‘Niggers all work on de Mississippi –
Niggers all work while de white man play . . .’
Every time there’s a new production of Jerome Kern’s Show Boat, there has to be a production
meeting about whether those lines (the originals) should be sung, or whether
they should be changed (I’ve heard ‘niggers’ change to ‘darkies’ – surely not
much difference? – and ‘poor folk’!) The answer is a no-brainer: of course the
original text should be kept – the show is a classic and shouldn’t be messed
about with. Neither should there be any offence – the ‘n’-word (as everyone now
has to call it) was common parlance in southern states of America in the early 20th century, and nobody at the time of the play would
have used any word. There should be no hesitation in printing or saying it if
one’s using it properly; using it as an insult is another matter. It’s a
question of usage.
The current scandal in Australia is about the Professor of
Poetry at the university, who in an email to a close friend used a number of
highly offensive terms referring to women and aborigines. He claims that they
were used in a ‘playful’ way, and that he and his friend had a long-running competition as to who could be most offensive.
I have to say the email didn’t read that way; it seems rather to reveal the
inner sensibilities of a man one wouldn’t really want to know. But that’s
perhaps beside the point, which is: shouldn't everyone have the right to write things in private without the risk of someone
making the words public? I dare say almost everyone has at some time said or
written words which they would not like to be generally repeated – an opinion
about a friend, for instance. I keep a journal: I certainly wouldn’t like some
passages in it to be printed and publicised without my permission. Clearly
there must be exceptions: if someone had captured a letter from Napoleon
revealing his plans for a battle, one would expect them to have been made known; if
someone had actually managed to get hold of a letter from Himmler detailing his
plans for the Final Solution, it would have been criminal not to publish it.
But in general, surely everyone has a
right to withhold their words, their private opinions, from the public without
the fear that some sly interloper will publish them?
It’s never going to be possible for anyone to be completely
private again, it seems. Broadcasters are told never to say anything in a
studio, even with the microphone turned off, which they wouldn’t say with it turned
on. To be completely safe, we will have to take the same view of an email. Won’t
we?
