Today’s conversation needs a little context. It began as a discussion on Twitter between, Grace and “H”, about hate speech (the conversation didn’t involve me initially). When the topic eventually turned to the n-word, Grace linked to my article, This Is The Way The N-Word Dies (at which point Twitter automatically looped me in), in an attempt to challenge the argument that censoring words is the only (or even a good) way to fight hate speech.
I get where H is coming from but, as almost always, I land more where you are coming from. I think part of my perspective is from being a queer POC (not black though). I've heard both homophobic & racist slurs over the years, and my responses have varied. Sometimes just shrug it off, sometimes laugh it off, sometimes get into a drunken fight LOL - all depends on the situation and who's said what. But in the end, they are just words. It is the intent behind their use and how I choose to react that matters. And despite these words being insulting, they are still just signifiers. Calling me the f-word is not saying I am an idiot or a thief or a liar. There's a emotionalism/hysteria/logic breakdown when reacting as if the use of a demeaning word - one that is still describing what I am proud to be - is the same thing as using words that attribute certain negative traits or activities to me.
N-word is one of the most complex words ever. From a long history as a purely diminishing word and a word that describes behaviors that whites & others don't care for ("I worked like a n----- today"), to a word that some black neighbors would use as a pejorative in the same way white neighbors would use the word "hick," to a word reclaimed (similar to b-word and to a lesser extent f-word) and a word divided (bizarre yet accepted distinction between ending in "gga" or "ger") and a word I used to hear latino & asian kids on the bus call each other casually right alongside their black friends, to a word that now apparently causes black college kids deep emotional trauma when simply seen on the page (WTF) and gets people of any color fired if dared uttered aloud, as if it is the unspeakable name of an evil being that will be summoned, like Candyman. LOL I cannot think of another word that holds such strange, diabolical power over the public imagination!
"I get where H is coming from but, as almost always, I land more where you are coming from"
Yeah, don't get me wrong. I think H's heart, if not his thinking, is in exactly the right place. You say that intent is what matters, and on one level I agree with this, but I'd say that even intent isn't the most important thing.
Think of your best quality. Whatever it is about yourself that you're most confident about and/or proud of. Now imagine I said something about it that was intended to offend you. Maybe I said that I hate people who are incredibly good-looking, or who are incredibly witty, or who are in great physical condition. How would you react? How much would it hurt you? What would my comments say to you about me?
In fact, it doesn't even need to be something you're proud of. How would you react if I tried to insult the shape of the folds in your ear? Or the number of creases on your palm? Something that you're completely neutral about. Wouldn't you find it ridiculous? Wouldn't you be tempted to laugh?
So yes, I agree with you about intent. If somebody is trying to hurt me that matters. Even if they don't succeed. In fact, the mere attempt to hurt me might be hurtful. But what they can hurt me *about*? That's a different matter entirely. And is entirely based on what I feel about myself.
I think you've put it exceptionally well; the n-word holds a strange, diabolical power over the public imagination. And as far as I can see, the only way to remove that power is to challenge what the the public imagines about race. Specifically, the idea that there's something insult-worthy about being black. Again, both black people and white people have deeply ingrained, unexamined ideas about this. It's past time to expose them to the light.
I think that racism and other isms have a common foundation that in my mind even define them. Low expectations of a member of a group because they are a member of the group.
When we stop looking at someone and have low expectations about ability or expectations for what their behavior will be there is no longer a foundation for the ism.
As for racial slurs, what do they mean to us? If I was to call you the n-word would it say anything about you? I think not, but it would certainly say something negative about me.
"I think that racism and other isms have a common foundation that in my mind even define them. Low expectations of a member of a group because they are a member of the group."
Hmm, that's definitely part of the picture, but I think there's also the issue of simple hatred, or the belief that your group is superior or simply deserves preferential treatment. This *can* be justified by low expectations, but not always.
In fact, sometimes the fear and hatred is brought about by the insecurity that the hated group is superior.
Racial slurs are a means of expressing that fear or hatred or insecurity. And as you say, say nothing about the target of them. I hope for a day when we meet words like that with pity rather than anger.
Fascinating exchange - as always, thanks. Words are, of course, a medium for expressing ideas. Banning words can often have an odd boomerang effect or, as you noted, the group they are directed at can embrace them and make it their own. Bans invert the causal relationship - when culture changes, no one will want to use this word (or others like it). Or, the inverse, seemingly harmless words can become very charged. Some examples of this too.
"or, as you noted, the group they are directed at can embrace them and make it their own"
No, there's a subtle difference here. I'm not suggesting black people embrace the word at all. This isn't about "taking it back". Any more than white people "took back" words like "honky" or "cracker".
The reason we don't freak out when somebody says these words to a white person, the reason we write them without hyphens, is that white people don't believe in their power. They don't believe that there's a word that demeans them for having white skin. Because they fundamentally don't believe there's anything wrong with having white skin. So the words are meaningless as attacks.
This is the mindset I want everybody, black and white, to develop about black skin too. I want the word to fall out of use, just as "honky" and "cracker" have, because we stop believing in their power. It's actually black people who need to take the lead on this. But it would be great if people like H also considered their attitudes when they challenge people about it. Right now, even though his heart is in the right place, his attitude affirms the idea that there's something wrong with being black. My point is that there's something wrong with people who believe this.
