By Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
I never much liked Paula Deen’s cooking. Filled with butter and gravies and things like Krispy Creme Donuts for hamburger buns, Paula seemed too culinarily eccentric … to foodie excessive … too health oblivious even for a southern cook in 1813 much less 2013. Her story though, like her southern twang, had a certain charm to it: single mother of two left penniless makes ends meet by selling food-to-go out of her home kitchen and works her butt off until she reached the top of the sundae’s cherry with three shows on the Food Network and some spin off shows for her two sons.
That all ended Friday as a deposition of Ms. Deen was released. In that dep (in a case Lisa T. Jackson v. Paula Deen et al. involving a claim of racial and sexual discrimination by an employee of her restaurant, Uncle Bubba’s), Ms. Deen admitted to using the no-no of racial epithets in the past — the distant past, like 50 years ago. Here’s an excerpt from the transcript of Paula’s deposition to see just what I mean:
Q
Okay. Have you ever used the N word yourself?
A
Yes, of course.
Q
Okay. In what context?
A
Well, it was probably when a black man burst into the bank that I was working at and put a gun to my head.
Q
Okay. And what did you say?
A
Well, I don’t remember, but the gun was dancing all around my temple.
Q
Okay.
A
I didn’t — I didn’t feel real favorable towards him.
Q
Okay. Well, did you use the N word to him as he pointed a gun in your head at your face?
A
Absolutely not.
Q
Well, then, when did you use it?
A
Probably in telling my husband.
Q
Okay. Have you used it since then?
A
I’m sure I have, but it’s been a very long time.
Q
Can you remember the context in which you have used the N word?
A
No.
Q
Has it occurred with sufficient frequency that you cannot recall all of the various context in which you’ve used it?
A
No, no.
Q
Well, then tell me the other context in which you’ve used the N word?
A
I don’t know, maybe in repeating something that was said to me.
Q
Like a joke?
A
No, probably a conversation between blacks. I don’t — I don’t know.
Q
Okay.
A
But that’s just not a word that we use as time has gone on. Things have changed since the ’60s in the south. And my children and my brother object to that word being used in any cruel or mean behavior.
Q
Okay
Realizing perhaps too late, the Deen Food Empire (books, utensils, cutlery, you name it) sprung into action. First a very public apology for sins past, then a new revised one on YouTube, the town square of our age, where Paula looking quite shaken literally begs for forgiveness. PC gods served? You tell me:
On cable TV shows up and down the msnbc roster, Deen was decried as racist, uncaring, and calls for her banishment from polite society became overwhelming. So much so that the Food Network pulled the shows and consigned Deen to places we reserve for the likes of George Wallace and Sheriff Bull Connor. But is that fair?
Deen grew up in place far away –temporally and culturally — from most of her critics and, as one who grew up in the same locales, I can tell you that her sin was a popular one in the South in the 60’s . Everybody who wasn’t white and rich had a name: wops, pollaks, heebs, rednecks, pope lovers, crackers, and yes those christened with the “N” word. And each group used the words liberally to each other and even among each other. I never saw a fight over the name calling but there were some close calls.
Surely it wasn’t a very hospitable place for African-Americans who bore the brunt of discrimination, but neither was it a hospitable place if you were poor, or Catholic, or ethnic, or anything other than wealthy, white and Protestant. That didn’t mean people weren’t civil to one another. By and large they were, but there was a palpable feeling of place and hierarchy that was enforced with a rigid caste system administered by state and local governments. That sat pretty well with the white elite who ran things back then.
But you should know those in power considered folks like Paula Deen no better that the “n*iggers” they brought in to do their cooking and cleaning and to raise their kids. Those “people” were there and free only by fiat of the government in Wershington and, by god, if that was the case they were going to be useful, or so it was thought.
The South changed and evolved in the ’60s and ’70s with the Civil Rights Movement as Dr. King’s words touched hearts both white and black and brightened them all. For those who wouldn’t listen, scenes of pregnant women blasted with water cannons and vicious police dogs attacking kids was surely enough. White people who drove pickups and worked in plants and farms started to realize that the folks who lived across the railroad tracks and who drove older pickup trucks and worked in plants and farms weren’t really much different from themselves and they had the same lack of control over their lives. The wedges of words that the ruling élite had no interest in curtailing melted away and it is clearly true that the advent of political correctness shown a glaring light on those southern dinosaurs who couldn’t or wouldn’t change.
Which brings us back to Paula Deen. Paula likely grew up in one of those same southern small towns like I did. She also likely made a distinction between “black people” (as they were called then ), who worked hard and raised their families as best they could under grinding poverty, and “n*ggers” who were seen as lazy, irresponsible, thuggish and no account. She likely came to learn that names reflect stereotypes and they can be and are often wrong; that people don’t fit nicely into boxes; and that, as Edmund Burke so wisely reminds us, you can’t draw up an indictment against a whole people.
