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Piers Morgan Uses Brutal Slave Whipping Analogy in Treatise Against the ‘N-Word’

By Matt WilsteinNov 11th, 2014, 1:57 pm


At 7:14 p.m. London time Monday night, Piers Morgan tweeted this:

Over the last nearly 24 hours, the former CNN host-turned-Daily Mail columnist has been in near-constant battle with his Twitter followers over a piece he wrote about black Americans and the “n-word.” The gist of Morgan’s piece is that if the “n-word,” or “n****r” as it is written at the top of the column, is going to go away, black people will have to “kill it themselves.”

But it is this passage, which deliberately uses the violent imagery of slavery, that has most of his critics expressing their outrage on social media:

Yet far from receding in society, it’s spreading; out of the once clearly defined confines of private usage in the black community, into the public hallways of every school in America.

This has to be wrong, doesn’t it?

Better, surely, to have it expunged completely. Eradicated, obliterated, tied to a literary post and whipped into such brutal submission that it never rears its vicious head again.

Dutifully, Morgan has responded directly to as many of his critics as possible on Twitter, managing to fan the flames — and no doubt drive more traffic to his article — rather than tamp down the furor. Here is a small sample of what he has been up to since yesterday:

And on and on and on…

In some ways, Morgan’s original controversial statements and subsequently incredulous reaction to the inevitable backlash feel similar to what happened after he had transgender activist Janet Mock on his show with the words “was a boy until age 18” appearing below her image. After Mock criticized the way he “sensationalized” their interview, Morgan went on another Twitter rant, outraged that anyone could view him as “transphobic.” When she returned the next night, he complained to her about the “abuse” he received from the LGBT community, despite the long-time support he has shown them

As in that case, perhaps Morgan does not realize that even though he denounces the “n-word” as a “grotesque, odious, evil stain on the English language” that he “would never use,” it is still possible for some in the black community to find offense in the way he has chosen to convey that point.

Either way, he seems to have achieved his desired result:

[Photo via CNN]

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