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When N-Word Becomes the In-Word
Guess what? We're going to bury the N-word, just like they did at the NAACP convention in Detroit a couple of weeks ago."
"Really? How are civilized folks supposed to express their simultaneous affection and contempt for black people if you do that?"
"They can just say: 'N-word.' "
"I thought you said you were burying the N-word."
"No, we're burying the word that rhymes with trigger. America should make the switch to a childish sounding euphemism so that nobody's feelings are ever hurt again."
"Sounds like an exercise in semantic sleight-of-hand if you ask me."
"The keepers of the nation's racial conscience have decreed it. Who are you to argue with their collective wisdom?"
"But this is lunacy. The existential reality the word represents is obviously still with us. Only the packaging will change."
"Switching to N-word is a lot like going metric after a lifetime of measuring by inches and miles, but some words are just too offensive to use under any circumstances."
"So, we're supposed to use a two-syllable abstraction that means the same thing?"
"Exactly. Now, I know it doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, but with a little practice, N-word will eventually flow as naturally as the word it replaces."
"Look, I understand why some people want to bury a hateful word, but wouldn't a coherent analysis of how racism permeates the deepest structures of American life be a better use of everyone's time? Who profits when black people are willfully ignorant about how societal disparities come about? Boycotting one painful word while living in the moral vacuum created by our inability to have an honest discussion about race and class isn't liberating."
"I hope you're not implying that burying the word is some kind of publicity stunt."
"Search your own conscience for the answer to that one. Does the elevation of N-word mean that Michael Richards is free to use it with impunity in his stand-up act?"
"It probably wouldn't be a good idea for anyone from the cast of 'Seinfeld,' or 'Friends' or 'Frasier' use it before it achieves critical mass as a term of endearment among blacks."
"I'm sorry, but I just can't picture a self-respecting, or even a self-loathing, black man ever shouting -- yo, are you my N-word?"
"There you go again -- putting limits on the black man's ability to turn lemons into lemonade. Why you always hatin' on a brother?"
"What? N-word, please!"
This month, 80-year-old Ralph Papitto, chairman of the board of Roger Williams University in Rhode Island, had to resign after it was confirmed he used a racial slur to refer to blacks at a meeting of the board.
Mr. Papitto was complaining about pressure from the university to diversify its all white 16-member board when the racist slur "kind of slipped out."
Old-school guys like Ralph Papitto don't use euphemisms when the original words still work for them. In a racist tirade, the man who donated $7 million to the university's law school, which also bears his name, dropped the original N-bomb to refer to black candidates for the board. Obviously, they haven't gotten around to burying the word in Rhode Island.
Later, a chastened and apologetic Mr. Papitto claimed not to have ever used the word before in his nine decades of life. How likely is that for an old white guy surrounded by other old white guys?
"The first time I heard it was on television and then rap music or something," he told a TV reporter in a transparently ridiculous attempt to assert his racial innocence. All you can do is laugh until it hurts.
Too bad Mr. Papitto didn't refer to the black candidates by the far more acceptable N-word. He wouldn't have had to remove his name from the law school if he had.
To paraphrase Chris Rock, I love black people, but I hate the therapeutic use of the N-word. There's something dishonest about fixating on one word while neglecting the much larger discussion that should accompany it.
While the NAACP was burying a racial slur in Detroit, dozens of black parents across the country were burying children shot down in the streets of major cities by black people.
Instead of mounting fake funerals, the national leadership of the NAACP and every other black organization should attend the real funerals of black children slain in every major American city every day. Seeing this endless parade of caskets might be enough to help us all recover a language that speaks to the urgency of the moment.
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35 Comments so far
Show AllI must be one of the few people who find the use of the euphemism "N-word" pathetic and offensive because it so clearly expresses how infantilized Amerikan culture is.
It isn't just the "N"-word, it's the use of ANYTHING-word, e.g. when a woman on a TV court show whined, "Your Honor, he called me the 'C-word'!"
There is a popular tendency, even among intellectuals and progressives who should know better, to cope with admittedly controversial and sensitive cultural artifacts by seeking to suppress and vociferously condemn them-- as if condemning and suppressing the symbol is part of condemning the underlying idea or perspective.
It's just as Orwellian as government Newspeak and doublethink.
I certainly don't advocate encouraging or lauding the use of offensive speech or symbols, but I think the far better course is to refuse to empower such things by trying to implement a zero-tolerance policy that strives to banish and euphemize troublesome terms and concepts out of existence instead of allowing them to find their own level. But I expect we'll stay at the "Oooh, you said a BAD WORD!" level.