I hear you - a better world awaits all with that mindset. e.g. I don't get pressed or aggrieved if a 4 year old tells me I'm "stupid" or my jacket is "ugly" - their evaluation means little to me, and I happen to enjoy my intellect (and jacket). One of those variables is mutable (clothes), but the other is immutable (intellect, arguably). And so it goes with traits like skin color, etc. We give it power by reacting to it. I can't help but think much of this behavior originates from groups that don't play or socialize with a broad group of people until later in life. That's not germane to your exchange with H though. I had all the petty racism from 7 year olds, and then I decided it just didn't bother me at some point. I don't recall exactly when, but I realized these were largely low-resolution people who had nothing else going on - their opinions no longer mattered.
"I don't get pressed or aggrieved if a 4 year old tells me I'm "stupid" or my jacket is "ugly" - their evaluation means little to me, and I happen to enjoy my intellect (and jacket)"
😅 I'm aware that I'm in serious danger of becoming a bore here, but this still isn't it.
It's not that the opinion of racists doesn't matter to me. It's not that they couldn't say anything to offend me or that I see them as children. It's that by attacking the colour of my skin, they're trying to offend me about something I'm completely neutral about (or if anything, which I think is a positive). The insult makes no sense.
As I said to Mark below, it's as if they're trying to attack me because of the number of creases on my palm, or the number of folds in my ear. Not only would I not be upset by these "attacks", I'd be *confused* by them. I'd very likely laugh at them.
Whereas if they attacked something I'm insecure about, as much as I might try to pretend to laugh it off, even if I was able to fool everybody into thinking I didn't care, their words would likely find a target.
At best, I think most people's ideas about dealing with the n-word are of this second type. About pretending not to be hurt. About getting good at pretending that the words didn't find their target. But I'm talking about *removing the target*. I'm talking about getting to a point where an insult based on the colour of our skin is confusing. Just as it would be for most white people.
Again, this is really the work of black people. We have to carefully examine our attitudes to this word and racist "insults" in general. But I also want white people to absorb this thinking, because people like H, though his heart is in the right place, is still approaching the n-word from a perspective of defending black people instead of pointing out how ridiculous racist beliefs are.
If you think about it, H's approach, though well intentioned, *affirms* racist ideas.
Thanks Steve - no, you're never a bore - it's always interesting to get a bit of insight into how people think. A few more replies and our dialogue will be worthy subject matter for a post, lmao. I've been the recipient of racial slurs a few times (confusingly for a few different races!), and my prior response is how I tended to frame things. However, if I am understanding you correctly, I see that there is still a pernicious fiction embedded in de-emphasizing the person wielding the imprecation instead of the so-called slur itself. My color, your color, the density and type of melanocytes per cubic centimeter in general isn't a topic worthy of insecurity, so the insult itself is confusing. It's so much happenstance, like our height, or eye color, or what have you. If it were something I had control over and felt insecure about (let's say I've got some pandemic pounds), then the derogation would have more import. I would still have the option of ignoring the person doing it, or embracing it, but that's different than what you're getting at if I grok you correctly.
"I see that there is still a pernicious fiction embedded in de-emphasizing the person wielding the imprecation instead of the so-called slur itself. My color, your color, the density and type of melanocytes per cubic centimeter in general isn't a topic worthy of insecurity, so the insult itself is confusing"
Yep! This is exactly it. To go back to H, imagine his friend was going around to people and saying, "Ha, look at you, you've got less than seven creases on your palm. You suck!"
H's instinct wouldn't be to say, "Hey! Not cool man, you can't say that!" it would be to say, "What the hell are you talking about? Do you realise how stupid you sound?!"
H's friend's hypothetical insult could *only* be offensive if the insult-ee had somehow absorbed the idea that having less than seven creases on their palm is a bad thing. And the instinct to defend them rather than ridicule his friend would *only* exist because H had absorbed those ideas too.
Now, H's friend is still trying to offend people. There's nothing wrong with telling him to stop, even if his insults aren't effective. In fact it's a good thing. But *how* we tell him to stop says a lot about our own beliefs and attitudes.
I feel a little frustrated reading this, as though the essential point is being missed over and over. The difference between words and ideas is not the essential point.
Racism is not a homogenous idea. It encompasses many ideas; racism among Israeli bigots is qualitatively different from racism among rural southern whites. In the former it is a conviction of superiority, that Jews truly are the master race and the world is theirs to take, a piece at a time.
In the latter, among rural southern whites, it is the barely concealed recognition that they are deeply inferior people who can only feel any authenticity by repeating over and over that some people (colored people) are even lower than they are.
These are fundamentally different ideas.
I don't want the n-word suppressed; want it openly allowed so people who utter it can be removed from employment under guard, never to work again. I want them to identify themselves so they can be shunned and ostracized, their children rehomed.
Millennia ago humanity was composed of isolated tribes and outsiders were dangerous to them. Now we live in a pretense of civilization and we can no longer tolerate that. We have to learn not to hate people because they don't look like us or talk like us, it's not the same world it was when we were hunter-gatherers and the Other was the Enemy.
We've put up with this crap for far too long. When police can murder a 12 year old boy with a plastic toy and go unpunished then the time is come for extreme measures.
And no racism won't die with a word. There will be other words. New words. Racism may never die any more than rape and murder have died, but there would be a hell of a lot more of both without their consequences.
Racism is intolerable. It must bear similar consequences. Call your coworker the bug N and you lose your job and your family, never to have either again.
"I don't want the n-word suppressed; want it openly allowed so people who utter it can be removed from employment under guard, never to work again. I want them to identify themselves so they can be shunned and ostracized, their children rehomed."
