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NEW YORK (AP) -- While music shopping one day, author Stanley Crouch heard a group of people behind him toss the N-word around in casual conversation -- with familiarity, not contempt.
Annoyed, he turned around to see four or five friends dressed in baggy shirts, huge pants nearly falling off and baseball caps turned backward.
They were white.
"I said to myself, 'Something's not correct at this moment," Crouch recalls in "The N Word," a documentary that doubles as a social history and proof of the dynamic, evolutionary force of language.
The film premieres Sunday on Trio at 9 p.m. EDT/PDT, the centerpiece of a week where the cable channel hands over programming to Chuck D, leader of the groundbreaking rap group Public Enemy and a radio host on the liberal Air America network.
At his behest, Trio will also air a documentary about the 1990s rap wars, "Biggie & Tupac," a Public Enemy concert special and the movies "A Rage in Harlem," "Cooley High" and "Nothing But a Man."
"The N Word" also prominently features Chuck, a New Yorker filmed incongruously with palm trees in the background.
For many blacks, the N-word can never be anything other than a slur. Others believe that appropriating the word is like defusing a bomb. Some young whites are ignorant of the word's history and, hearing it on their favorite rap songs, even feel it's fashionable.
Chuck leaves no doubt where he stands. "Us accepting it is like somebody catching garbage and loving it," he said in the film.
In an interview with The Associated Press, he said white people have used the word with him as a term of affection, or to show they're cool.
"They don't know any better," he said. "I have to be aware of their intentions and put them in their place. It's like somebody throwing a rock at you. Are you going to sit there and have someone throw a rock at you and you're not going to say anything?"
If Crouch had heard white people use the word in the same store 40 years ago -- if he'd even be welcomed there to shop -- there's no doubt malice would be intended.
Several black celebrities are asked, in the documentary, the first time the word was used against them. Chris Rock remembers instantly the second-grade setting, the little girl's name.
The word's origins are traced back to the 17th century. Ugly footage from the 1950s and 1960s shows whites using the word to make blacks appear subhuman.
Fast-forward to the 1970s, and the peak of Richard Pryor's career. The comedian uses the word liberally in his routines.
Pryor's use of the word gave some blacks a sense of empowerment. "No one can use the word more beautifully than Richard Pryor," Whoopi Goldberg said.
But Alvin Poussaint, an associate dean at Harvard University, said there have always been some whites who enjoy watching blacks make fun of each other.
"I don't know if we gained any respect from the white community," Poussaint said. "In fact, probably the opposite."
Less remembered is that near the end of his performing days, Pryor renounced use of the word.
In the early 1990s, the word became commonplace in rap songs. Chuck laments that it was only a few years between Public Enemy's "Fight the Power" and Snoop Dogg's "Gin and Juice." He lays more blame on music executives for encouraging its use than on the artists themselves.
Ice Cube, formerly of the rap group NWA, said that to him, the word has been used so much it doesn't affect him at all.
"We've taken this word that's been a burden to us, we've been able to digest it and spit it back out as a badge of honor, as defiance," he explained in the film.
Writer-director Todd Williams unearthed some priceless footage of the end result of the N-word being used repeatedly in pop culture, with Japanese actors using the word over and over in a television comedy skit.
Stripped of context, what did the word mean?
Any moral confusion over the word's impact today isn't cleared up by the film.
"I have a psychological problem with our sanitizing the word," former presidential candidate Al Sharpton told AP. "I do understand these young people who feel they are taking a negative and using it as a hammer back. The ultimate comeback is to take a word that's an insult and use it as defiance.
"But on the other level, are you giving license to anyone to use it and take away the ugly history of how the word was used for generations?"
Chuck and Crouch both have no tolerance for debate. They compare it to other derogatory terms such as any number of ethnic slurs that still sting when used.
Chuck averred that the N-word "is not a word of love. It's a word of hatred that is thrust upon us."
