Carmichael tackles N-word in sitcom
Comedian fought with NBC to have word aired as part of ‘deeper conversation’
The Carmichael Show is known for confronting controversial topics, so it’s not surprising that the NBC sitcom would dedicate an episode to the N-word and who has a right to say it. But it may have surprised viewers tuning in June 21, to hear the word aired six times — unedited — on broadcast television.
The Carmichael Show, now in its third season, is based on comedian and co-creator Jerrod Carmichael’s family. Wednesday’s episode found Jerrod (Carmichael), celebrating his mother Cynthia’s birthday, along with his girlfriend, Maxine (Amber Stevens West); brother Bobby (Get Out’s Lil Rel Howery); and father, Joe (David Alan Grier).
Jerrod secured a last-minute dinner reservation through Drew, a high school friend who co-owns the restaurant. When Jerrod thanked his friend for the favour, Drew, who is white, replied: “Anything for you my n--.”
Jerrod’s family was horrified, but Jerrod was nonchalant: “Drew is my friend, that’s just how we talk,” he said. His family members and girl- friend shared their own experiences with the word and their varying opinions on whether white people should be allowed to say it.
The Carmichael Show isn’t the first sitcom to tackle the N-word. ABC’s Blackish confronted varying opinions around who can say the word in a 2015 episode that found a young Jack Johnson innocently dropping the word during a Kanye West-inspired performance at his elementary school talent show. ABC bleeped each instance of the word. Creator Kenya Barris told Vulture he thought editing the slur offered viewers “an easier entry point.”
“Hearing it is a little bit hard,” Barris said. “The bleep, in a weird way, makes you hear it even louder. But it still allows you to get into the drama and the comedy of the scene without making you feel ostracized.”
The Blackish episode was inspired by Barris finding texts from his daughter’s white friends who used the N-word. Barris was horrified, but his daughter was used to hearing people of all races use the word. Similarly, Carmichael explained in a column for The Hollywood Reporter that his own fam- ily had varying opinions on who can say the N-word. His mother is opposed to anyone using the word, but his grandmother, who had lived through Jim Crow laws and the civil rights movement, “thought the word was fun.”
“My perspective is that I just don’t want us to be controlled by a word. I don’t want it to be used as a weapon. We have the power to dilute words and a lot of times, we use that in the wrong way. Donald Trump was called a racist and that should have been a strong accusation, but we use the word ‘racist’ so much. Can you imagine (then-U. S. president) Jimmy Carter being called a racist? That would have been a crazy New York Times cover story with every journalist trying to get to the bottom of what happened. Now that we use it so much it doesn’t mean what it did.
“That’s a negative way of doing that. I think a positive way is how my friends and I grew up saying (the N-word). So I don’t associate it with pain if I’m being truthful.”
Carmichael fought for the word to air unedited on NBC. In his Hollywood Reporter column, he wrote that “having the word itself said on the show came out of a deeper con- versation about do you feel beholden to these unspoken rules for being a black person, or being a woman or being gay or being whatever you are? It just naturally went to the N-word and the rules around it and that’s where it came from. Then we said to the network, ‘ We want to say it, but it has to go on air.’ ”
Carmichael wrote: “If you’re going to say it, you better have an intention behind saying it. People know the difference between you just saying something to get a rise of them and when you really just want to explore something.”