I learned the N word growing up in East Oakland in the early fifties. Without thinking I adopted it and used it frequently for years. But I personally buried that word when my son was born. That was one part of my childhood I didn't want to pass on to him. It is just a word, but it can only be buried on a personal level.
Hoa binh
old sayings.... kill a mule, buy another. kill a "n word", hire another
get you cotton picking hands off that. (think..who were the cotton pickers)
i have not seen you in a coon's age. not talking about raccoon.
how old?....i learned them in the 1950's
outside the 'big' city....these attitudes are alive and well.
Heh, one has to laugh at the child like qualities of presumed innocence when we hear things like gosh darnit. Knowing full well the connotation is still god damnit, but we assume that the highest power in the universe is hung up on semmantics like we are and accepts our revision of the same thought. Simple minds...make the best racists.
I thought the N word would be swept away just like the toxic aftermath of Katrina in New Orleans. Not so. It keeps bubbling to the surface like a rotting, festering carcass whose stench won't disappear. In fact, use of the N word and the per-mutations are glorified and in common use, ironically by those most negatively impacted by its use. You don't hear "wetback" or "spic" or "slant/slope" in common use by other groups. If so, you will be called on it. The "N" word; along with other "popular" phrases such as "those b----tches" and "them H-----es" remain in common daily use by an unacceptable large number of African Americans, with no challenge by peers or adults. So yeah, harp on Imus and we all feel good about. Years back Bill Cosby spoke up about personal responsibility and was called to task by "leaders of the community." And others put Oprah to task why she helped fund and build a school in Africa and her reasons for not doing in U.S. The "n" is a problem allowed to continued but there must be self responsibility, self awareness, self respect and self restraint which is not being exercised. Until I see more involvement and real efforts by African Americans to stop the use of the "N" word "...ggas or ...ggers," I'll stay clear of this and focus my energy on ending the occupation in Iraq. Too many died and suffered during the Civil Rights Movement of the 60's only to see the "results" manifested in misoginitic videos and "me first and only" mentality perpetuated by the cultural "icons" such as athletes and musicians, who remain silent on the issue. Their silence I interpret as compliance so as not to upset "their base of fans" - which is no different from how the DEMS explioit the anti-war activists and the GOP exploits the religious right. I'll just brush this issue aside with the same non-chalance as our elected leaders brush aside our occpation in Iraq and the death and misery associated with it. Bring troops home now.
test...
"spick"
test...
"hunky"
test:
"dago"
test:
"queer"
Joe toxic,
You missed Tony Norman's whole point. The infantile polite removal of slurs does nothing to remove the underlying racism.
The dagos and hunkys and micks and polacks (we have no spicks) here in in Pittsburgh never use "nigger" any more, but remain openly racist.
Joe toxic,
You missed Tony Norman's whole point. The infantile polite removal of slurs does nothing to remove the underlying racism.
The dagos and hunkys and micks and polacks (we have no spicks) here in in Pittsburgh never use "n _ _ _ _ r" any more, but remain openly racist.
btw, this is my second attempt at this post - it allows all those other slurs, and even obscenities like "fuck" but blocked my post with "that word", even when clearly used in a non-slur context (unlike the other slurs) and enclosed in quotes.
BTW, for you non-"yinzers" (not a slur), columnist Tony Norman is a black man, and the only decent columnist on the Post Gazette staff.
oooh!
Now, let's try this one!
test:
"hymie"
...what fun - I feel like a naughty child again!
And how could I forget!
test:
"chink"
"gook"
Got to get up some courage for this one...here goes...
test:
"kike"
The NAACP must be searching for relevancy.
Harmful or offensive words are often adopted by the people they were meant to objectify. Homosexuals have largely adopted "fag." Doing so takes away some of the word's rhetorical power. By "burying" it and running away from it the NAACP just affirms its strength. If they're smart, they want it to be offensive, so when the occasional white comedian goes on a drug-induced tyrade with that word, the NAACP can resurface and act like it means something.
When will people wake up to the fact that this is a cultural conflict and not a racial one? Almost no one in this country would use "The N Word" or treat a person poorly because they are differently colored. Yes, you heard that right. The problem occurs in areas where the whites think that the ghetto culture of "hip-hop" or "rap" music applies to all black people. Wouldn't these whites be surprised to know that most blacks do NOT live in the ghetto and do NOT embrace the violence, ebonics speech, and weirdness of ghetto culture. The fact that most whites are not aware of this fact does not indicate hatred or racist thought -- only the fact that they have lived their entire lives in a racially segregated community. Perhaps they would desire to learn the truth of our country's racial (and cultural) demographics.
while your at it test beaner and rag head. Also you might might want to listen to wat Snoop dog ( i think) had to say to this subject. go back a wayz to the Don Imus debate. It's a very interesting point but I don't remeber it well enough tonite.
