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Ice Cube Joins ‘Real Time with Bill Maher’ Panel; Talks White Privilege & the Use of the “N’ Word

blame it on JES7 June 10, 2017

This past Friday, Bill Maher caused a whole lot of controversy while, during his Real Time with Bill Maher show, decided to drop the “n-word” live on TV while interviewing of all people, Republican Senator Ben Sasse. When the Nebraskan Senator invited Bill to “work the fields with us,” Bill responded “Working the fields? Senator, I’m a house n*gger.”

During his latest panel, Bill invited Ice Cube to promote the 25th anniversary version of his album Death Certificate (which also spawned the video “Good Cop Bad Cop“) and of course he took the opportunity to confront the host on his past transgression.

“I knew you was gonna f*ck up sooner or later,” Cube told Bill with a deadpan expression. “I love your show, but uh, you be bucking up against that line a little bit. You know you got a lot of black jokes,” he continued. “Well, against racists,” a bewildered Bill responded, which Cube retaliated with “Sometimes you sound like a redneck trucker.”

Following Bill’s apology, Cube replied with the following civil monologue:

I accept your apology, but I think we need to get to the root of the psyche. Because I think it’s a lot of guys out there, who cross the line because they’re a little too familiar or they think they too familiar. Or it’s guys that you know, might have a black girlfriend or two that made them some Kool-Aid every now and then. And they think they can cross the line. And they can’t. It’s a word that’s 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 been used as a weapon, against us. By white people. And we not gonna let that happen again. By nobody. Because it’s not cool. [Transcript via Pitchfork]

Watch the entire must see conversation below.