I Want You to Shut the F#ck Up (15 page)

It goes without saying that of all the slurs out there, there is none more incendiary and yet more perfectly constructed than the word “nigger.” If something can stand the test of time, fighting off weather, erosion, and social upheaval, then you know it’s well built. The Great Pyramid was the tallest building in the world for close to four thousand years. You don’t need to be an engineer to know that building is well constructed. That’s what the word “nigger” is. It’s like the
Mona Lisa
of slurs.

The only thing I don’t like about the word “nigger” is that we haven’t found a word that makes white people just as uncomfortable. When America and Russia didn’t get along, they had enough nukes to kill each other off if shit went down. The policy was called “mutually assured destruction.” That’s the sort of weapon black
people need. We don’t need detente. Instead of working to eradicate the word “nigger”—which will never happen—we need to get linguists together to find a word that’s just as incendiary for white people. “Cracker” is not going to cut it. White people from the North don’t get it, and it sounds too old-fashioned everywhere else. Meanwhile, “nigger” keeps feeling new and improved. By my math, we’re up to Nigger 4.0.

People forget that the definition of a racist isn’t “someone who uses the word ‘nigger.’ ” I knew a black dude who said that he was going to stop using the word “nigger,” or even “nigga,” because it made him sound ignorant. What is that, a baptism? “I’m going to dunk you in this water, and all the shit you did before is going to be washed away”? Only a kid believes something as stupid as that. If you stop saying “nigger” but still keep treating people like one, you’ve just gone from being racist to being a racist hypocrite.
That’s not an improvement
.

It works the other way as well. There are plenty of despicable racist jokes that people circulate around e-mail. Those people then say with a straight face, “I didn’t mean to be offensive. I had no idea that a black person would get upset that I said he looked like a gorilla. I mean, it’s not like I used the n-word.”

Racism is an attitude, not a vocabulary test. People want things to be different from the way they are. Well, that’s life! It’s not what you
want
it to be sometimes. This PC shit is new, but slurs are old. How can a four-hundred-year-old word still be so controversial? “Nigger” has stood the test of time. It’s outlasted civilizations—and, I guarantee, it’ll be in the dictionaries long after all of us are in the ground.

Using the word “nigger” is the easiest way for a racist to identify himself. It’s like a badge of honor for them to say because they’re
breaking a taboo. They feel strong and defiant—so why the fuck should we be giving these people tools of empowerment?
Suppressing
the word won’t suppress the
thought
. But expressing the word might be an opening for a conversation. How can we change minds unless we know their contents?

From a selfish perspective, I’m glad that people are so uncomfortable around slurs and stereotypes. It makes my job as a comedian that much easier, since discomfort is such grist for the comic mill. The entire show
The Office
, for example, is based on awkward, uncomfortable moments. It’s like that old line about stand-ups “saying what we’re all thinking.” When I discuss slurs or stereotypes and people laugh, that’s a bit of their tension being released. They are acknowledging thoughts they don’t like having but nevertheless cannot deny.
Nothing makes Americans more uncomfortable than race
. I experienced that firsthand when I came to the defense of Don Imus—and instantly became a black sheep.

T
O
me, saying someone is a “black comedian” can mean one of two things. It can either mean that a comedian is of African descent, which is simply a genetic fact. But it can also mean a comedian who plays solely to a black audience—and that is not something I ever wanted to be. To be a black comedian in the second sense would really be like being a “black chef.” A good chef, just like a good comedian, can tailor his product to a variety of audiences. He should be able to improvise and not have a narrow purview to draw from. Thankfully, I’ve never been a “black comedian.”

Early on in my career, I was supposed to go on a twenty-city tour opening for Harry Belafonte. The first gig was at the Melody Fair in Buffalo, New York. The venue was theater in the round, and to get to the stage I had to walk down this very long ramp. As I was making my way to the stage, I looked over at the crowd. I had never seen so many old white people in my life. It was like a
Golden Girls
rally. Finally, I made it up to the mike. I stared at them, they stared at me. “What the
fuck
are we gonna talk about?” I said.

I killed that night. I probably did end up
actually
killing at least one person there. Statistically speaking,
someone
must have died during my thirty-minute set. But after everyone had a great time and they were all applauding, Harry Belafonte called me into his dressing room. He sat there in a chair, with his back to me. “You’re a funny man,” he said in that famous raspy voice. “A very funny young man—but you’re not for my audience. You won’t come back with me for the rest of the tour. I put a call in to Jeffrey Osborne. Tomorrow morning, you’re going to get on a plane and you’re going to go to Vegas to perform at the Golden Nugget.”

The next day, I was staying at a suite at the hotel. I brought LaDonna out with our three small kids, and my mother-in-law came too. I wasn’t going to be making much money, so when we ordered room service we were very conservative. When the food came and I went to sign the bill, the room-service dude waved it away. “It’s gratis,” he said.

“What do you mean?” I asked him.

“It’s
gratis
,” he repeated. “You don’t have to pay, as long as you’re performing here.”

After that, all fucking bets were off. We ordered so much shit that the
manager
of the Golden Nugget called the room. He gave me an
intervention
, and that too was
gratis
. “We love that you’re
performing here,” he said, “and feel free to order what you want, but you have got to relax. Just
relax
.”

That Harry Belafonte show was a learning experience for me. First off, I learned what words like “gratis,” “prix fixe,” and “per diem” meant. But I also proved that I could perform in front of an entirely white crowd—an entirely white and
old
crowd—and make them laugh. So when I got approached to do a part on
Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip
, I wasn’t scared at all. The show was produced by Aaron Sorkin and was supposed to be the Next Big Thing. The series was very insider and was trying to appeal to the type of urban sophisticates who read the
New Yorker
. Clearly, it was going to be a show only watched by white people.