Dear BBtheGOD,
Yeah, sure, racism isn't due to 500 years or enslavement and oppression and disenfranchisement and discrimination and lynching, much or which continuing to this day, it is just due to distaste of a certain style of dress and music and speech in the early 21st century.
It appears that it is you who isn't familiar with hip-hop or rap. While there is the violent and misogynistic "gangsta-rap", much of hip hop and rap speaks to the culture of zero opportunity, discrimination, and oppression by white racist cops.
Hip hop has been embraced around the world and emulated in dozens of languages.
Please read or listen to this democracy Now episode:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/18/1458248
The solution to racism isn't to force blacks to act like white suburbanites - in fact such an attitude is practically the definition of racism.
In my town, in a poor white neighborhood that borders a poor black one, I see instances of outright racism every day - It serves the very useful purpose of making sure the working class whites direct their blame on the nig_ers (CD deletes the post if the whole word is used) rather than other than their capitalist bosses.
But as most CD readers are rich, bourgeois, suburban whites - plus maybe a few Obama-style blacks, I wouldn't expect them to understand this.
And correctivelens,
As a city-dweller, I know of NO gay person who has adopted the word "fag" - with it's implication of the practice of burning homosexuals at the stake, ("faggot" being a bundle of sticks for a fire) - it remains a abhorrent term.
However many gays, particularly those on the left, have wholeheartedly embraced the word "queer". while ones like the pathetically sold-out congressman Barney Frank still prefer "gay".
..and we've just tested two more words!
Our obsession with, and fear of "bad words" never ceases to amaze me and it's something I really don't understand. Consider:
Calling a black person a "n_gger" or even "boy" will get me kicked off a bus fined and even jailed. Call the same person strange fruit and the same results are doubtful. Call a white kid "boy" or wigger and the results would likely depend on the context of the conversation.
Say f_ck and I am a lowlife demonstrating low intelligence but say fornication and all is right with the world. Sh_t = obscenity, turd is better, excrement is perfectly fine so feel free to roll around in that word all day long.
These days using the word gay to to describe merriment is like soooo gay.
In the electronics industry where I spent 16 years as a technician the use of the words dykes (wire cutters) and jig (a custom or makeshift device used as a physical or electronic adapter) are both frowned upon if not banned outright. The workplace fear of the word dykes is pretty easy to see but several times I have claimed to not understand why the word jig is bad. I usually get an answer like "Some people might take it as a racial slur". It's quite amusing to watch supervisors squirm as I continue to feign ignorance and they try in vain it to explain that someone might think it's short for jigaboo without actually saying the word, LMAO!
I can tell you that you're a load your mother should have swallowed without using ANY "bad words" and you'll know just what I mean although the word "load" could mean a load of just about anything the implication is clear.
If the KKK denounces lazy mexicans, greedy jews, and stupid black people will we be comforted that at least they didn't say lazy beaners, greedy kikes, and stupid n_ggers?
Interestingly prohibitions against cursing or swearing are primarily religious in nature and are quite literal prohibitions though we often refer to any "bad word" as cursing or swearing. Technically "god damn it" is a curse and so is "may you do poorly on your SATs" though in normal circumstances most people would not think to accuse you of cursing at them for the latter. Swearing is a similarly confused in modern usage - technically Shit, Damn, F_ck and piss cannot be considered to be swearing although commonly refered to as such yet we SWEAR upon the bible that prohibit swearing before taking the witness stand or when taking an oath of office. Please, somebody slide a chair under my ass (non-swear, non-curse word) before I fall down from laughing so hard.
Bad words are like the evil eye, they only contain as much power as our feeble superstitious minds give them.
Even though I fully realize how ridiculous this all is I would still be mortified to have a black person catch me using the word n_gger while cracker, honkey and white devil merely make me chuckle. Oh what a tangled societal web we weave with our stupidity.
I don't remember the exact words but at the end of the movie South Park - Bigger Longer and Uncut Mrs Bravslaski (aka Kyle's mom) says something like "I hope we've all learned our lesson here that it's okay to kill, maim, and mutilate each other as long as nobody uses naughty words". I think burying the word N_gger would make Mrs Bravlaski very proud.
P.S. On a related note I think ridiculous hate speech laws will only serve to promote REAL hate.
