Renault-ver and Out

Renault has decided to pull the "N-word" advertisement I wrote about in Tuesday's blog posting. This is the statement the company's U.K. office sent me today:

"The latest press and radio ad campaign from Renault UK has been created with a simple game of Yes/No as its theme. The aim of the campaign is to promote Renault UK's unbelievable offers over the next 10 days, which are so good it will be very difficult for customers to get a dealer to say 'No'. The 'N' word headline is one of three print advertisements that are complemented by three radio commercials explaining the game and Renault's offers. Any misunderstanding of the 'N' word is totally unintentional. However, this specific print advertisement will be removed with immediate effect, so as not to cause any offence. The other advertisements in the series do not include an 'N' word reference."

So, the ad in question was pulled. Two other print ads will continue, headlined: "We Don't Have a Swear Box, We Have a 'No' Box" and "For 10 Days, the Word 'No' Does Not Exist."

When I asked Renault UK press officer Mike Gale what exactly the N-word in question was in the ad that caught my eye--"For 10 Days, We Can't Use the 'N' Word"--he said it was "no....That's obviously what it means." When I asked whether most people in Britain would think that "the 'N'-word" means "no," he said, "I wouldn't know, to be perfectly honest."

There is a great deal of debate about the N-word (and by that I mean the six-letter one, not the two-letter one). Originally a racist epithet, it's now often bandied about by hip-hop artists and others who see it almost as a term of endearment or fraternity. Activist Dick Gregory used it as the title of his autobiography. Its usage has become a subject of serious scholarly attention (as in this book by my former Washington Post colleague Jabari Asim, and this one by Harvard Law professor Randall Kennedy). There's also a movement to abolish the N-word.

That gets too close for censorship for me. "Huckleberry Finn" wouldn't be as moving or illuminating without it. My objection to the Renault ad is that the advertising copywriters were playing with something too charged and dangerous for a flip newspaper ad. I hope I'm not sounding overly politically-correct, starting us on a slippery slope where soon not only shouldn't we say the real N-word but we shouldn't even say "the N-word."

Do I believe they really had no idea that using the expression "the N-word" might cause some readers to think they were referring to what Kennedy calls the "paradigmatic" racial slur in the English language? What do you think? But even giving them the benefit of the doubt, they should have known. They have led sheltered lives indeed if the thought never occurred to them.

I mean, give me an F-wording break. And by that I mean...well, you know what I mean, don't you?

Doug Wilder World Tour '07

Guess who I met last night? I guess it's not much of a challenge, given that his name's in the headline and there's a photo of him right here. That's right, L. Douglas Wilder, former governor of Virginia and current mayor of Richmond. He's on some sort of European tour with folks from Virginia Commonwealth University, where he teaches a class. Wilder spoke at Oxford's Harris Manchester College on the issue of race in America.

It's a subject that fascinates the British, who marvel that some of the same men who could pen the gloriously self-evident phrase "all men are created equal" could also own men, women and children they considered a little less equal. Wilder talked about fighting to keep Koreans free during the Korean War then returning home to a country where he wasn't totally free. He became a lawyer not expecting to be a politician. But a politician is what he became, the first African American state senator since Reconstruction and the country's first elected black governor.

His speech was not a detailed lecture, but an informal survey of 200 years of race relations in the U.S., delivered with a seasoned politician's smooth deployment of the telling anecdote. At the end he answered questions, including:

On gerrymandered political districts: Wilder made no apologies for his role in redrawing Virginia congressional districts so African American candidates would have a better chance of winning office. "Let me plead guilty," he said.

On the presidential race: Wilder thinks America might be ready for its first black president or its first female president. "When the thing is right, the time is right. People are always ahead of their leaders."

On the Democrats' chances for retaking the White House: Not a sure thing by any means, especially if they can't differentiate themselves enough from the Republicans. If a Giuliani or a Romney is elected, it will be "because the Democrats lost, not because the Republicans won."

On the war in Iraq: "It's very simple. You end it. Out. Fini. Over." Each service member's death, Wilder said, "diminishes us all.... I think you know where I stand on that issue."

On campaigning in the wilds of Southwest Virginia: Wilder said that his campaign to be Virginia's lieutenant governor took him to parts of the state he'd never visited before, rural mountain hamlets where, it was thought, a black man had no sense being. He would stop and shake every hand at every country store ("You can't go to one country store and not go to all of them," he said). Sitting on the barrel near the door of one, eyeing Wilder with a wary skepticism, was a white man in bib overalls, a bandanna tied around his neck, tobacco juice leaking from the corner of his mouth: the last unshaken hand in the room.

"I'd like to shake your hand," said Wilder. "I thought you might," said the man, who then added, "I got a question for you. What do you think about abortion?"

