Ice Cube Confronts Bill Maher Over the N-Word: Sometimes you sound like a redneck trucker

Ice Cube Confronts Bill Maher Over the N-Word

A week after Bill Maher made headlines for using the n-word on his show “Real Time” he apologized again, but this time on air. The episode focused largely on a discussion about race. Guests included Georgetown University professor Michael Eric Dyson, producer/actor Ice Cube, David Gregory, David Jolly and Symone Sanders. Maher told Dyson,

I want you to school me. I did a bad thing. For black folks, that word — I don’t care who you are — has caused pain. I’m not here to do that … It doesn’t matter that it wasn’t said in malice; it wasn’t. It brought back pain to people.

Ice Cube took Maher to task, stating to him,

What made you think that it was cool to say that?

Though Cube accepted the apology, he still found felt Maher’s behavior problematic.

I still think you need to get to the root of the psyche because I think there’s a lot of guys out there who cross the line because they’re a little too familiar, or they think they’re too familiar. Or, guys that, you know, might have a black girlfriend or two that made them Kool-Aid every now and then, and then they think they can cross the line. And they can’t. You know, it’s a word that has been used against us. It’s like a knife, man. You can use it as a weapon or you can use it as a tool. It’s when you use it as a weapon against us, by white people, and we’re not going to let that happened again … because it’s not cool … That’s our word, and you can’t have it back.

He continued,

It’s not cool because when I hear my homie say it, it don’t feel like venom. When I hear a white person say it, it feel like that knife stabbing you even if they don’t mean to.

Here’s a clip of Cube saying Maher sounds like a ‘red neck trucker’.

Here’s the clip of Cube’s entire segment.

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Authored by: TJB Writer