You say you don't want the n-word suppressed, but I can't think of a more effective means of suppressing a word than taking away the children of anyone whoever says it 😅. Social censure is a great way of changing behaviour, but it isn't so good at changing attitudes. To use a topical example, do you think vaccine mandates and shaming are making anti-vaxxers more or less amenable to the vaccine? Similarly, if we rounded up the children of everybody who said the n-word, do you think we'd increase or decrease racist sentiments?
As far as I can see, the attitudes behind racism or sexism or all flavours of bigotry are exactly the same:
"You are different to me in some way. That difference implies a bunch of qualities that can be generalised to everybody in the same arbitrary group as you. Those qualities make you inferior and/or undesirable."
There are huge differences in *how* this attitude manifests (perhaps this is what you mean by "qualitative differences"). An anti-semite might express themselves differently to a racist or a sexist or a homophobe. But the cognitive flaw behind it, at least as far as I can see, is always the same. Very happy for you to point out what I'm missing.
You also seem to have misunderstood my last point. I'm not saying that racism will die with a word. I'm saying that racism will die when attitudes and thinking changes. When we look at racists as the simple-minded crackpots that they are. When the "insults" they try to hurl bounce off their intended targets. When they feel ashamed to express their racist views because the the reaction they get fills them with doubt.
The colour of somebody's skin is an almost unbelievably stupid reason to hate them or abuse them. Punishing people for their stupidity, especially in the ways you're suggesting here, doesn't make them less stupid. It allows them to feel as if they're martyrs to a cause. Get enough of them feeling that way and you have a whole different problem.
Black people should be protected from racism that affects their access to opportunity. Hiring practices, medical care, policing, and so on, anything that impacts black people's access to these and other aspects of life should be dealt with seriously and decisively. But name-calling? I hope for a day when the very concept of a racial "slur" sounds just as archaic and ridiculous as a tallness "slur" or a beauty "slur". As far as I can see, there's no way to separate the idea of a racial slur, especially one that only exists for black people, from the idea that there's something wrong with being black.
I don't think racism or other bigotries will ever die, not until they evolve out and we will be long extinct before that happens. My exzmple is Ukraine, where after 70 years of Soviet repression of antisemitism—a human lifetime—it re-emerged as virulent as ever when the SU dissolved.
That's pretty robust.
I think bigotry is as inborn in humanity as religion and every bit as poisonous. I don't think it's just an unsavory social phenomenon that we can overcome with sensitivity training.
I mentioned rape and murder. I think these would both be more commonplace—a LOT more commonplace—without the consequences they bring. The consequences are largely missing from bigotry and my answer to this is not to seek to adjust language or educate people into tolerrance or, Christ, celebration of diversity but to hugely increase the consequences of behavior.
Sorry but I have no confidence in the adjustment of attitudes whether through adjustment of words or anything else. Laws and legal consequences are the only things that work and attitude adjustment will catch up in a few generations.
I realize how authoritarian and draconian this sounds, but a woman who wants to raise children and knows that a husband who raises bigoted kids will cost her those children won't marry a bigot. Bigots will be inhibited from passing their vile attitudes to future generations
"I realize how authoritarian and draconian this sounds"
😅It doesn't "sound" draconian, it *is* draconian! Which is why I can't follow your logic. You're saying that suppression doesn't work, which I think you're right about, and yet you're proposing an especially draconian (and legally unrealistic) form of suppression.
Yes, murder and rape would be a lot more commonplace without the consequences we have in place, but racism (as in racial hatred, not name-calling) is actually pretty rare. Even though there are almost no consequences in place. The driving forces behind rape, murder, and bigotry are all very different. And require different solutions.
And again, I'm not in any way suggesting that we can adjust attitudes by adjusting or suppressing words (I'm still not sure where you're getting the idea that I am). I'm suggesting that we (by which I mainly mean black people) carefully examine our attitudes with regards to this word.
The n-word is a weapon whose power to hurt is entirely in black people's minds. Racists use it because they expect it to be effective, and every time we buy into that belief, we prove them right. But if black people stop buying into the idea that this word, or any word, can demean a person with black skin, the n-word loses its power. You can't insult somebody about something they don't think there's anything wrong with. As I mentioned, there's no such thing as a "slur" for someone who's beautiful or clever. The concept makes no sense.
The reason why we don't call "cracker" the c-word and freak out when somebody says it to a white person, is because white people don't believe in the word's power to demean them. There's nothing more useless than a weapon without the power to wound. So the word simply fell out of use. The same would be true of the n-word.
Some degree of discrimination is inevitable. We discriminate on the basis of all kinds of things. But the things we *hate* each other over are all learned. You might be born (or close to it) preferring redheads to brunettes. But nobody is born an anti-semite or a racist or any other kind of bigot. You need to be taught these ideas. And the society you live in needs to validate them. The idea that there's a word to demean me for having black skin, but not a word to demean a white person for having white skin, validates (wrongly) the idea that there's something wrong with black people.
Sorry Steve but I don't really buy this. Black people famously use the N among each other but it's worth the incisors of a white person to chummily try to mimic it. There are probably those who say it's been "reclaimed."
AS lot of gay people do the same with "queer," nonchalantly using this abhorrent slur to refer to themselves (and me) in what they claim is a neutralization. This is is fermenting bullshit. This "reclamation" is just the latest form of that confrontational belligerence that hindered the achievement of equality. Earlier it was unadulterated bigotry toward heterosexuals ("breeders" in activist parlance). I dropped out of gay politics in the miod 90s after hearing too many who identified with the enclave culture and to whom assimilation was the dirtiest word in the language.
