By Eva Rosenfeld
The Communicator
Ann Arbor Community HS
1st Place
Division 4, News Writing
Bylined Opinion Article
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 it’s 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 doesn’t 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-word’s 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 – reflecting…a 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 can’t 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 they’re 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 can’t just write it off when it’s convenient. This is a microcosm of a broader problem: the idea of being “color-blind”, or disregarding the disparities between whites and non-whites by claiming that racial privilege no longer exists.
Finally, some equate black people saying words like “cracker” to white people’s 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.