Posted by
flagwaver on Sunday, July 20, 2008 10:01:30 PM
Once again the so-called “N-word” has made an appearance in the public eye and touched off a firestorm of controversy. In case anyone missed it, the Reverend Jesse Jackson actually used the so-called “N-word” when lamenting that Barack Obama was “talking down to n_ggers” about continuing to pursue faith based initiatives to help solve some of the problems that blacks face today, instead of relying solely on the government. Whether or not this was simple campaign rhetoric or not, and I personally think it was, is beside the point; the point is that Jackson chose to use a vile term in describing his alleged constituency.
The flap grew even hotter when it was discussed by the resident geo-political and renowned social commentators on “The View”, the sorry excuse for a talk show fronted by Barbara Walters, Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Elizabeth Hasselbeck, and some chick named Sherri whose main claim to fame is being the black woman to replace Star Jones on the show. They got into a discussion about it that included Whoopi and Sherri saying that it is perfectly fine for blacks to call each other n*gger, but that whites better not let it come from their mouths, and with Whoopi bringing la Hasselbeck to tears by telling her that blacks and whites live in “different worlds”.
What struck me about all of this is that anyone in the black community, much less a high profile person like Whoopi Goldberg would have the audacity to try to continue the myth that n*gger has some transcendent, positive meaning or connotation when used among blacks. I have been black for all of my life and I have rarely seen that word used as anything other than what it is, namely an insult. For a short time young black men walked around saying that their friends were their “n-words” and it may still go on today; but for as long as I can remember the adults that were around me only used that word as a put down. It was usually attached to a person that was lazy, shiftless, a drain in the community, and someone that was not particularly welcome in the community because of the above mentioned traits. I am not defending their use of that word here, but simply trying to point out that even among blacks the word is most definitely a negative depiction of blacks.
But my broader point is that as far as I am concerned, the “n-word” is one that none of us should be using to refer to one another. No matter how much people try to “reclaim” the word, nothing they do is going to redefine it; the age old meaning is going to hold true. There is a reason that Jews don’t refer to each other as “kike”; that Hispanics/Latinos do not call themselves “spics”; why Chinese do not call themselves “chinks”; why Vietnamese do not call themselves “gooks”, and why Italians do not call themselves “dagos”. They don’t do it because they know that their feeble attempts at “reclaiming” a slur does not undo the pain, hurt, and racism embodied in that word. Some words are unchanging, and quite honestly they should be unchanged. Some words need to be preserved to show our younger generations just how vile and hurtful some words can be, and they should be taught that these words are anathema to any thinking person trying to function in an ethnically diverse society.
Slurring a person or ethnic group is never alright, even if the slur comes from within the group; in fact, slurring from inside the group may be worse than if it comes from outside the group. When a person uses one of these words to attack someone within his own ethnicity, he is unleashing the worst word he can find in an effort to destroy that person; there can be no doubt about the intent if another black person gets angry at me and drops the “n-word” on me. So instead of trying to “reclaim” a slur, or trying to justify its use, we should be doing everything we can to eradicate it from our vocabularies, and we should damned sure be teaching our children what the word means and why it is on the same level as a curse word. Because when we make excuses for its use, all we do is keep the word in circulation and give others our implicit imprimatur for its use.
Maybe Whoopi, Sherri, and others will keep that in mind the next time a Michael Richards does off the deep end, because it’s just a “term of endearment.”