You say that racism is actually rare. Glad I was already sitting down when a read that because a motorbike accident around 2015 left me unsteady on my feet. Steve! Over 70 million people voted for Trump and their racism was the outstandingly strongest motivation; since Trump's bigotry is out in the open those people said "he's our guy," it wasn't economic anxiety.
American racism is intense, it is widespread, and its expression is intensifying. There is simple not enough social pressure against it as there is for rape and murder and that social pressure is the object of mockery among the right. "Safe spaces," "sensitivity training," "fuck your feelings.
OK, my answer IS draconian, but I stand by it. The only way to get bigotry, (which in America means murder, not just hurt feelings) out of our society is to break the generational transmission. I have little more to say about this and don't like repeating myself.
And your idea that sensitivity to the N is for black people to solve, sorry Steve, I'd walk through fire for you and you know it but that just sounds bizarre to me. When gay people call themselves "queer" they are saying yes, we ARE defective, yes, we ARE compulsive deviates.
There is a hypothesis in communications called Sapir-Whorf, with a weak and a strong form; the strong form says that ideas we don't have words for are inexpressible, even unthinkable; the weak form says that expression and thought are harder. The strong form doesn't have a lot of support.
"Over 70 million people voted for Trump and their racism was the outstandingly strongest motivation; since Trump's bigotry is out in the open those people said "he's our guy," it wasn't economic anxiety."
I think you've been reading my work long enough to know how I feel about Trump, but I swear, the "all Trump voters are racists" trope is the left's version of QAnon. It's so transparently false, yet so many people are so fervent about it!
19% of black men voted for Trump in 2020. 10% of black women. 36% of Hispanic men. 30% of Hispanic women? Do we really not have a more nuanced explanation for this than "they're all racist"?! There are numerous reasons why people vote the way they do. I'd say (and argued in my "Why Black People Voted For Trump" piece) that race is way down on that list. And frankly, Joe Biden made, and continues to make, more racist gaffes than Trump ever did.
It's probably broadly fair to say that all racists voted for Trump (though even this is almost certainly simplistic). But to say that everybody who voted for Trump is a racist? A glancing analysis of the facts shows this doesn't make sense.
Yes, racial hatred (note, I specified that clearly) is rare. Do you think people were talking about micro-aggressions in the 60s? Nope. Why? because racial hatred was rife. Yet in 60 years, society has actually made significant strides on that front. People still resort to name-calling during arguments sometimes, sometimes that leads to a few punches being thrown, but it rarely goes beyond that. And of course, most black people go about their day, every day, with nothing racist happening at all. The last time somebody said something to me in real life that I'd describe as racist was about two years ago.
You're conflating two very different things with gay people calling themselves "queer" and black people being called the n-word. I have never, not even close, advocated for black people to use the n-word. I've never talked about reclaiming it. In fact, if you've read my article on the n-word, you'll know that I argue very clearly against both of these.
What I'm saying is that the power of the n-word is in black people's minds. Just as the power of the word "queer" is in yours. But you have a better point, because "queer" has a well understood meaning in the English language, completely separate from gay people, which is at best slightly derogatory. So your wish not to be labelled with it makes perfect sense.
The n-word has *no other purpose in the English language* except to denigrate black people. So 100% of its power is in the minds of black people. Racists believe the power is in their hands, but it's not. This is the point I think you're not getting. And it's really important. Every person who has ever tried to use this word against me has discovered this.
It's almost sad to see the expression on their faces when they see what happens when a black person truly doesn't buy into the idea that there's a slur to describe their skin. They're so confused and disappointed and filled with self-doubt. I want that expression to appear on the face of every single racist on the planet.
So sure, I'm not arguing that ideas we don't have words for are inexpressible (though I can mostly see the logic).I'm arguing that ideas about ourselves are only powerful if we believe them. And if we stop believing them, the people who use them to attack us eventually stop believing them too. I'd like to see more black people carefully examine their beliefs about the n-word.
I didn't say all Trump voters were racists, I said it was the strongest factor, and IO have read of many studies corroborating that. Sure, some voted because they hate the Democrats or they hate (their caricature of) liberals. But racism was far and away the strongest factor.
"The changing of the use of the word was important as a signal to others that the ideas were indeed changing/changed. Words express ideas and some ideas should not be acceptable to a civil society, not through laws and legislation but interactions between a moral and just people."
First, let me be crystal clear; I'm not *advocating* for the use of the n-word😅. I'd be very happy to see it disappear from the vocabulary of everybody on the planet. Black and white. I have never and would never direct it at anybody, but I also think it's ridiculous that any reference to it, even when clearly in context, is treated as an act of racism.
As for attitudes changing, we might be dealing with a "chicken and egg" situation here. Thankfully, children are almost always less bigoted and stupid than their parents were, especially as our societies become more diverse. But did people become less racist because they stopped saying Ni**er Town? Or did people stop saying Ni**er Town because they became lest racist. I suspect the latter.
In fact, I'd argue that the name being dropped was a sign that attitudes were already changing. A critical mass of non-racist thinking had to be reached before anybody felt strongly enough to take the map down. But you obviously have more insight than I do here, considering that it's your town.
I completely agree that words express ideas and that some ideas aren't acceptable in a civil society. I'm just trying to dig down past the idea that "you shouldn't insult people on the basis of their skin" and get to "what do you mean by 'insult people on the basis of their skin'?! That doesn't even make sense!"