PJD:
You're right, I really meant to say "queer," thank you. BUT, "fag" is making it's way in to gay, culture, honest. I don't mean to out-gay you, but as a resident of a very, very gay neighborhood in a major western city (I need to retain some anonymity here :)) I do hear my neighbors say that word, but still with a slightly derisive tone. I saw a man with a shirt just the other day that said nothing but that word in lowercase letters on the chest. I assume he meant it out of irony.
correctivelens:
Perhaps not the gay man on the street but Dan Savage (America's favorite gay sex advice columnist - of The Stranger, a weekly alternative newspaper in Seattle) did try to "reclaim" the word as they say by encouraging his readers to start their letters and emails with the salutation of "Hey Faggot". He stopped this a couple of years ago however for reasons I can't quite remember.
I highly recommend his column (Savage Love) which can be found online at www.thestranger.com under the category "The Usual Suspects" and in a number of other weeklies across the country.
He also:
Caused a minor media flap by claiming to have licked the door knobs and telephone receivers in the Iowa campaign headquarters of Gary Bauer.
Wrote a book about his and his life partner's experience adopting a child.
Wrote a book called Skipping Towards Gamorah in which he describes his quest to break all of the seven deadly sins.
Showed that it IS legal for gays to marry by marrying Amy Jennings, a lesbian columnist at The Stranger.
Is responsible via a contest for adding the word santorum (as in former senator Rick Santorum) to the english lexicon (Google the key words santorum+fecal+frothy for the full definition)
If we can all just quit treating each other like crap I think the words will take care of themselves whether we keep them in the lexicon or not.
Apologies, just went to www.thestranger.com and it appears they have changed their format a bit so that Savage Love no longer appears under "The Usual Suspects". It is now the first link under either "Home" or "Columns".
Hmmmm,
Since descrimination certainly doesn't end once you have the job I suppose we could all report to work in wardrobe that covers our identity from head to toe, in a motley of black, white, brown, red and yellow of course. This uniform can be stuffed with an excess of padding when necessary to prevent fatso descrimination, pants will be bell bottoms to hide the platform shoes provided to the virtically challenged, and rose colored glasses to hide discrepencies in eye color.
In order to express individuality and to identify individuals we can all have randomly selected names displayed on our chests. These randomly selected names will be symbolic so as not to upset the illiterate and will be gender non-specific - hence the random selection.
EXAMPLE: "Hello happyface horse cube, how are you?"
"Very well indeed cloud bunny pogostick! Thank you for asking"
"Uh oh"
"Is something amiss cloud bunny pogostick?"
"Indeed happyface horse cube. By expressing your wellness you may offend our coleagues who are ill or who are well but are not VERY well. I'm going to have to notify blue hammer milkshake that you receive some time in the mediocracy retraining camps."
How's that?
Golly gee whiz, even them folks who spamsell vi@gra knows how to get around a robot word parsing mucheene. If I really wants to be a racizt person I can find a way to intimidate and/or offend you in public or private and you will know it by the smell of my putrid little soul...
All snark aside, Ted Rall (all seated may now rise and then bow in honor to America's #1 BullShit Detector) http://www.gocomics.com/rallcom/2007/07/16/ hit the subject last Monday with his hammer so hard it went "twang!".
Don't you know the word that rhymes with tigger is used to call Arabs "sand n.ig gers" by Americans? I guess it's okay to use the word that way now.
Caucasian racists coined the word; now that street-smart "tiggers" adopted the word and call each other that, Caucasians disapprove of it. It was okay when THEY used the word, however. If African-Americans want to call each other that, why should it bother anyone? They're the only ones who should be able to get away with it. It's THEIR word exclusively. They can do whatever they want with it. Bury it, keep it alive, whatever.
Only in America....
hey mbruton,
There is a funny little organization that currently uses these funny looking costumes in a variety of colors, with pointy little hoods with eye holes. They have this little i.d. patch over their hearts, I think it says KFC,they must really like their chicken.
But you know what? they forgot to leave a hole for their mouthes to eat the chicken.
But any how, do you think they would get their feelins hurt iffen we borrowed their design for custom office apparrell? Hmmm, better check first could lead to some kind o' designer infringement, and we really wouldn't want to offend the Kernel.
In place of the KFC logo we could put the name tags i.e. cloud bunny pogo stick, of course it would have to be in brail as well, and, Hmmmm, we better check this one out too, with them sight challenged folk fillen their way through the office area, we might have a sudden increase of folks claimin to be sightly challenged, and lingerin a bit too long on the brail. I see legal problums on the horizen. Thanks for sharing.
