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Stephen Colbert: Right off the top, I just want to say, “Negro. ”

Negro, negro, negro, negro, negro, negro, negro, negro, negro, negro: You know there are some words that you say over and over again and they lose their meaning, this isn't one of them.…

Now, I don't want to shock any of the black members of my audience—Two and…and there are none. Okay—but, black people, now you know: when you're not around, all white people use the word negro.

We're always negro-this and negro-that. “Hey, there's a Negro over there!” or “I love Negro music!” or “Let's have dinner with the Negroes. They're nice.”

And now, and now, because of this, we know it's okay to say it… So, let's all say, “negro” together, okay? I say, “Knee, you say, ”Grow.”

KNEE!

Audience: GROW!

KNEE!

Audience: GROW!

Jay the Intern! [points to intern]

Jay the Intern: Negro.

Morgan Freeman! [points to Morgan Freeman]

[Gets “Don't Catch a Beat-Down, Bro'” sneer, or as we refer to it in the 'Hood, Angry Black Man Look No. 1 (or just The No.1) for his efforts.]

Which is fair. All of this disturbing behavior lately deserves the No.1, if not, in fact, the implied beat-down behind it, because unless I'm mis-reading the cultural winds, white folks are using Obama's election to get a little too familiar with colored folks peoples of color, to cross boundaries that election didn't get them an all-access pass to. They've become uppity, in other words, and a Stink-eye here or there needs to be shot their way to let them know how badly they've misjudged the post-racial world.

They helped elect a black president, which, while significant in a symbolic sense, isn't that significant in any real sense. To get their votes, the black president had to whitewash the Democratic platform to remove any race-specific policies or strategies for removing the barriers to equal opportunity and equal access to the nation's resources leftover from its long history of government enforcement of slavery and apartheid. It's true. If we're being honest, we have to admit white people didn't vote for him to address our racial woes or to celebrate our successes. It wasn't racial at all. Despite the “Yes, we can” idealism, the president was elected not because of how far we've come as a nation, but because of how low we'd sunk.

So, you get the Stink-eye or the No. 1 when you cross a social barrier your recent inaction hasn't given you access to. You don't know us like that.

Despite having been together since the 17th century, we're still strangers, and you need to treat us like strangers, respectfully, excusing yourself before you take liberties with our personal space.

So if this is you,
and you're wondering—“Pardon me,” you say—if anyone would be offended if you presumed to understand our blackness

…there is a deeper significance — a racial philanthropy — that perhaps neither man intended. Jay-Z is black black. He is old-school double-dark-chocolate-chunk black. He is black the way Labatt is blue. He is not white black, Barack black, like our president. Or the kind of black that doesn't curse and deplores the n-word, the genteel black, like Oprah. He is, arguably, the first black-black guy to cross over into Oprah-land and Bill Clintonworld without making the Oprah-sized no-look-back forward flip that means you're selling not necessarily your soul but perhaps something fleshier, a little more external.

the answer is yes. Yes, we would.

And if you're wondering if it's okay for you to fall back on sexual tropes and stereotypes for descriptions of black men, like reducing them to seventy-three sliding inches of blackness, as in

But Jay-Z doesn't really sit. What he actually does is slalom down in his chair, real low like it's a water slide. Seventy-three inches of all-black everything, laid out like a ramp.…

Well, no. Just no.

So, observe the Stink-eye, respect the No.1. Or we'll have to get the big, pipe-slinging brothers with the vice grips and blow torches to get medieval on your asses and get you to back up off us, move you back to your side of the racial divide.

I'm surprised I have to tell you this.