The former is a good start. But to me, the latter is the goal.
I get where H is coming from but, as almost always, I land more where you are coming from. I think part of my perspective is from being a queer POC (not black though). I've heard both homophobic & racist slurs over the years, and my responses have varied. Sometimes just shrug it off, sometimes laugh it off, sometimes get into a drunken fight LOL - all depends on the situation and who's said what. But in the end, they are just words. It is the intent behind their use and how I choose to react that matters. And despite these words being insulting, they are still just signifiers. Calling me the f-word is not saying I am an idiot or a thief or a liar. There's a emotionalism/hysteria/logic breakdown when reacting as if the use of a demeaning word - one that is still describing what I am proud to be - is the same thing as using words that attribute certain negative traits or activities to me.
N-word is one of the most complex words ever. From a long history as a purely diminishing word and a word that describes behaviors that whites & others don't care for ("I worked like a n----- today"), to a word that some black neighbors would use as a pejorative in the same way white neighbors would use the word "hick," to a word reclaimed (similar to b-word and to a lesser extent f-word) and a word divided (bizarre yet accepted distinction between ending in "gga" or "ger") and a word I used to hear latino & asian kids on the bus call each other casually right alongside their black friends, to a word that now apparently causes black college kids deep emotional trauma when simply seen on the page (WTF) and gets people of any color fired if dared uttered aloud, as if it is the unspeakable name of an evil being that will be summoned, like Candyman. LOL I cannot think of another word that holds such strange, diabolical power over the public imagination!
"I get where H is coming from but, as almost always, I land more where you are coming from"
Yeah, don't get me wrong. I think H's heart, if not his thinking, is in exactly the right place. You say that intent is what matters, and on one level I agree with this, but I'd say that even intent isn't the most important thing.
Think of your best quality. Whatever it is about yourself that you're most confident about and/or proud of. Now imagine I said something about it that was intended to offend you. Maybe I said that I hate people who are incredibly good-looking, or who are incredibly witty, or who are in great physical condition. How would you react? How much would it hurt you? What would my comments say to you about me?
In fact, it doesn't even need to be something you're proud of. How would you react if I tried to insult the shape of the folds in your ear? Or the number of creases on your palm? Something that you're completely neutral about. Wouldn't you find it ridiculous? Wouldn't you be tempted to laugh?
So yes, I agree with you about intent. If somebody is trying to hurt me that matters. Even if they don't succeed. In fact, the mere attempt to hurt me might be hurtful. But what they can hurt me *about*? That's a different matter entirely. And is entirely based on what I feel about myself.
I think you've put it exceptionally well; the n-word holds a strange, diabolical power over the public imagination. And as far as I can see, the only way to remove that power is to challenge what the the public imagines about race. Specifically, the idea that there's something insult-worthy about being black. Again, both black people and white people have deeply ingrained, unexamined ideas about this. It's past time to expose them to the light.
Love the comparison to qualities & attributes, whether positive or something like the folds in an ear. Excellent!
I think that racism and other isms have a common foundation that in my mind even define them. Low expectations of a member of a group because they are a member of the group.
When we stop looking at someone and have low expectations about ability or expectations for what their behavior will be there is no longer a foundation for the ism.
As for racial slurs, what do they mean to us? If I was to call you the n-word would it say anything about you? I think not, but it would certainly say something negative about me.
"I think that racism and other isms have a common foundation that in my mind even define them. Low expectations of a member of a group because they are a member of the group."
Hmm, that's definitely part of the picture, but I think there's also the issue of simple hatred, or the belief that your group is superior or simply deserves preferential treatment. This *can* be justified by low expectations, but not always.
In fact, sometimes the fear and hatred is brought about by the insecurity that the hated group is superior.
Racial slurs are a means of expressing that fear or hatred or insecurity. And as you say, say nothing about the target of them. I hope for a day when we meet words like that with pity rather than anger.
Fascinating exchange - as always, thanks. Words are, of course, a medium for expressing ideas. Banning words can often have an odd boomerang effect or, as you noted, the group they are directed at can embrace them and make it their own. Bans invert the causal relationship - when culture changes, no one will want to use this word (or others like it). Or, the inverse, seemingly harmless words can become very charged. Some examples of this too.
"or, as you noted, the group they are directed at can embrace them and make it their own"
No, there's a subtle difference here. I'm not suggesting black people embrace the word at all. This isn't about "taking it back". Any more than white people "took back" words like "honky" or "cracker".
The reason we don't freak out when somebody says these words to a white person, the reason we write them without hyphens, is that white people don't believe in their power. They don't believe that there's a word that demeans them for having white skin. Because they fundamentally don't believe there's anything wrong with having white skin. So the words are meaningless as attacks.
This is the mindset I want everybody, black and white, to develop about black skin too. I want the word to fall out of use, just as "honky" and "cracker" have, because we stop believing in their power. It's actually black people who need to take the lead on this. But it would be great if people like H also considered their attitudes when they challenge people about it. Right now, even though his heart is in the right place, his attitude affirms the idea that there's something wrong with being black. My point is that there's something wrong with people who believe this.