LMJ 222555111..........still lookin
"The dagos and hunkys and micks and polacks (we have no spicks) here in in Pittsburgh never use "nigger" any more, but remain openly racist."
Oh I hear them use it all the time. And what's also sad, is that they're being screwed too. Our hispanic population is growing btw. There are a lot of them in Beechview now, a neighborhood in which integration's results have been mixed, which is unfortunately the case with most of our neighborhoods. That's why on one hand I like to see integration, it also worries me because I know how people can be and how not everyone wants to get along. All it takes is one incident, one moron.
I'd like to bury all the words. I can't help but be offended by them all. Maybe I just need a thicker skin as some would suggest. I'm partly Polish, and to this day when people use the word "polock". My dad even uses it affectionately yet it bothers me.
Think about the word "geek". It used to be an ugly word, referring to someone who ate live chickens or something. Then it merely became derisive, referring to someone who was really smart but had no social skills and was into comics, sci-fi (I guess me and Tony Norman would qualify for being comics fans). Now the word "geek" has been embraced by those who were once the brunt of it.
"In my town, in a poor white neighborhood that borders a poor black one, I see instances of outright racism every day - It serves the very useful purpose of making sure the working class whites direct their blame on the nig_ers (CD deletes the post if the whole word is used) rather than other than their capitalist bosses."
No doubt. And of course those black people often will blame those working class whites also, when neither group really has any power over anyone. We're all just taught and conditioned to hate one another without looking at the root causes of crime and such. White people who see an influx of black people into their community and then an increase of crime often don't see capitalism and the legacy of slavery at work, nor do they take into account the criminality that exists amongst their own. All they know is that things were fine until black people moved in. And as you said, it all just serves to stifle solidarity among working and poor people. Some of those whites will even embraced right-wing ideologies thinking that the Republicans will protect them from angry blacks who they feel hate them and want to hurt them. It's what they see on tv and hear on radio. They see blacks getting carted away by cops and hear angry rhetoric. In turn, black people experience racism from whites, and it traumatizes them also, teaching them contempt for whites.
And they're all victims. Black and white. Thankfully at least some of us resist the baiting though not nearly enough.
"But as most CD readers are rich, bourgeois, suburban whites - plus maybe a few Obama-style blacks, I wouldn't expect them to understand this."
Well count me in the working-class white guy metalhead urbanite column. :)
I like Tony Norman also. He's one of Pittsburgh's treasures, and he's a comics fan also which is cool. :)
"The solution to racism isn't to force blacks to act like white suburbanites - in fact such an attitude is practically the definition of racism."
LOL. Take a look at a lot of those white suburbanites though. Half of them try to act like black urbanites. :) Especially the youth.
I think if that if we chip away and dismantle institutional racism and classism, bigotry will fall down also. Reparations imo are key to this, as well as universal health care, universal education, and a fair living wage. Poverty and a bad economy often fuel racial tensions, pitting working and poor people against one another, making them think that they need to "survive" and that other groups threaten that survival.
However, there are times when I also agree with the NOI's view that black people should be given ten states as part of reparations. It seems to me anymore that the relationship between blacks and whites in this country is like a bad marriage and that a divorce is in order or at least a period of separations so that we could all heal. All we do is give each other reasons to resent one another. Maybe if we just left each other alone for a while, we could eventually come back together.
I'm half-asleep and not making much sense I know. :) It's just that lately I've become increasingly concerned with hate and the hate that it can create. Inequality, be it based on race, class, gender, or orientation, will be the USA's undoing. We can halt it too.
I never quite understood how a word could infuriate an individual.
Being an Italian/American I heard all the usual words growing up in a mixed ethnic neighborhood and it never bothered me...I always thought the people uttering those words were just stupid and juvinile.
The term...YO MAMA...the cross over generic equivalent of a put down also never bothered me.
I've concluded that one has to be pretty stupid to respond to these words and if people stopped responding to them the words would become meaningless and lose their power to offend.
Is there a single Caucasian out there that gets offended by being referred to as WHITEY.
And further more why is the SMILEY FACE yellow
GARBOTOO, you have to understand the context from which these words sprung.
Call a black person a "coon" and see how they react. Are they stupid as you would suggest for being offended by it?
What I think we need to do as a society is not merely develop tougher hides. Instead of just banning words, we need to look at why people use them, and create a culture where people don't want to use those words to describe others. But not out of a fear of getting fired from a job or being kicked in the stomach. It's just wrong.
"im rubber. your glue."
Thanks...I forgot that one...THAT SAYS IT ALL
Hey, if it works for you, cool.