NEW YORK (AP) -- While music shopping one day, author Stanley Crouch heard a group of people behind him toss the N-word around in casual conversation -- with familiarity, not contempt.
Annoyed, he turned around to see four or five friends dressed in baggy shirts, huge pants nearly falling off and baseball caps turned backward.
They were white.
"I said to myself, 'Something's not correct at this moment," Crouch recalls in "The N Word," a documentary that doubles as a social history and proof of the dynamic, evolutionary force of language.
The film premieres Sunday on Trio at 9 p.m. EDT/PDT, the centerpiece of a week where the cable channel hands over programming to Chuck D, leader of the groundbreaking rap group Public Enemy and a radio host on the liberal Air America network.
At his behest, Trio will also air a documentary about the 1990s rap wars, "Biggie & Tupac," a Public Enemy concert special and the movies "A Rage in Harlem," "Cooley High" and "Nothing But a Man."
"The N Word" also prominently features Chuck, a New Yorker filmed incongruously with palm trees in the background.
For many blacks, the N-word can never be anything other than a slur. Others believe that appropriating the word is like defusing a bomb. Some young whites are ignorant of the word's history and, hearing it on their favorite rap songs, even feel it's fashionable.
Chuck leaves no doubt where he stands. "Us accepting it is like somebody catching garbage and loving it," he said in the film.
In an interview with The Associated Press, he said white people have used the word with him as a term of affection, or to show they're cool.
"They don't know any better," he said. "I have to be aware of their intentions and put them in their place. It's like somebody throwing a rock at you. Are you going to sit there and have someone throw a rock at you and you're not going to say anything?"
If Crouch had heard white people use the word in the same store 40 years ago -- if he'd even be welcomed there to shop -- there's no doubt malice would be intended.
Several black celebrities are asked, in the documentary, the first time the word was used against them. Chris Rock remembers instantly the second-grade setting, the little girl's name.
The word's origins are traced back to the 17th century. Ugly footage from the 1950s and 1960s shows whites using the word to make blacks appear subhuman.
Fast-forward to the 1970s, and the peak of Richard Pryor's career. The comedian uses the word liberally in his routines.
Pryor's use of the word gave some blacks a sense of empowerment. "No one can use the word more beautifully than Richard Pryor," Whoopi Goldberg said.
But Alvin Poussaint, an associate dean at Harvard University, said there have always been some whites who enjoy watching blacks make fun of each other.
"I don't know if we gained any respect from the white community," Poussaint said. "In fact, probably the opposite."
Less remembered is that near the end of his performing days, Pryor renounced use of the word.
In the early 1990s, the word became commonplace in rap songs. Chuck laments that it was only a few years between Public Enemy's "Fight the Power" and Snoop Dogg's "Gin and Juice." He lays more blame on music executives for encouraging its use than on the artists themselves.
Ice Cube, formerly of the rap group NWA, said that to him, the word has been used so much it doesn't affect him at all.
"We've taken this word that's been a burden to us, we've been able to digest it and spit it back out as a badge of honor, as defiance," he explained in the film.
Writer-director Todd Williams unearthed some priceless footage of the end result of the N-word being used repeatedly in pop culture, with Japanese actors using the word over and over in a television comedy skit.
Stripped of context, what did the word mean?
Any moral confusion over the word's impact today isn't cleared up by the film.
"I have a psychological problem with our sanitizing the word," former presidential candidate Al Sharpton told AP. "I do understand these young people who feel they are taking a negative and using it as a hammer back. The ultimate comeback is to take a word that's an insult and use it as defiance.
"But on the other level, are you giving license to anyone to use it and take away the ugly history of how the word was used for generations?"
Chuck and Crouch both have no tolerance for debate. They compare it to other derogatory terms such as any number of ethnic slurs that still sting when used.
Chuck averred that the N-word "is not a word of love. It's a word of hatred that is thrust upon us."
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