Letters to the culture Editor

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Dear culture editor,

My name is Fred Arlington-Sander and I cannot stress enough that I am white. On July 9, 2007, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) held a funeral for the “N-word,” which I am not allowed to say. I chose to address the issue immediately in July, but you advised me that my comments were “raving and offensive” and you recommended that to avoid racial conflict and potential legal action I should take a six-month “cool-off” period, as you put it. Now that I have had time to collect my thoughts, I will try to put forth my propositions as rationally as possible. This topic may seem like “old hat,” but there are still some unresolved issues.

I believe in racial symmetry and there is a term which affects all of us whites and alienates us from our heritage. This word even made it onto network television, a feat which can hardly be said of the N-word. Even though it predates the Civil Rights movement, this term was adopted to complete the antinomy to the N-word. Yet now that the one word has been declared dead, the other lies in a state of unopposed existence, without an opposite to countermand it. It is my intention that we white folk should hold a funeral for the word “honky.” I have watched the proceedings of the NAACP funeral on YouTube.com and I feel I can replicate that powerful feeling symmetrically. I have already composed an impromptu eulogy for “honky,” which has been recorded onto a cassette tape and enclosed in an envelope with this letter. I plan to recite it at the proposed funeral with some of the kinks worked out. Perhaps I should have prepared a little more before recording it.

Thank you for your time,

Fred Arlington-Sander

Below is a copy of Mr. Arlington-Sanders’ eulogy, transcribed from Side B of the cassette. Side A contains The Eurythmics Ultimate Collection, from “I’ve Got a Life” to “Thorn in My Side.” Upon realizing this, Mr. Arlington-Sander has requested the tape back.

Mr. S-A: My fellow Caucasians, and umm . . . I guess anyone else that wants to listen. George Jefferson used it. That’s not right. He used it on TV. I never heard the N-word on TV. Oh, OK, that’s actually not where I wanted to start. Umm, OK, we don’t know where he was born. He could have been born in the slaughterhouses of Chicago, to refer to people of East-Central European origin, or he may not have. It’s not entirely clear, but in any case, he was born out of malice for us.

So here we are to mourn him, well, not exactly mourn him, but put him to rest. I guess it might have been more effective if we symbolically put him in a rest home or something. I mean, at a funeral people usually remember the deceased, and we don’t exactly want to remember this, do we? It’s not like, “Hey, remember that time I used ‘honky’?” We don’t want that. But it’s too late, he’s dead. Dead as that other word, anyway. How dead can a word really be? I mean, people still learn Latin and they say that’s a dead language. You can’t just say a word is dead and then expect people to respect it. No, but this word is dead. I know because I killed it. Remember when you overused a joke or something and then people would say you “killed it”? Maybe if we overuse it, it will die.

No, let’s just stick to the original, hang on [indistinct] I told you, I’d put my laundry basket outside my door!

All right, so let’s stop using it. We won’t talk about honky-tonk music anymore and we definitely won’t listen to “Honky Cat” by Elton John. I guess I shouldn’t be using the word I’m using to eulogize it, should I? Oh well, the NAACP got away with it. We won’t say “honky” anymore . . . starting now. Tell everyone else.