op-ed

the n-word

eva rosenfeld

Hard R, soft R, in a song, in everyday

speech, in front of black people, in front
of white people, the variables make no
difference; white people should not use
the N-word.
From 1619 to about 1860, roughly two
and a half centuries, black people were
kidnapped from their homelands. They
were brought to the United States on
slave ships with conditions so brutal
that many died on the trip over. Did
they survive, they were deemed property and condemned to a life of hard
labor and violence at the hands of white
people.
Even after the Civil War and the outlawing of slavery, black people were still
treated as inhuman; their oppressors
continued to murder them on account
of their race and fought to refuse as
many of their human rights as they
could think up.
Today, the effects of all this still rule
our social systems. A Pew Research
Center analysis of government data
from 2009 found that the median net
worth of black households was $5,677,
versus the median net worth of white
households at $113,159. White people
still reap the benefits of these centuries
of oppression, and black people the
repercussions.
Over the course of this, a word was
used to assert control over black people
and maintain these hierarchies. It was
spat as a neat little justification as black
people in America were enslaved, beaten, lynched, raped, denied basic human
rights, denied education. That word
is the N-word. So as a white person, if
you choose to use that word, that is the
context in which you are using it - as a
tool of oppression.
A common argument for the universal
use of the N-word is the idea that its
meaning has changed, and so its okay
to say now. However, its meaning has
been changed as an act of reclamation
by the black community. The reclamation of a word or term occurs when
a group adopts a term that was once

disparaging for the group as its own.

It is not logically within the rights of
the oppressive group to reclaim a term.
Moreover, this word has been reclaimed
as something that black people can do
that whites cannot, which is powerful in
its own right because among the things
that white people have more access
to than black people are: education,
employment, freedom from incarceration, and living spaces in any neighborhood. So white people can get over
being denied access to this one word.
But frankly, its meaning should deter us
enough.
The turmoil and confusion that surround this word makes sense. In a few
short decades, the word switched from
being used as a flagrantly derogatory
term unto black people to a reappropriated term used affectionately and in
music by black people (it still is used as
a derogatory term, but for a long time
that was its only meaning).
In 1940, Langston Hughes wrote, The
word n***** to colored people is like a
red rag to a bull. Used rightly or wrongly, ironically or seriously, of necessity
for the sake of realism, or impishly for
the sake of comedy, it doesnt matter.
Negroes do not like it in any book or
play whatsoever, be the book or play
ever so sympathetic in its treatment of
the basic problems of the race. Even
though the book or play is written by a
Negro, they still do not like it. The word
n*****, you see, sums up for us who
are colored all the bitter years of insult
and struggle in America. Since Hughes
wrote this, parts of it have become
outdated; his never acceptable ideology exemplifies the N-words previous
meaning.
In 1970, Clarence Major published his
Dictionary of Afro-American Slang,
which offers the definition, used by
black people among themselves, it is a
racial term with undertones of warmth
and goodwill - reflectinga tragicomic
sensibility that is aware of black history. The word kaffir, a comparable

term used as a slur for black people in

South Africa, is nowhere close to being
used in an affectionate context, so it is
truly a phenomenon that the N-word
was so rapidly converted from its historical context.
But while it has adopted alternate
meanings, it cant be actually separated
from its historical context, and certainly
not as long as our society is still built
on structural racial oppression. White
people forget this- the context in which
theyre using the word. White youth are
the largest consumers of hip hop, so
they are primarily exposed to this word
in its reappropriated state, and are apt
to overlook the suffering the word has
inflicted and continues to inflict.
Another argument is that if we keep
applying a negative connotation to the
word it actually gives it the properties
to continue to be bad. But this school of
thought evades taking responsibility for
centuries of wrongdoings; we did the
damage, and we cant just write it off
when its convenient. This is a microcosm of a broader problem: the idea of
being color-blind, or disregarding the
disparities between whites and nonwhites by claiming that racial privilege
no longer exists.
Finally, some equate black people saying words like cracker to white peoples use of the N-word. While derogatory terms directed at white people might
be hurtful on an individual level, they
are not contributing to a greater system
of oppression and dehumanization, because white people are not systematically oppressed or dehumanized. So while
they may not be nice, they are not on
the same plane as slurs like the N-word
in terms of harmfulness.
White people can use the n-word.
Freedom of speech allows that entirely.
However, freedom of speech does not
protect us from the social consequences
of using a word, justify its use in any
way, or make its effects any less damaging.

th e co mmunicator

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