Death of the "N" word.

In downtown Detroit yesterday, the NAACP staged a mock funeral for the "N" word:

A horse-drawn carriage pulled a pine casket topped with black roses through the streets of Detroit on Monday.

The coffin was cheap, and the flowers were fake -- a fitting send-off for something despised by so many.

This was no celebration-of-life funeral. The thousands who gathered in Hart Plaza on the city's riverfront were more than happy to rejoice in this passing, the hoped-for demise of the N-word and its slang derivative.

I have a personal story to go with this. Several weeks back the family and I were watching Whoopi Goldberg on TV. She told the following joke:

There's a little black angel up in heaven and he's flappin' his little black wings, so happy-like and he sees God walkin' around so he flies over and says "God - is I an Angel?" And God says "No Nigga - You a BAT!!!"

The joke inspired a sort of nervous laughter in the TV audience who found it to be funny, but felt guilty about it. I don't think either my wife or I laughed, but I could be wrong. As I remember it in my head, it was Whoopi's delivery that was truly funny rather than the joke itself.

Our daughter J, however, was thoroughly confused by it. CAL did her best to explain the joke to her. J replied by saying, "I've never heard that word before," which is to say, the "N" word.

Let me just add that by no means does J live in a sheltered world. She goes to public school (7th grade this fall), watches cable television, and lives in one of the most ethnically diverse cities in southeastern Michigan. Although CAL and I do tend to cuss quite a bit ("fuck" is a favorite word in our household, which mortifies J), we don't use racial slurs of any kind.

So is the "N" word really dead? Maybe so. Or if it isn't dead, then its future survival doesn't look so good with the next generation.