I was on the road when my manager gave me a call. Sorkin was casting the series, and he was red hot after the success of
The West Wing
. “But he can only meet you today,” my manager said. They didn’t even send over the script. Aaron’s assistant called me while I was on the treadmill at the gym. I put my cell on speaker and the guy read me the sides, which was basically the breakdown of the character and the overview of the series as a whole. After I was done with my workout and with the call, I quickly grabbed a shower before heading down to meet Sorkin in his office. I was excited because the cast on the show was spectacular. They had Matthew Perry in there, Amanda Peet, Steven Weber from
Wings
, and Brad Whitford from
The West Wing
.

Sorkin and I talked for about an hour, and he reiterated what the character was. I knew that I could deliver what he wanted, so I bullshitted my way through the conversation as though I had read the whole script. After it was over, I not only got the part but I got named as a producer. I’d be writing some of the comedy, since the series was about comedic actors. I never had to audition,
and I know that there were a
lot
of actors who were hungry for the part. I actually didn’t end up reading the script until the first day of shooting, and that fact got out somehow. Even now when I take meetings, people will sometimes ask if I read the script this time
for real
.

One of the highlights of the run was working alongside John Goodman. Everyone knows that John is a tall, huge dude, but he is also a superb actor in every way. His character was this racist judge who kept disrespectfully calling my character “Sammy” when his name was actually Simon. This was when John was close to his heaviest, and he kept falling asleep in his chair as we filmed—but it worked for the character. It was a two-part episode, so he and I ended up working together a lot. I thought he was going to die in the middle of shooting because he kept falling asleep and sweating so much; it was horrible. But not only did John not die, obviously, but that performance of his was so outstanding that it garnered him an Emmy nomination.

After the episodes aired, I found out that a really good friend of mine
had
died. Growing up, he lived across the street from me. The funeral was attended by everyone from the old neighborhood. After the service, we all did what black people like to do at these times: We headed to the repast where everyone can eat, laugh, and remember their friend who passed. It’s like a big party.

In the back of the house sat my father with all his old cronies. His group is full of the kind of old dudes who put their napkins in their shirt and just hang out talking shit. I ventured over, making conversation, and then my father caught my attention. “I saw your show,” he informed me.

“Oh, okay.”

“You let that white man talk to you like that?”

“What are you talking about?” I had no clue what he meant
—none
.

“I’m talking about your show. He kept calling you ‘Sammy’ or ‘nigger.’ You let that white man talk to you like that?”

Now I realized “that white man” was
John Goodman
. “Daddy, it was a
script
.”

“But it made you mad, didn’t it?”

“
Not at all
. I never even thought about it. I promise you it was something that didn’t even register, not even a little.”

“I can’t believe this,” my father said. “Are you going to tell me that man is going to keep calling out your name, and you didn’t care?”

“Daddy, it’s a
script
. They wrote it; I was the guy; I did it. I thought it was great. It was some of the best and most challenging acting I’ve ever had to do, and I was working with the pros. It was
great
.”

My father is not a funny dude. He’s
never
been a jokester. The way he speaks to people, especially me, is gruff. When I visited him in the hospital one time, the
first
thing out of his mouth was a sarcastic: “Wow, the superstar is here to visit his dad.” But what he was saying was
absurd
, even given my relationship with him. I knew that he understood that a television was not a window, that he wasn’t looking through the glass at something that was happening outside at that exact moment. Yet I started to realize that, crazy as it sounded, he was actually serious about what he was saying.

I looked at his buddies to see their reactions. All I saw was a bunch of old dudes eating and looking around, drinking their beers as if nothing was going on. “I bet it pissed you off,” my father insisted.

“Charlie,” old Mr. Russell said, “that’s
enough
. Leave the boy
alone”—“the boy,” of course, meaning me, a grown man in his forties with his wife in the other room helping people serve food. I talked to Mr. Russell for a little while and then I just left them all sitting there. I told LaDonna what had happened, and she wanted me to let it go. “Oh, come on,” she said. “He’s an old man. Leave him be, he’s set in his ways.”

He was older, sure, but he wasn’t feeble. He wasn’t suffering from dementia, where he wasn’t aware of what he was saying. I don’t think age is an excuse for bad behavior in general and it certainly wasn’t in this case in particular. My relationship with my father hadn’t been great before that, but this was the first time he’d ever been
mean
. He wasn’t just mean, he was
insistently
mean. He usually didn’t give a fuck and eventually kind of let me go, but not this time. This time he dug in and he wasn’t going to back off. To this day, our relationship hasn’t recovered.

My wife was wrong about why he said what he did. It wasn’t that my father was set in his ways. He and I simply had a fundamental difference of opinion. When I was the only black guy on
Studio 60
, I viewed that as a source of pride. I could be myself in South Central, and I could be myself in a meeting with Aaron Sorkin. The more rooms a man can feel comfortable in, the more places where he is welcomed in as a person, the greater the opportunities for him to see the world and to explore and learn about it.

My father clearly didn’t see things that way. I wasn’t “crossing over.” In fact, I don’t think he even had a concept of what “crossing over” would look like to him. It
bothered
him that I was on that series. He wasn’t alone. It bothered
a lot
of other people to a greater or lesser degree. From their perspective, I was simply a token. I was Isaac on
The Love Boat
, and I had promised myself that I would never be Isaac or some other sort of caricature.