Bad Words: Hearing "N________r" in a Hip SF Restaurant

A letter written recently to a San Francisco restaurant:

January 3, 2010

Dear _________ Owners:

I enjoyed a wonderful meal at [your restaurant] on the night of January 1st, but it was marred by what I thought was an irresponsible music choice. My friend and I were eating dinner and suddenly the hip hop that we weren’t paying that much attention to was littered with “n____r” throughout.

Now, I like some hip hop; I have about 20 artists on my iTunes. I know “n_______r” can be heard in a lot of hip hop. I know that some will argue that some African-Americans have appropriated the term for their own purposes. But there are other African-Americans who take issue with that strategy.

I also know that [the restaurant] was filled with white people that night. I certainly didn’t see any African-Americans. Certainly didn’t see any in the kitchen.

Hip-hop littered with “n________r” is problematic for me. So, yeah, I don’t play it and I don’t have to go where it’s played. And, no, I didn’t say anything to anyone at [the restaurant] in the middle of my meal. I knew I’d need time to explain myself and your hard-working staff has a lot going on.

But I’d argue that choosing this particular hip hop artist (I don’t know who it was) is problematic for me in that setting and it might be for you, too. You might argue that a place like [your sophisticated restaurant] doesn’t cater to racists, that your customers and staff can contextualize the “n__________r” they hear repeatedly in the music. I wouldn’t be so sure. By playing this music in your restaurant, you surely help to normalize the use of the word for those less sophisticated, those not very well versed in history. And those people are everywhere, even in the uber-hip Mission.

You might argue that white teenage boys are the biggest market for hip hop so the artist must know that this music will be played, quite often, in predominantly white settings. Yes, that is certainly true, but I think that artist decision is quite probably market driven, in any event irresponsible, and I think that for 4 minutes or so [your restaurant] was facilitating that irresponsible decision and thus making its own irresponsible decision.

The lamest argument I sometimes hear is, “That’s just how we talk to one another.” Language is powerful and it’s especially powerful when we think it’s not. The nursery rhyme is wrong: names do hurt.


After the Great Migration, African-American men in northern cities would greet each other by saying “man” as in, “How’s it going, man?” They chose “man” because they were suddenly surrounded by men like themselves who had escaped the American South where black men were called “boy” and “n_____r” – a word I can’t even bring myself to write much less have amplified in any space filled with strangers. To my ear, “man” celebrates the dignity of being human. “N_____r,” despite the effort to take it and thus declaw it, is a sad replacement.

Should I, a white guy, tell African-Americans how to communicate with one another? That’s not really the question. The real question is whether I want to be complicit in the dissemination, no matter what the intent, of a disgraceful term? And how much more pronounced is this issue if the intent of the artist is mostly market driven?

You’ll note that I have not expressed an objection to how often the terms “fuck” and “motherfucker” occurred in the hip hop selection that evening. This coarsens the setting, but I fear I’ve grown inured to these terms. “N_______r” is more profound, weighed down by historical baggage, and requires, at the very least, a conscious decision and I would encourage you to decide against its dissemination in your otherwise wonderful restaurant.

Thanks for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,



Greg Monfils


I received a call 2 days after sending the letter. The management and staff of the restaurant read the letter and agreed. I was invited to call the executive chef which I did. He apologized and I thanked him for his time.