Chile! It’s the use of the n-word with the hard “r,” then questioning Mariah Carey’s Blackness but claiming to be part of “the culture” all in the same breath for me!!! Fix it, Jesus!
A recently resurfaced clip from one of Pose star Sandra Bernhard’s 1998 stand-up comedy specials, is getting her dragged from coast to coast! And for good reason too.
In the Twitter video of Bernhard’s special, ‘I’m Still Here…Damn It!, the actress calls Carey the N-word, questions whether she is actually Black and insults Diddy, and frankly Black men as a whole. “And now [she’s] trying to backtrack on our asses, acing real n*****ish up there at the Royalton Hotel suite with Puff Daddy and all the greasy, chain-wearing Black men,” Bernhard says. She then continues as if she were speaking as Carey, “…’ I got a little bit of Black in me, too. I didn’t tell you that.'”
Bernhard defended her derogatory language that same year in an interview with New York Magazine, saying, “I have carte blanche to use that word from my friend Paul Mooney,” she said. “I’m a card-carrying white-black girl. Plus, I have a huge Black following, so you know, it’s like a Black person saying [n*****ish].” She spoke on it again in 2006 with Seattle Weekly, “I think anybody Black who comes to my shows gives me carte blanche to say that because I’m really coming from their place,” she said. “I’m not some cracker up there… It’s so obvious that I’m a part of that culture.”
She also claimed that Carey and her manager only took offense to the joke because of the supposed underlying truth of the joke. “They were just upset because supposedly she’s half-Black,” Bernhard said. “Then why are you upset? I’m saying n*****ish like you would say it, honey. And it’s also a comment on white people…everybody laughed, so I must’ve hit a nerve.”
Just a reminder that Nurse Judy from Pose called Mariah Carey a “n****er” and made fun of other black artist. https://t.co/YDPK4ET0Dg
— Tre – Justice for Black Lives (@RadioLamb) August 7, 2020
However, in 2005, Carey spoke out about Bernhard’s joke, revealing in an interview that she took action against Bernhard for her comments. “This is a woman that belongs to two groups that I do not belong to,” Carey said, referring to Bernhard being Jewish and lesbian. “If I’d ever said anything about those two groups, people would be picketing in the streets. And you know what? If I was two shades darker, there’d have been people protesting for me.” The singer also said that she called the NAACP to enlist their help in getting Bernhard’s special removed from the airwaves.
Most recently, Bernhard defended her use of the word in a 2010 interview with ‘Wags Revue,’ claiming that “people like me are more down with Black culture than certain Black people.” But in 2019, while on ‘Watch What Happens Live,’ the comedian said her and Carey were on good terms. Bernhard has yet to respond to the resurfaced clip. Meanwhile, Pose star Indya Moore responded to the video on Twitter, writing, “Very hurtful, confusing, and disappointing.”
