specifics.

And

Jackson has called on the entertainment industry, including rappers, actors and studios, to stop using the N-Word.

More here.

About the most that I'm willing to criticize Jackson for here is hypocrisy. That is, in calling for the entertainment industry, including presumably African-American rappers, to avoid the word, but using it himself privately, he is employing what appears to be a double standard.

But that's as far as I'm willing to go.

I mean, I feel fully justified in telling white people to avoid using the n-word. After all, white people invented it in order to oppress black people, and, when used by a white person to address a black person or people, it continues to carry that weight to this very day, invoking centuries of torture, despair, and domination. Culture has powerful memory.

But it's just not my place to tell black people how to use the word. Okay, I understand that there are many African-Americans, from the academic elite to the working class, who believe the n-word to be patently offensive when used by anybody, regardless of their color or ethnicity. But I have also heard the word used brilliantly by the likes of Richard Pryor and Chuck D. I've heard it used cleverly, in casual conversation, as a word of solidarity among African-Americans I've known over the years. I've heard it used to express righteous outrage. In short, I understand how many black Americans, from all walks of life, have taken an idea that was created to harm them and reshaped it as a concept of self-empowerment.

It's just not as simple as good word/bad word.

I mean, like I said, cultural context makes my usage of the n-word extraordinarily problematic at best, but I do my damnedest to avoid it: I'm talking about African-American usage of the n-word. And this is a debate, a cultural discussion within the black American community, that clearly has not yet come to its conclusion. It is also a debate in which I have no business taking part, for obvious reasons. So I neither condemn nor support Jackson for his usage of the word.

I'm just watching to see how it's all playing out.

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