Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
What Happens When the President Uses the “N” Word?
“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet” — Juliet of the House of Capulet
I’ve written columns for many outlets over the past 15 years, and one practice I’ve always maintained is to spell out the whole “N” word when it is being used in an historical context, as in, “Slave owners referred to blacks as “N.” I do the same when quoting another person, as in, “He called him a “N.” I’ve also reserved the right to spell it out in condemnation of the word itself, as in, “It’s wrong to call anyone a “N.”
My thinking was that the “N” word is an insult when intended that way. I owe my American brothers and sisters with superior protective pigment the courtesy of not using that word as an insult, because it is worse than other words on the insult scale.
However, I don’t owe anyone a distortion of history. I don’t owe anyone less than exactitude when it comes to a quote, lest I be distorting history myself.
Yet every single editor I’ve had changes the spelled out word to the abbreviated “N word” before my column is published (I’m using the abbreviated “N” word now instead of spelling out the word, in recognition of Ricochet’s past practice).
Don’t get me wrong – I don’t use the word casually. I don’t use it in my own conversations and have not done so in decades. I think the only time I ever really used it was during a fistfight on the playground. There are different rules when throwing down — I would get called a cracker, a honky, etc. and I would yell out as many reciprocal remarks as I could. None of the white or black kids watching considered it racist. Afterwards, even the combatants did not. When you are in a fight, the rules of decorum are suspended. You’re trying to insult the guy you’re punching in the face.
Although I must say, when the full “N” word is used so much in song — and when we give those songs awards like Grammys and Oscars — appropriate use of the word becomes a blur.
As for my own thinking on spelling out the full “N” word in writing, I’ve always thought it was shaped by my coming from a predominately black community. Blacks are as smart as me. They know the difference between an historical reference, a quote, and an insult. What a great offense to think they would not!
I also loathe patronizing anyone. Many other white kids who grew up in predominantly black neighborhoods took on the role of what we then called “Wiggers,” an amalgam of two words you can guess for a white kid who dressed black, acted black, walked black (yes, there was always a walk) and talked black. With apologies to Rachel Dolezal, the white NAACP leader who has been posing as black, I never found it necessary. The black kids knew I was white and accepted me even if I spoke like a nerdy Philadelphia lawyer. Respect for one another means accepting differences, not changing them. The language differences didn’t hold true to racial lines anyway. It was individual. The black kids on the honor roll (I wasn’t) spoke more like an English gentleman than I did. So much for white or black identity. I maintain that there are economic class identities that have nothing to do with race, but that’s for another conversation.
I don’t act differently around black people. I don’t act differently around gay people. I am who I am, to quote my favorite sailor.
Yet a contrary idea crept into my thinking over the years. Perhaps it’s not just political correctness that compels us to not use the full “N” word even in an historical context. Perhaps it is politeness, manners, and courtesy.
As an analogy, there are biological words for male and female body parts, and there are some juvenile, crass colloquialisms for them that are curse words. Those are words I would not use in polite society, for it is coarse to do so.
Perhaps, through the efforts of black people who I credit with changing my thinking on this, the “N” word has been relegated to the hinterland of bad language, alongside George Carlin’s seven dirty words you can’t say on TV. Perhaps the word is now so rude, so irritating, that it is uncomfortable to hear or read. Not illegal, just simply frowned upon as a matter of courtesy and taste. I would not spell out the dirty words for the vagina even in a quote, instead using something like @#$^%. Perhaps the “N” word is simply in that category now.
I can live with that because it is not political correctness. I acknowledge social convention, and often lament when it is frivolously violated. We need community standards to be civilized, and if the community standard is that the “N” word must not be spelled out to maintain sublime human discourse, then I can live with that. That it also makes black people happy is a bonus.
Yesterday, President Barack Obama recorded a podcast with Marc Maron. In the course of making an argument about racism, he said the “N” word. Not as I typed it, mind you: he said the whole word.