I hear you - a better world awaits all with that mindset. e.g. I don't get pressed or aggrieved if a 4 year old tells me I'm "stupid" or my jacket is "ugly" - their evaluation means little to me, and I happen to enjoy my intellect (and jacket). One of those variables is mutable (clothes), but the other is immutable (intellect, arguably). And so it goes with traits like skin color, etc. We give it power by reacting to it. I can't help but think much of this behavior originates from groups that don't play or socialize with a broad group of people until later in life. That's not germane to your exchange with H though. I had all the petty racism from 7 year olds, and then I decided it just didn't bother me at some point. I don't recall exactly when, but I realized these were largely low-resolution people who had nothing else going on - their opinions no longer mattered.
"I don't get pressed or aggrieved if a 4 year old tells me I'm "stupid" or my jacket is "ugly" - their evaluation means little to me, and I happen to enjoy my intellect (and jacket)"
😅 I'm aware that I'm in serious danger of becoming a bore here, but this still isn't it.
It's not that the opinion of racists doesn't matter to me. It's not that they couldn't say anything to offend me or that I see them as children. It's that by attacking the colour of my skin, they're trying to offend me about something I'm completely neutral about (or if anything, which I think is a positive). The insult makes no sense.
As I said to Mark below, it's as if they're trying to attack me because of the number of creases on my palm, or the number of folds in my ear. Not only would I not be upset by these "attacks", I'd be *confused* by them. I'd very likely laugh at them.
Whereas if they attacked something I'm insecure about, as much as I might try to pretend to laugh it off, even if I was able to fool everybody into thinking I didn't care, their words would likely find a target.
At best, I think most people's ideas about dealing with the n-word are of this second type. About pretending not to be hurt. About getting good at pretending that the words didn't find their target. But I'm talking about *removing the target*. I'm talking about getting to a point where an insult based on the colour of our skin is confusing. Just as it would be for most white people.
Again, this is really the work of black people. We have to carefully examine our attitudes to this word and racist "insults" in general. But I also want white people to absorb this thinking, because people like H, though his heart is in the right place, is still approaching the n-word from a perspective of defending black people instead of pointing out how ridiculous racist beliefs are.
If you think about it, H's approach, though well intentioned, *affirms* racist ideas.
Thanks Steve - no, you're never a bore - it's always interesting to get a bit of insight into how people think. A few more replies and our dialogue will be worthy subject matter for a post, lmao. I've been the recipient of racial slurs a few times (confusingly for a few different races!), and my prior response is how I tended to frame things. However, if I am understanding you correctly, I see that there is still a pernicious fiction embedded in de-emphasizing the person wielding the imprecation instead of the so-called slur itself. My color, your color, the density and type of melanocytes per cubic centimeter in general isn't a topic worthy of insecurity, so the insult itself is confusing. It's so much happenstance, like our height, or eye color, or what have you. If it were something I had control over and felt insecure about (let's say I've got some pandemic pounds), then the derogation would have more import. I would still have the option of ignoring the person doing it, or embracing it, but that's different than what you're getting at if I grok you correctly.
"I see that there is still a pernicious fiction embedded in de-emphasizing the person wielding the imprecation instead of the so-called slur itself. My color, your color, the density and type of melanocytes per cubic centimeter in general isn't a topic worthy of insecurity, so the insult itself is confusing"
Yep! This is exactly it. To go back to H, imagine his friend was going around to people and saying, "Ha, look at you, you've got less than seven creases on your palm. You suck!"
H's instinct wouldn't be to say, "Hey! Not cool man, you can't say that!" it would be to say, "What the hell are you talking about? Do you realise how stupid you sound?!"
H's friend's hypothetical insult could *only* be offensive if the insult-ee had somehow absorbed the idea that having less than seven creases on their palm is a bad thing. And the instinct to defend them rather than ridicule his friend would *only* exist because H had absorbed those ideas too.
Now, H's friend is still trying to offend people. There's nothing wrong with telling him to stop, even if his insults aren't effective. In fact it's a good thing. But *how* we tell him to stop says a lot about our own beliefs and attitudes.
Really appreciate the exchange. Thank you.
I feel a little frustrated reading this, as though the essential point is being missed over and over. The difference between words and ideas is not the essential point.
Racism is not a homogenous idea. It encompasses many ideas; racism among Israeli bigots is qualitatively different from racism among rural southern whites. In the former it is a conviction of superiority, that Jews truly are the master race and the world is theirs to take, a piece at a time.
In the latter, among rural southern whites, it is the barely concealed recognition that they are deeply inferior people who can only feel any authenticity by repeating over and over that some people (colored people) are even lower than they are.
These are fundamentally different ideas.
I don't want the n-word suppressed; want it openly allowed so people who utter it can be removed from employment under guard, never to work again. I want them to identify themselves so they can be shunned and ostracized, their children rehomed.
Millennia ago humanity was composed of isolated tribes and outsiders were dangerous to them. Now we live in a pretense of civilization and we can no longer tolerate that. We have to learn not to hate people because they don't look like us or talk like us, it's not the same world it was when we were hunter-gatherers and the Other was the Enemy.
We've put up with this crap for far too long. When police can murder a 12 year old boy with a plastic toy and go unpunished then the time is come for extreme measures.
And no racism won't die with a word. There will be other words. New words. Racism may never die any more than rape and murder have died, but there would be a hell of a lot more of both without their consequences.
Racism is intolerable. It must bear similar consequences. Call your coworker the bug N and you lose your job and your family, never to have either again.
"I don't want the n-word suppressed; want it openly allowed so people who utter it can be removed from employment under guard, never to work again. I want them to identify themselves so they can be shunned and ostracized, their children rehomed."
