Titled "The Thrilling Exploits of Chas Mudede AKA the Scholar Nigga!" the cartoon was written and drawn by two white artists, Ivan Cockrum and Lara Seven, who purchased the comics page during the Strangercrombie charity auction, which, among other items, sells sections of the newspaper to raise money for Northwest Harvest. What upset the person who approached Secrest was that the cartoon figure of me, a black man, was called "Scholar Nigga." Secrest contacted The Stranger and arranged a meeting to address what she believed to be a flagrant act of racism. I went to this meeting with the publisher of the paper, Tim Keck, on a blustery day and did most of the talking. I explained to the three concerned members of the NAACP that I had actually cleared the cartoon because it wasn't racist, but a kind of homage to my work. The cartoonists were not only knowledgeable about my writing but also the inter-paper conflicts I've had with other local writers. In the case of "Scholar Nigga," it was Samson Spears, a black hiphop critic for the now-defunct magazine Tablet, who gave me that title. The cartoonists were aware of this and other aspects of what I write, such as my intense love for German philosophy, and also my intense loathing for animals from Antarctica.
My explanation hit a brick wall. The NAACP didn't care about inter-paper conflicts, or the fact that it was a black man who called me a scholar nigga. Their position was simply this: The Stranger had inappropriately used the n-word. The meeting ended with her requesting that our paper never use the word again, except for critical purposes—that was the NAACP's policy.
11:38 AM