So, now I’m in a quandary. I thought the way to go here was to use the abbreviated “N” word and not the whole word, even in an historical context, simply as a matter of good form. Then the nation’s chief executive used the whole word.
We are then faced with revisiting this issue. What shall we do? May we use the word in a non-insulting historical context as the President just did, or shall we not follow his lead on that?
NB — Please don’t tell me folks of one color can use the word and folks of another can’t. Feel free to say it, but it’s going to bounce right off me if you do. We’re all equal.
Published in General
Is this the beginning of that mythical “conversation about race” that we are constantly told by pundits that we need to have? I just want to clarify when that conversation starts so I can jump in. I wouldn’t want to miss it.
You’d think that almost seven years into the first half-black presidency that we’d start that conversation… I honestly can’t wait. I wonder what it’s going to be like.
A personal anecdote:
When I was in the Army, one of my fellow soldiers got in to some trouble over the use of the word in question. He is a white guy, and he roomed with a black guy. Now, they were very good friends, and had taken to calling each other “the N word”. Not as a joking insult, but the way two black men may refer to each other, as friends. Now, everyone had heard these two refer to each other this way before, all the way up the the company commander. But the white fella made the mistake one day of saying it to his friend in a public space, where a black man of sufficient rank heard it. I won’t say the white soldier was drawn and quartered, at least not in the literal sense. He was however given an Article 15 and demoted.
I tend to think that its the meaning of the word in context, not the word itself, that is important. But others don’t see it that way. So, you know: PC.
Years ago, my friend/roommate and I got into a spirited, but respectful debate over the use of the N word. My friend is black, I’m not, and the context of our debate was a white college baseball coach who had recently lost his job (this would have been 2005 or so) when he attempted to compliment one of his players by saying roughly “he’s a good kid. There’s no N in him.”
I didn’t think the guy should lose his job. Ultimately my friend won the job retention debate by pointing out that every rival coach in the division would use that line against the team for years. “Mrs. Jones, do you really want your son to play for that guy?” They’d never again get a quality player. Fair point.
But the more important part of the debate was who gets to use the word. I was hardly fighting for its use, (it wasn’t a word I was raised hearing, let alone used) but rather pointing out the hypocrisy of “he can, you can’t.” LaMonte looked at me and said “why would you WANT to use that word?”
He didn’t use the word. And I didn’t. And I’ve never thought twice about it since.*
*Though my penchant for precisely quoting Chris Rock and Dave Chapelle has been curtailed.
This also goes on among professional baseball teammates and among musical group members, especially blues bands, and if the white participants get careless, it can bite them. Context is key, but watch out for who is in the audience and doesn’t get it in the context.
No, we may not use the word. The President was just using the forbidden word as Liberals so self consciously use other inappropriate language, as a sign that they are cool. I like your analysis.
Noodle?
There’s a pretty safe rule here: if in doubt, don’t, unless there is something significant to be gained by it.
Arguably, the president’s use of the word made his argument more forcible. It was all the more so coming from someone whom we usually expect to deploy a professional vocabulary.
OK, I’ll partly take this on. We’re equal, but certain insults are used against certain people, and normally in polite society those people have a little more leeway to use those words without offending other people. This can be overdone to a ridiculous extent when political correctness enters the picture, but it’s not originally PC. It’s a natural chivalrous instinct.
Louis CK’s take on this is correct (yes, yes, I know, he’s only a comedian). But saying the “N-word” – as in literally using the expression “N-word” as opposed to saying the word itself – is a cowards way out. Anyone who uses the expression “N-word” puts the actual word in your head without having the moral courage to say it themselves. Not saying it is a game played by the media.
This article hints at the N-word a lot and yet the actual word itself is in everyones head when they read the article. When do we stop acting like children about this? It’s a horrible word because of the horrible connotations it evokes but it is not going to disappear until EVERYONE stops using it. Pretty obvious no?
