Maybe City Council members should practice what they preach.
At a hearing yesterday on a resolution to discourage the use of the n-word, the racially offensive term was heard more times than on a Kanye West album.
The spewing of the slur nearly 50 times in less than two hours angered the anti-n-word measure’s sponsor, Councilman Leroy Comrie (D-Queens).
“If I had been the chair, I would have asked them not to use the word,” Comrie told The Post afterward. “I was not pleased.”
Marcia Harris, founder of the Harlem-based Ban the N-Word Movement, got the ball rolling with a passionate lecture on the word’s origins – that dropped the n-bomb a staggering 19 times.
“All of the other things will be for naught if, at the core, you see yourself and others who look like you as a n- – – – -, a word used to dehumanize a living, thinking human being,” she said during the hearing held by the council’s Civil Rights Committee.
The campaign to stop the use of the slur is aimed largely at young whites and blacks who aren’t aware of the term’s historical significance or don’t care. The measure, approved by the committee, will be taken up by the full council tomorrow.
Tim Gaylord, a New Jersey resident who told lawmakers he was instrumental in getting a similar measure passed in Irvington, N.J., used the word 10 times in his testimony.
He said using the word makes people think about blacks in a negative way.
“Fifty-thousand black people murdered and ain’t nobody saying anything about it. Why?” he asked. “It’s because it’s just n- – – – -s.”
Even some council members didn’t bother with euphemisms to make their points while sporting pins with a slash over the letter “N.”
Mike Nelson (D-Brooklyn), who was the only white person to use the word at the hearing, described a “sickening, scary, depressing” date he had in the 1960s while serving in the Air Force in Arkansas.
When he grimaced after his date used the n-word twice, he said, she told him, “Well, obviously you don’t like what I’m saying. Well, they may be Negroes to y’all, but they’re n- – – – -s to me.”
The chair of the council committee, Larry Seabrook (D-Bronx), cited two books he’d read: “N- – – – -,” by Dick Gregory and “Die N- – – – – Die,” by Rap Brown, and complained about people who’ve used the word in print over the years and made money.
“I grew up in a segregated society, and I thought that was my first name by some people, so I think historically we have to look at this,” Seabrook said.
He said he was reminded of a news story about a cop who, in arresting an Orthodox Jew in Brooklyn, said, ” ‘We’re going to treat you like a n- – – – -.’ Then I realized that it was more than a color, it was treatment.”
Some people at the hearing carefully avoided saying the word, including Atlanta-based lawyer Roy Miller, who got the word stricken from Funk & Wagnall’s dictionary, and Queens Borough President Helen Marshall
“It’s like throwing rocks into a crowd, and some of those rocks hit little children who can never be an n-word,” Miller said, using the euphemism.