You can’t say the word “nigger” or any other “profanity” in Wilmette, Illinois. Or at least you can’t say it when someone else might hear you.

That appears to be the result of a controversy in which the city’s park district refused to allow an open-air production of the musical adaptation of “Ragtime.”

Jim McDonough, jazz critic for the Wall Street Journal, gives a great overview of the controversy and its resolution, which includes a revealing interview with Ty Perry, an African American actor/director who was hired to direct the production:

Mr. Perry, who claims no special authority over Ragtime based on race, sees things quite differently. “If you don’t want people to use the word,” he said, “this is the perfect opportunity to show them why they shouldn’t.” Setting aside euphemism, he quoted examples of its use in the musical. “There is a song in which Coalhouse Walker [the black protagonist] sings the line, ‘I’m not their nigger,’” he says. “And at another point when Willie Conklin [the racist villain] demands a toll, Coalhouse asks, ‘Since when?’ And Conklin says, ‘Since some high falutin’ nigger and his whore could drive that car of theirs any place they please. That’s since when.’”

Mr. Perry adds: “I understand it makes white people nervous, but to take that word out of ‘Ragtime’ would be to invalidate my heritage as an African-American man. I was talking to my partner about this and he said, ‘I can’t understand what you feel when you hear that word.’ And I said, ‘I can never understand the guilt you feel when you hear that word.’ We both have a common bond with that word. So let’s deal with that.”

Even though the park district eventually agreed to stage the production indoors — starting this past Thursday — they still believe “the decision not to do it outdoors was the correct one.” Apparently, they’d rather not “deal with that.”