Nine New Neckties, Nightshirt, Nose
This goes for all such words… I appreciate the CoC on this. Asterisks are not worth much.
That said, it can’t be fully avoided in historical contexts.
Nexican.
Most of us don’t have an occasion where the use of the word under discussion is needed. Answer to your question in the context described is yes.
And in my thoughts, it seems that, in other than special relationship situations such as Spin raised, this word is not commonly used by those in our principal cultural environment without almost immediate negative reactions. IOW, the word is in the same category with derogatory words used to describe immigrants of various ethnicities here over the last 150 years. I’d be surprised to hear anyone here at Ricochet uses this word in other than a context matching the OP questions.
Is my thinking wrong?
Edit: And the President is ok to use the word in his comments, but I don’t think his argument is particularly valid. The Left uses these kinds of points to transfer the ideas related to ‘racism’ to their political opponents. My hope is this doesn’t work much longer.
Nifty
Include me in your list of editors.
I don’t know why that word bothers me as much as it does, but I cannot bear it, and I always edit it out.
I can’t bear to read it or hear it.
Stuff for the psychologists, I guess.
The word is “[Editor’s note: I believe we all know what it is. Given that quite some number of people on this thread agree that it’s unusually offensive when spelled in full; given that no one is here to express bonhomie in rap; and given that Ricochet’s Code of Conduct clearly prohibits vulgar language, it doesn’t belong here. Feel free to make the case that it belongs elsewhere: a perfectly legitimate political point, which we always encourage. But obviously, it doesn’t belong here.]” It’s rude to use it as a put down. It’s perfectly acceptable to use it as an expression of bonhomie in a rap. If we didn’t torture ourselves over it, there would be no big deal. Grow up, America.
The Editor has proven my point. Thank you, Sir or Madam. You’re my best nigger.
Tommy, regarding your question “What shall we do?” – I certainly won’t take Barack Obama as a role model. Vulgar people do all kinds of things best avoided, and I don’t miss those things any more than I miss using words that give unnecessary offense. If he were to refer to Michelle by a term from a gutter rap I’d not take any cue from that either.
I won’t use the word in print and I don’t wish to read it. I will occasionally use it in a movie quote — it’s not in any songs I would sing.
The “lost” Tarantino film True Romance features the magnificent “Chesterfield scene”, which is not at all safe for work, or anywhere else for that matter. But you get a crackling performance with Dennis Hopper and Christopher Walken. That’s what it takes to pull this off.
Gary Oldman and Tarantino himself fail to hit the note credibly, and that’s why Hopper and Walken get the big bucks.
I do not look to this president for an example of how to conduct myself under any circumstances. It’s no skin off my nose.
Casey – Just say “No”.
For the record, my dear Ricochet editors, I’ve noticed mainstream media who are quoting the President spelling out the N word.
What then does that make us? Cowards, or ahead of the curve?
Nervous.
Yes.
May Blacks be merciful after the revolution.
And Neighborly.
It makes us an institution that applies its Code of Conduct even to the President of the United States.
Noteworthy.
Now if we can just make the Affordable Care Act a violation of the Code of Conduct…
It makes us a website with a Code of Conduct that prohibits the use of vulgarities. This is clearly a word that makes polite people flinch, so … not for Ricochet.
Flinch more than “President Hillary” or “President Christie?”
Nonuple Nystagmus
Different kind of flinch. Don’t overthink this one. If it’s on this list? Consider replacing it with the one on the left. Why cause an unnecessary sense of distaste among our friends? I’m in agreement with you about the harm it’s done to us to stop caring that what we wear looks clean, adult, decent, and presentable.* Same principle.
*I think you put too much of the blame on yoga pants, though — which are really not all too different from shorts or tight jeans, in immodesty — and not enough on tattoos and piercings, which is the fad that said to me, “We’re ruined. We now think it’s cool to look like the underclass.”