Paula Deen Said What?

If Americans are suffering from an obesity epidemic, then Paula Deen could certainly be guilty of complicity. For starters, the recipes that she touts treat butter like it is the sixth basic food group. Her cooking shows continued to showcase her cooking style, which also often involve frying, salt, sugar and fatty meats, for three years after she was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes. Even when she finally disclosed this information she found a way to capitalize on the situation by endorsing a drug that helps treat the disease, but this did not seem to interfere with her ability to continue building her empire. Ironically, what may be her final undoing will not be what she put into her mouth (or ours), but what came out of it.

Being subjected to a legal deposition is a surreal experience, especially when you are a party to the proceedings. As you answer each of the questions you know that they are specifically designed to back up the road map that the opposing lawyer knows he will follow in court. It is not enough to just tell the truth. Like a good chess player you must always be thinking several steps ahead and always on the lookout for a gotcha moment.

When Deen answered “Yes, of course” to the question “Have you ever used the N word yourself,” she ignited the firestorm that would eventually end her contract with the Food Network as well as endorsements and other business deals with Smithfield Foods, Sears and Kmart, Wal-mart, Walgreens, Target, QVC, J. C. Penney, Home Depot, Ceasars Entertainment and Novo Nordisk. My guess is that Paula Deen would not be ranked as a master level chess player. The opposing lawyer knew when formulating the question that there are not many people who could truthfully answer “no,” but Deen’s response did not provide any nuance. In our politically correct society an answer like that is supposed to be coupled with remorse.

To be fair, it is possible that Deen did not initially understand the gravity of the situation. The transcript makes it quite clear that she knows “that's just not a word that we use as time has gone on. Things have changed since the '60s in the south.” What she did not seem to realize that the n-word is “one of the most notorious words in American culture.” This is a word that even Eminem will avoid using. In the song “Criminal” he gives Lenny Bruce a run for his money, lets loose offensive slang for every segment of the LGBT community, insults televangelists, graphically describes the Lewinsky scandal and makes light of gun violence. Still the line “than you’d wanna f--- me up for saying the word …” is left trailing. The last word of the line that precedes it is “quicker.”

Confusion over this word would be understandable as no other word seems to change meaning so much depending on the context in which it is used. When coming out of the mouth of a skinhead it is shorthand for all the racial hatred that has stained our country’s history, the verbal equivalent of a lynching. It is not a verb, but can still be conjugated by replacing the “er” for an “a.” In this form the “word can mean friend,” especially between African-Americans. Only Paula Deen knows what is in her heart, but I suspect that her use fell somewhere in between.

We are taught in elementary school that “sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can never hurt me,” but anyone who has been verbally bullied knows that this is a false lesson. Names can hurt a lot. Before the O.J. Simpson trial the n-word was just one of many hate terms that these bullies had in their arsenal. However, the coverage of Detective Mark Fuhrman’s taped racial tyrades elevated the infamy of this word. It was decided at this time that this word was so bad the euphemism “n-word” had to be created. Never mind that the tape confirmed the worst suspicions of many in the community about systemic racism in the actions of the Los Angeles Police Department, the media had a way to clean up the language for polite company.

Perhaps this explains why little of the outcry against Paula Deen seems to be coming from the black community. It is a little hard to get worked up about a sixty-plus Southern woman admitting to using racial epithets during her lifetime in a world where black teenagers can be shot when returning from the convenience store. George Zimmerman may have seen the boogeyman in every young black man that he saw walking in “his” neighborhood, but the transcripts of his numerous 911 calls do not show him using the n-word. In my opinion, those who hide their hatred are more dangerous than those who wear their racism on their sleeves.

This same line of reasoning guides my thinking on efforts to sanitize classic books such as “Huckleberry Finn,” “To Kill a Mockingbird” or “Of Mice and Men” to spare “the reader from a racial slur that never seems to lose its vitriol.” As difficult as it may be for a modern reader to see the n-word repeatedly in these works they are authentic representations of a time period. African-Americans who lived in those times were subjected to the actions of men who uttered these words. It is a reminder of how far our society has come and what happens when hatred is allowed to rule.

Anthony Weiner and Mark Sanford are proof that comebacks are possible in modern day America and it is possible that Paula Deen has not cooked her last butter filled recipe. Hopefully, any attempted rehabilitation of her reputation will include a meaningful conversation on race relations. A little less divisiveness would be good for our country.

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A complete archive of Carl’s weekly blogs can be found at on the Northridge Patch.