Paula evolved and the South evolved. But the question remains for Paula and those like her: When is the sentence for violating political correctness over? When can you freely admit a mistake made decades ago without fear of reprisal? Not the criminal kind administered by the state, but the reprisal from the overlords of decorum who sit in ivory towers or corporate boardrooms and wax philosophic on all manner of society’s ills and largely for their own benefit ? When will a society committed to free expression allow itself to deal honestly with its past and say publicly a two-syllable word that most find offensive?
In my view, you don’t need a word that no one can utter. You don’t need to continually explain and apologize for sins made years ago in a culture far, far away if you’ve done it once and sincerely. And perhaps most importantly, you don’t need to feel society’s wrath for simply telling the truth about that society.
Paula Deen is no hero, but she is certainly no villain for growing up as she did and living as she did. When we master that fact perhaps we can overcome the racism that divides us even as we accept that our differences spring largely from things over which we have little control, and that we can come together in spite of ourselves if we forgive as freely and as often as we decry.
Source: Huffington Post
~Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
I’m sorry Tony. I should have qualified my assertion by stating I was referring to that “gray line” of Tony C’s.
My apologies for disrupting your world.
Bob, Esq: … is because you and your cadre REFUSE to acknowledge any such distinction.
In my post of June 23 at 10:13 AM, the fourth, fifth and sixth paragraphs detail precisely that situation, and the first paragraphs detail the reasons that black-on-black use of the N-word is very different from any mixed-race usage of the word.
Now it is time for you to refuse to acknowledge any error on your part and call me some names.
Tony,
Consider this per Mark’s point:
“Older versions of this rhyme had the word nigger (instead of tiger) and are less popular now because of the waning public acceptability of the word,”
Waning public acceptability of the word. This is what Mark’s referring to regarding growing up in the South.
It is ex post facto to penalize a person for using a word in the past at a time when it was socially acceptable relatively speaking per geography.
Mike,
It is a given that your primary evidence that Paula Deen is a racist is her use of the word “nigger” — just as the title of this post suggests. As such, you have held it out as a litmus test bootstrapping all your other conclusions.
The reason Gene, Mark and I have been pointing out the difference between the use of the word “nigger” with and without racist intent is because you and your cadre REFUSE to acknowledge any such distinction. Thus my use of the term ‘litmus test.’ The counter-arguments by Gene, Mark and myself are the objective evidence of your rigid position.
“Show I’ll send the challenge back. Show me where I said or implied that I adjudged people racists because they used the epithet “nigger” in their childhood.”
Can you read? Or don’t you ‘feel’ like it?
I said:
“I did not say you characterize children of the 40′s, 50′s and 60′s as racists. I used your litmus test for racism against you via reductio ad absurdum. You adopted the strict rules, and I simply applied them to a group of people who did use the word “nigger” in their life and yet no rational person would consider them racist; other than you by your rules. That’s a fair ball.”
And the only smug one here is you; by virtue of your delusion that you can dismiss an entire discipline of thought based on your ‘feelings.’ Philosophy and logic are the building blocks for that little thing called law; you know, that subject which forms the basis of this blog?
“It is a given that your primary evidence that Paula Deen is a racist is her use of the word “nigger”
Bob,
I don’t care what the posts’ title was. I didn’t call Paula Deen a racist because she used that word, I referred to a lot more than that. You would like to frame the discussion that way, just as Gene would like to frame it in judicial terms, because that represents your strongest case, though also a loser. Show me though where I ever framed it that way in my comments. You know you can’t.
“The reason Gene, Mark and I have been pointing out the difference between the use of the word “nigger” with and without racist intent is because you and your cadre REFUSE to acknowledge any such distinction. Thus my use of the term ‘litmus test.’ The counter-arguments by Gene, Mark and myself are the objective evidence of your rigid position.”
Bob, poppycock! Again this is the frame all of you use and it is not responsive to anything I or the others said. That none of you has once addressed exactly what we have been saying directly, you’re the ones with a rigid position
because you are incapable of seeing any other point then your own. This is frankly the worst job of logic from you that I’ve ever seen and I can only think some personal nerve has been touched and no dammit I would never call or imply that you are racist. However, I know nothing of your history so I can’t judge what personal pain such discussions bring to you.
An example of this is your example of “Eeeny, meeny, Miney, Moe…..” You presented your version as if it was typical of children all over. I’m older than you and I grew up in New York. I think Blouise is older than you and I think she grew up in the Mid West. Tony is probably younger than us and I think he grew up somewhere else. None of us heard the formulation you quote as common until we were adults, or do you think we’re lying to you. I take it that you and Mark grew up in Virginia, or at least the South and I would expect it was so common there that you would naturally think it universal, it wasn’t. you really need to assess what is personal about your argument and what is the stuff of reason, becvause I think you have them confused.
On the lighter side…
Hank Aaron Settles The Paula Deen Racism Debate (Sort Of)
Bron 1, June 28, 2013 at 3:32 pm
Gene H:
I dont know the answer to that question. Some words are just better left un-said.
The C word and the N word are 2 that would make the english language better if they were erased from the dictionary and I dont say that lightly. And I also understand the ramifications.