You say you don't want the n-word suppressed, but I can't think of a more effective means of suppressing a word than taking away the children of anyone whoever says it 😅. Social censure is a great way of changing behaviour, but it isn't so good at changing attitudes. To use a topical example, do you think vaccine mandates and shaming are making anti-vaxxers more or less amenable to the vaccine? Similarly, if we rounded up the children of everybody who said the n-word, do you think we'd increase or decrease racist sentiments?
As far as I can see, the attitudes behind racism or sexism or all flavours of bigotry are exactly the same:
"You are different to me in some way. That difference implies a bunch of qualities that can be generalised to everybody in the same arbitrary group as you. Those qualities make you inferior and/or undesirable."
There are huge differences in *how* this attitude manifests (perhaps this is what you mean by "qualitative differences"). An anti-semite might express themselves differently to a racist or a sexist or a homophobe. But the cognitive flaw behind it, at least as far as I can see, is always the same. Very happy for you to point out what I'm missing.
You also seem to have misunderstood my last point. I'm not saying that racism will die with a word. I'm saying that racism will die when attitudes and thinking changes. When we look at racists as the simple-minded crackpots that they are. When the "insults" they try to hurl bounce off their intended targets. When they feel ashamed to express their racist views because the the reaction they get fills them with doubt.
The colour of somebody's skin is an almost unbelievably stupid reason to hate them or abuse them. Punishing people for their stupidity, especially in the ways you're suggesting here, doesn't make them less stupid. It allows them to feel as if they're martyrs to a cause. Get enough of them feeling that way and you have a whole different problem.
Black people should be protected from racism that affects their access to opportunity. Hiring practices, medical care, policing, and so on, anything that impacts black people's access to these and other aspects of life should be dealt with seriously and decisively. But name-calling? I hope for a day when the very concept of a racial "slur" sounds just as archaic and ridiculous as a tallness "slur" or a beauty "slur". As far as I can see, there's no way to separate the idea of a racial slur, especially one that only exists for black people, from the idea that there's something wrong with being black.
I don't think racism or other bigotries will ever die, not until they evolve out and we will be long extinct before that happens. My exzmple is Ukraine, where after 70 years of Soviet repression of antisemitism—a human lifetime—it re-emerged as virulent as ever when the SU dissolved.
That's pretty robust.
I think bigotry is as inborn in humanity as religion and every bit as poisonous. I don't think it's just an unsavory social phenomenon that we can overcome with sensitivity training.
I mentioned rape and murder. I think these would both be more commonplace—a LOT more commonplace—without the consequences they bring. The consequences are largely missing from bigotry and my answer to this is not to seek to adjust language or educate people into tolerrance or, Christ, celebration of diversity but to hugely increase the consequences of behavior.
Sorry but I have no confidence in the adjustment of attitudes whether through adjustment of words or anything else. Laws and legal consequences are the only things that work and attitude adjustment will catch up in a few generations.
I realize how authoritarian and draconian this sounds, but a woman who wants to raise children and knows that a husband who raises bigoted kids will cost her those children won't marry a bigot. Bigots will be inhibited from passing their vile attitudes to future generations
"I realize how authoritarian and draconian this sounds"
😅It doesn't "sound" draconian, it *is* draconian! Which is why I can't follow your logic. You're saying that suppression doesn't work, which I think you're right about, and yet you're proposing an especially draconian (and legally unrealistic) form of suppression.
Yes, murder and rape would be a lot more commonplace without the consequences we have in place, but racism (as in racial hatred, not name-calling) is actually pretty rare. Even though there are almost no consequences in place. The driving forces behind rape, murder, and bigotry are all very different. And require different solutions.
And again, I'm not in any way suggesting that we can adjust attitudes by adjusting or suppressing words (I'm still not sure where you're getting the idea that I am). I'm suggesting that we (by which I mainly mean black people) carefully examine our attitudes with regards to this word.
The n-word is a weapon whose power to hurt is entirely in black people's minds. Racists use it because they expect it to be effective, and every time we buy into that belief, we prove them right. But if black people stop buying into the idea that this word, or any word, can demean a person with black skin, the n-word loses its power. You can't insult somebody about something they don't think there's anything wrong with. As I mentioned, there's no such thing as a "slur" for someone who's beautiful or clever. The concept makes no sense.
The reason why we don't call "cracker" the c-word and freak out when somebody says it to a white person, is because white people don't believe in the word's power to demean them. There's nothing more useless than a weapon without the power to wound. So the word simply fell out of use. The same would be true of the n-word.
Some degree of discrimination is inevitable. We discriminate on the basis of all kinds of things. But the things we *hate* each other over are all learned. You might be born (or close to it) preferring redheads to brunettes. But nobody is born an anti-semite or a racist or any other kind of bigot. You need to be taught these ideas. And the society you live in needs to validate them. The idea that there's a word to demean me for having black skin, but not a word to demean a white person for having white skin, validates (wrongly) the idea that there's something wrong with black people.
Sorry Steve but I don't really buy this. Black people famously use the N among each other but it's worth the incisors of a white person to chummily try to mimic it. There are probably those who say it's been "reclaimed."
AS lot of gay people do the same with "queer," nonchalantly using this abhorrent slur to refer to themselves (and me) in what they claim is a neutralization. This is is fermenting bullshit. This "reclamation" is just the latest form of that confrontational belligerence that hindered the achievement of equality. Earlier it was unadulterated bigotry toward heterosexuals ("breeders" in activist parlance). I dropped out of gay politics in the miod 90s after hearing too many who identified with the enclave culture and to whom assimilation was the dirtiest word in the language.
