Shhh, Don't Say Anything

'Boondocks' steps over line in its treatment of King

The rift between Al Sharpton and black cartoonist Aaron McGruder has been festering for a couple of weeks. It erupted shortly after the Cartoon Network aired a controversial episode of the animated series The Boondocks on Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday.

In that show, King is depicted as having survived the shooting that took his life in 1968. Instead of dying, the civil rights leader slipped into a coma from which he recently emerged. Standing at a podium to address a room full of blacks, King is shocked by what he sees.

As the music blares, fistfights break out, some people swill liquor while others engage in sexually explicit dancing. When his calm attempt to get their attention is ignored, King blurts out: "Will you ignorant niggers please shut the hell up?"

Then the civil rights icon tells his audience how disappointed he is with their behavior. "I had a dream once," the fictional King says. "It was a dream that little black boys and little black girls would drink from the river of prosperity, freed from the thirst of oppression. But lo and behold, some four decades later, what have I found but a bunch of trifling, shiftless, good-for-nothing niggers."

This is followed by King's recital of a litany of problems and failings of blacks that is laced throughout with the n-word.

McGruder defends show

On Nightline the following day, McGruder defended the show, saying "it's kind of our job to be out there on the edge." Sharpton didn't agree. He demanded an apology from the Cartoon Network. He didn't get it. In fact, shortly after the King show aired, the cable network renewed The Boondocks for a second season. *snip*

McGruder makes a good point when his cartoon character talks about the failings of some blacks to live up to King's dream. But while I still think McGruder is a genius, I believe he went too far in this episode. By having King make such flagrant public use of a word that his cartoon character describes as "the ugliest word in the English
language," McGruder pushes the slain civil rights leader into the swamp of self-loathing speech.

That's a dangerous gambit, given the racially mixed audience to which his show plays. Some people might get the point he's trying to make. I fear, however, that most will not see - or hear - anything beyond King repeatedly calling his people "niggers."

Do I like the use of that word? No. However, if a black man can't make this statement, who can?

This smells to me like the same argument used against Bill Cosby when he spoke out against the problems he saw in the black community. That bastard, he told the truth in public, oooohhhh, how dare he?

The person who will be most effective speaking anto the heart of any community, is a member of that community. And that individual will speak the language of that community.

Considering the number of times I have heard black folk use the "N" word amongst themselves, it seems a little strange that anyone would be upset that a boundaries pushing black cartoonist be would called on the carpet for doing what the vast majority of his peers do.

Boondocks
MLK