I Can Only Imagine How A Black American Would Feel Upon Hearing It
There are still some things that pretty much everybody agrees on. Ice cream is delicious, war is bad, and the n-word is the worst word in the English language. So bad, in fact, that we’re only allowed to refer to it by its first letter (and in some cases, not even that).
In my article, This Is The Way The N-Word Dies, I pointed out that the unique power the n-word holds in many people’s minds is a reflection of the way we think about black people. Not only the idea that it’s possible to insult a black person because of the colour of their skin, but that it’s reasonable for black people, and only black people, to fall apart at the sound of a word, regardless of intent or context.
I argued that the power of the n-word is in the hands of those who hear it, not those who would try to wield it. Angela wasn’t so sure.
Angela:
It’s just so potently ugly and demeaning, that word. And it’s got a couple of centuries of racial animus that comes along with it. I cringe every time I hear it, and I can only imagine how a Black American would feel upon hearing it.
Steve QJ:
It’s just so potently ugly and demeaning, that word
I honestly don't see it that way. This is how many of us are TAUGHT to see it. But it's the idea that's the problem. It's the idea that it's possible to refer to a black person in a way that's inherently demeaning. Why should this be true? Why is there no equivalent for people of any other colour or any other type?
I can't separate the idea that there's an inherently demeaning way to refer to black people from the idea that there's something inherently demeaning about being black. Once you're truly free of the latter idea, the former makes no sense.
I’ve had many different versions of this conversation over the years, but they always boils down to this:
The idea that there’s a word that demeans black people, purely because of the colour of their skin, is impossible to separate from the idea that there’s something demeaning about being black.
Of course, when the n-word took on its mythical status, this is exactly what many people, even some black people, believed. And some people today, even some black people, still haven’t shaken that idea.
I’m not arguing that people don’t have a right to be offended when somebody obviously sets out to offend them. I’m not suggesting that anybody who is offended is guilty of some unconscious self-hatred. I’m saying that it’s very difficult to offend somebody over a trait they’re proud of.
There is no slur for beautiful, or powerful, or, simply, normal. There are no other slurs, that will get you suspended if you say a word, in a different language, that sounds kind of similar to them.
If we want to take power from the n-word, we need carefully examine the idea that there’s even such a thing as a slur for black people. I hope that one day, everybody agrees that there’s isn’t.
I just find the whole thing childish. The idea that you would be emotionally scarred by the mere sound of the syllables, even in a foreign language or an unrelated English word like “niggardly.” That it is utterly forbidden to pronounce the word even in reference, to say “‘nigger’ is an ugly word,” or “I would never call anyone a nigger.” That you, Steve, cannot mention the word *in an article about the word*. To ban schoolchildren from reading “Huckleberry Finn,” a book whose very message is exactly the opposite, of Huck’s transcending the prejudices of his time and discovering the humanity in a runaway slave. (For that matter, we’re not supposed to say “slave” anymore, either: they were “enslaved people.”)
Not too long ago, it was forbidden to utter the words “shit” or “fuck” in public; now they appear in respectable print publications and no one bats an eye. But now this one other word is enough to get you fired and socially shunned. As we’ve been discussing on another thread, all this language policing is not only not helpful but actively harmful to the cause it purports to serve.
Ethnic slurs are a method of disparagement sometimes used for differing purpose. They seem to me to say more about the speaker than the target. An attempt to make something OK that isn't; It's OK for them to be slaves, they are less than human. It's OK to go off to war and kill them, they are less than human. This one came into play as I was staging to go to Vietnam. Interestingly, many black men had no problem with the use of the word gook. They used the word for the same reasons the white guys used it.
On a smaller scale, various forms of discrimination because they aren't one of us. The woman with a complaint becomes a bitch. The same theme is in play with dehumanizing political partisanship where the bad tribe is no longer about race but opposing views. All about making some behavior that is harmful OK in the mind of the speaker. The harm is not so much in the words but the attitudes and actions of the speaker that lead to their use. People using that language are telling you more about themselves than about the target of their scorn.
When my children encountered racial slurs, I told them my story of the turd. "If someone tries to give you a turd and you don't take it, they are the one with the dirty hand, not you."