You say that racism is actually rare. Glad I was already sitting down when a read that because a motorbike accident around 2015 left me unsteady on my feet. Steve! Over 70 million people voted for Trump and their racism was the outstandingly strongest motivation; since Trump's bigotry is out in the open those people said "he's our guy," it wasn't economic anxiety.
American racism is intense, it is widespread, and its expression is intensifying. There is simple not enough social pressure against it as there is for rape and murder and that social pressure is the object of mockery among the right. "Safe spaces," "sensitivity training," "fuck your feelings.
OK, my answer IS draconian, but I stand by it. The only way to get bigotry, (which in America means murder, not just hurt feelings) out of our society is to break the generational transmission. I have little more to say about this and don't like repeating myself.
And your idea that sensitivity to the N is for black people to solve, sorry Steve, I'd walk through fire for you and you know it but that just sounds bizarre to me. When gay people call themselves "queer" they are saying yes, we ARE defective, yes, we ARE compulsive deviates.
There is a hypothesis in communications called Sapir-Whorf, with a weak and a strong form; the strong form says that ideas we don't have words for are inexpressible, even unthinkable; the weak form says that expression and thought are harder. The strong form doesn't have a lot of support.
"Over 70 million people voted for Trump and their racism was the outstandingly strongest motivation; since Trump's bigotry is out in the open those people said "he's our guy," it wasn't economic anxiety."
I think you've been reading my work long enough to know how I feel about Trump, but I swear, the "all Trump voters are racists" trope is the left's version of QAnon. It's so transparently false, yet so many people are so fervent about it!
19% of black men voted for Trump in 2020. 10% of black women. 36% of Hispanic men. 30% of Hispanic women? Do we really not have a more nuanced explanation for this than "they're all racist"?! There are numerous reasons why people vote the way they do. I'd say (and argued in my "Why Black People Voted For Trump" piece) that race is way down on that list. And frankly, Joe Biden made, and continues to make, more racist gaffes than Trump ever did.
It's probably broadly fair to say that all racists voted for Trump (though even this is almost certainly simplistic). But to say that everybody who voted for Trump is a racist? A glancing analysis of the facts shows this doesn't make sense.
Yes, racial hatred (note, I specified that clearly) is rare. Do you think people were talking about micro-aggressions in the 60s? Nope. Why? because racial hatred was rife. Yet in 60 years, society has actually made significant strides on that front. People still resort to name-calling during arguments sometimes, sometimes that leads to a few punches being thrown, but it rarely goes beyond that. And of course, most black people go about their day, every day, with nothing racist happening at all. The last time somebody said something to me in real life that I'd describe as racist was about two years ago.
You're conflating two very different things with gay people calling themselves "queer" and black people being called the n-word. I have never, not even close, advocated for black people to use the n-word. I've never talked about reclaiming it. In fact, if you've read my article on the n-word, you'll know that I argue very clearly against both of these.
What I'm saying is that the power of the n-word is in black people's minds. Just as the power of the word "queer" is in yours. But you have a better point, because "queer" has a well understood meaning in the English language, completely separate from gay people, which is at best slightly derogatory. So your wish not to be labelled with it makes perfect sense.
The n-word has *no other purpose in the English language* except to denigrate black people. So 100% of its power is in the minds of black people. Racists believe the power is in their hands, but it's not. This is the point I think you're not getting. And it's really important. Every person who has ever tried to use this word against me has discovered this.
It's almost sad to see the expression on their faces when they see what happens when a black person truly doesn't buy into the idea that there's a slur to describe their skin. They're so confused and disappointed and filled with self-doubt. I want that expression to appear on the face of every single racist on the planet.
So sure, I'm not arguing that ideas we don't have words for are inexpressible (though I can mostly see the logic).I'm arguing that ideas about ourselves are only powerful if we believe them. And if we stop believing them, the people who use them to attack us eventually stop believing them too. I'd like to see more black people carefully examine their beliefs about the n-word.
I didn't say all Trump voters were racists, I said it was the strongest factor, and IO have read of many studies corroborating that. Sure, some voted because they hate the Democrats or they hate (their caricature of) liberals. But racism was far and away the strongest factor.
"The changing of the use of the word was important as a signal to others that the ideas were indeed changing/changed. Words express ideas and some ideas should not be acceptable to a civil society, not through laws and legislation but interactions between a moral and just people."
First, let me be crystal clear; I'm not *advocating* for the use of the n-word😅. I'd be very happy to see it disappear from the vocabulary of everybody on the planet. Black and white. I have never and would never direct it at anybody, but I also think it's ridiculous that any reference to it, even when clearly in context, is treated as an act of racism.
As for attitudes changing, we might be dealing with a "chicken and egg" situation here. Thankfully, children are almost always less bigoted and stupid than their parents were, especially as our societies become more diverse. But did people become less racist because they stopped saying Ni**er Town? Or did people stop saying Ni**er Town because they became lest racist. I suspect the latter.
In fact, I'd argue that the name being dropped was a sign that attitudes were already changing. A critical mass of non-racist thinking had to be reached before anybody felt strongly enough to take the map down. But you obviously have more insight than I do here, considering that it's your town.
I completely agree that words express ideas and that some ideas aren't acceptable in a civil society. I'm just trying to dig down past the idea that "you shouldn't insult people on the basis of their skin" and get to "what do you mean by 'insult people on the basis of their skin'?! That doesn't even make sense!"
The former is a good start. But to me, the latter is the goal.