Wilder thought to himself, "I almost made it out of here," then launched into his "Jeffersonian" explanation for supporting Roe vs. Wade: The government has no right to interfere in personal decisions. The fellow piped up: "It's not a man's business anyway."

Wilder's point: "You can't judge a person by what they look like."

Renault Ad Update
Still no word from ad agency Publicis about Renault's clumsily insensitive "N-word" newspaper ad. As commenters on the post have pointed out, there was an N-word flap in Britain this year, when a white contestant on the reality show "Big Brother" was tossed after using the epithet.

I did speak to a person in the Guardian's ad department who said the advertiser was "mortified" and didn't think the ad would be taken that way.

Renault & Racism: Just Say 'No'

Here's the headline on an ad for French automaker Renault on Page 10 of today's Guardian: "FOR TEN DAYS, WE CAN'T USE THE 'N' WORD."

There are plenty of words that begin with the letter "n" but there's only one "n-word." I don't have to spell it out, right? It's an ugly racial epithet the utterance of which will not endear you to anyone with an ounce of sensitivity. Of course, Renault would never use that word. So what n-word do they mean? Here's the complete text of the ad:

No. There, we said it
But that's the last time you'll hear it for a few days.
Between the 9th and the 18th of November,
we've instructed all our dealers not to use the 'n' word.
With unprecedented deals across the range, we're just going
to keep saying yes.
Visit renault.co.uk for details of your local Renault showroom
and for a precious few days, see if you can get us to utter
that naughty little word.

Ha ha! Renault and its advertising agency, Publicis, are just having a little fun. They want you to think they're referring to that n-word. They want you to experience a wicked (a naughty) little frisson. We were thinking they meant the n-word that white-sheeted Klansmen used to shout before stringing someone up from a tree in the Deep South, the n-word that skinheads scream before kicking some poor guy's teeth in (or worse). But the joke's on us. They actually meant the word "no."

I had several questions:
Is it wise to suggest that except for 10 days in November Renault dealers have a hard time not saying that word?
Will they go back to saying it on Nov. 19th?
And what is this ad doing in the Guardian, the most self-consciously liberal and annoyingly PC newspaper in the land?

I have been told by some English friends that Britain is not as racist as the United States, not as segregated or race-obsessed. It's true that racism is America's great shame, the issue that has split the country since it was founded. Even today we don't necessarily deal with race and discrimination in the healthiest of ways. But I don't think a U.S. ad agency would bandy about race-related expressions in an effort to shift a few hatchbacks.

And the U.K. isn't exactly a color-blind society. Recently a Conservative candidate named Nigel Hastilow resigned after suggesting that Enoch Powell, Britain's great race-baiting rhetoritician, was correct on the subject of immigration.

I suppose racism is something we each confront in our own ways, but this ad just strikes me as the b-word: bad.

I have calls in to both Publicis, Renault's agency, and the Guardian. If they call back, I'll update with their points of view.

Left Holding the Bag
According to the Guardian, London may tax or ban plastic shopping bags, concerned about their environmental impact. It's already hard to get the bags in Oxford: If you ask for one at the shops, instead of using a reusable, carbon-neutral, handmade-by-Bangladeshi-lesbians burlap sack, people look at you as if you've just poured crude oil on a baby seal.

The unintended consequence of these noble efforts is the hardship a bag ban would put on dog owners such as myself. Our dog has a two-bag-a-day habit, if you know what I mean. Plastic shopping bags are the perfect poop-disposal mechanism. Please don't tell me I'm going to have start using reusable burlap bags for that.

Jesus Is Just All Right With Me...
The Oxford Mail today reports that local veterans were upset that more than half of the city's 48 councillors didn't show up for Sunday's Remembrance Day ceremonies--the British equivalent of Memorial Day. Bad form, surely, but one detail in the article clanged with me. In the story, a Col. Chris Keeble is referred to as a "devout Christian." The same language is used in an editorial elsewhere in the paper: "We could not agree more with the thoughts of Col. Chris Keeble--a devout Christian--who negotiated the surrender of Argentinian troops at the Battle of Goose Green in the Falklands War in 1982."

I'm not sure what that fact signifies or why it's worthy of mention. What makes a person cross the line from "a Christian" to "a devout Christian"? And how far do you have to go before you arrive at "a fanatical Christian"?

And while I'm piling on the Oxford Mail, I was disappointed by a detail missing from a story about a pair of local musicians auditioning for a TV talent show. Wende Blowfield said she and Brian Staton auditioned for "Britain's Got Talent" as a way of showing "her three disabled children...that anything can be achieved if you put your mind to it."

A worthy sentiment, but what did Anton Chekhov say? A loaded gun seen in Act One has to go off in Act Three? Nowhere do we learn what the Blowfield children's disabilities are. I don't want to be morbid but if you're gonna mention it, explain it.