*****
They are definitely the top two on my list of words that are best left unsaid.
Mark: I always get angry with folks who aren’t intellectual honest like you. Call me crazy!
No, I think I will call you a liar, a sore loser, a person that cannot answer with reason so they resort to emotional name-calling and make false claims of intellectual dishonesty, a person that, analogous to a racist, made up their mind they were right and could never be wrong, damn any facts or reason.
Like I said, reason prevailed. Your distress at being on the wrong end of that is understandable.
Bob: Oops, sorry about that, my cut was from a previous comment. I meant to quote this line: Care to argue that my mother is a racist now for uttering those words as a child?
Bob, Esq: has said the N word in her life. That was a very large target for Jackson to hit.
I consider childhood a valid excuse, children are pre-rational, that is why we don’t let them control their own lives. I would argue, however, that the adults that taught her (and therefore condoned the use of) that word were likely racists, which was pretty common when my mother was a child.
Mike, Blouise: Same here, I was taught “Tiger.” I did not hear the original usage until I was past the age of using the rhyme at all.
Blouise: “Sorry Bob … nobody I knew was using the phrase “catch a n*igger by the toe” … fellow or tiger were the words we used”
“Older versions of this rhyme had the word nigger (instead of tiger) and are less popular now because of the waning public acceptability of the word,”
The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1951, 2nd edn., 1997), pp. 156-8.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eeny,_meeny,_miny,_moe
Sorry Blouise, this was the way my mother learned it while she was growing up.
Care to argue that my mother is a racist now for uttering those words as a child?
Bron: [Paula Deen] … has [probably] said the N word in her life. That was a very large target for Jackson to hit.
Except she referenced a very particular conversation about a wedding a few years ago, a conversation Paula Deen both confirms happened and confirms that the gist of that conversation was her desire to dress blacks like slaves, but she feared the media would be upset with her about doing that.
Ms. Jackson did not complain about general usage of the N-word, she complained about a specific usage about a specific topic recently enough that Deen remembers it happening, and I seem to recall she named another witness present besides herself.
Typically when people make things up to be damning statements, they insulate themselves from proof: The made up statement will be from a time and innocuous context the alleged speaker is unlikely to specifically remember, and the accuser is the only one that heard it, and the statement itself will be clear and damning, and often “in the voice” of the accuser instead of in the voice of the alleged speaker.
I think it takes skill to write realistic dialogue in the voice of a particular character; certainly a lot of beginning fiction writers and script writers exhibit the literary-deficit of all their characters sounding like either the same person or caricatures. I do not think Lisa Jackson is a professional writer, she is a restaurant manager, yet the statement she attributes to Paula Deen sounds (to my ear) like Paula Deen, as a fan of the Food Network I have heard Paula speak frequently and at length. Another amateurish writing malady is an improper understanding of the formulation of spoken English; but the statement alleged by Jackson does sound (to my ear) as realistically conversational.
My experience with liars makes me assign a much higher probability of truthfulness to Ms. Jackson than I would assign to Paula Deen.
That isn’t prejudice or prejudging, it is just what seems most plausible, particularly in light of the other behaviors Deen exhibits: Deen is dodging the questions by claiming amnesia, making excuses for actions she refuses to admit (her black kitchen help uses the word with each other), and making ludicrous assertions on the stand (she can’t tell, herself, if her use of the N word offends somebody — but she also knows she isn’t supposed to use it).
Mike,
You’re right about “catch a tiger by the toe” … that became popular with my childhood friends thanks to a gasoline company’s commercials “put a tiger in your tank”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kB5ROD4CGG8
Sorry Bob … nobody I knew was using the phrase “catch a n*igger by the toe” … fellow or tiger were the words we used
Well, we “opened up this quarrel between the present and the past,” maybe we can end it with this. Good job by all concerned;
A small interjection gentlemen, over the years I have noticed that when the argument morphs into a discussion of semantics, the one doing the semantic search is the loser.
Gene H:
I dont know the answer to that question. Some words are just better left un-said.
The C word and the N word are 2 that would make the english language better if they were erased from the dictionary and I dont say that lightly. And I also understand the ramifications.
Gene H:
“But can you call her racist without evidence as to the intent behind the usage, Bron?”
***************
Of course not. See Bob, Esq. supra.
Mike S:
“All in all though I must thank you for producing a guest blog that has engendered such a wonderful discussion. While I point out what I see as intemperance in your characterizations, none of it lacked civility and this thread shows we can discuss sensitive topics, that touch a nerve in each of us, in the calm civil manner that Jonathan Turley asks for. Well done, even if I disagree with you, this has been fun and never at any point aroused anger in me because of the quality of everyone’s dialogue.”
****************
You do that most every week. Just trying to keep up.
Nick,
To quote Bartles & James
Thank you for your support.
Juliet:
“Thank you, Mike. I’ve had my Internet chops busted by my better (and worse) than these.”
******************
That’s something we all can get behind.