While I personally hold the belief that a word cannot be taboo or censored without it's context, and that unless you're using a racial slur as an offensive and derogatory term for a person of a particular ethnic group, you should not lose your job or face extremely harsh penalties, doesn't mean I'm particularly comfortable when white men use racial slurs for comedic effect. Let's be honest, Bill Maher and Louis CK are comedians by trade, they're entertainers, they get paid for what they do or say. By using racial slurs as punchlines, they are making off using racial slurs for laughs. Words that have history among people of colour are trivialized and then normalized, and of course this is to say the very least ethically dubious as well as morally questionable. I mean, if straight people using gay as a synonym for shitty bothers you, white comedians using nigger as a punchline should similarly bother you.
The truth is, that same joke could probably have worked just as well without resorting to a racial slur.
In Bill Maher's case, he made a joke saying that, in response to a joking job offer by a senator to "come work in the fields", Bill was more of a "house nigger".
Bill Maher could have said "house elf" and gotten away with not only a clever Harry Potter reference but also said the same thing and not have put his job and reputation on the line, so at the very least the word's use should be more carefully considered. Bill Maher especially didn't in that moment understand the gall and presumption it took for him as an white celebrity to compare himself to a black slave but you don't need to look far to figure that Bill Maher and Louis CK aren't people with explicit racial prejudices, and the use of these may arise from a more minor character flaw of being blunt and or brash rather than any major racial prejudices.
The concerning thing is when they do it, because they're such high profile figures, there's this message that goes to other comedians that may enable them to use racial slurs in similar ways.
The essence of it all I think comes back to that white men have a privilege black men and other people of colour don't, where they can use racial slurs without having it be something that's ever been used against them. I think because comedians in particular have to be pretty thick skinned because of hecklers, they don't necessarily understand the emotional blow they deal to the everyday person of colour by so frivolously using a racial slur in that manner.
It's unfortunately just something everyone in the world has to learn, and that's just how to be empathetic.
Bill Maher misspoke, and it was pretty bad. But he's not the only one to have done it. And I think he'll likely not come off with as heavy a penalty as he could if he held more republican views, we'd probably campaign harder for his removal from the air and he'd likely have been fired on the spot.
But we're willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, and I think that's a good thing. I'd actually argue that we should do that if a similar situation occurred to anyone else regardless of their political views.
I think we're at a point in time where we know that using a racial slur as a racial slur is a pretty awful and unacceptable thing to do. I'm not saying that we can never make a joke using the word nigger because then half my favourite comedians would have to half their sets. I do hope we can get to the point where we at least stop using racial slurs to get laughs when we don't have any right to use them.
But if you really need to use the word nigger, there are at least a couple creative solutions out there.
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