The n-word and me
I noticed that there’s a proposal to ban the n-word in Boston public schools:
“The critical thing is making sure the students understand that we want to do this with them and that this is not about punishing them,” said Sadiki Kambon, director of the Black Community Information Center.
“We don’t want them suspended or expelled — we just want them to get on board with us,” Kambon said.
Kambon and Imam Abdullah Faaruuq of the Mosque for the Praising of the Lord in Roxbury emerged from an hour-long meeting with Chang at school headquarters saying they were encouraged by the enthusiasm to support The Coalition to Ban the N-Word.
Kambon’s effort was quickly praised by other black community leaders.
“I think it’s critically important. They’re trying to create an atmosphere where the word will not be tolerated, and I think that makes all the cultural sense in the world,” said Darnell Williams, director of the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts.
My guess is that this is aimed more at black students’ use of the word than white ones, because the word has become rather casual among young black people today, partly as a result of rap music. Banning words is a very dangerous and slippery slope, although a school system has the power to ban lots of things that are usually considered rights (dress codes are standard in schools, for example). Schools maintain decorum, and trying to discourage the flinging of certain words around is part of that.
This is dangerous and troubling, though (and note some of the players, which makes me wonder what’s next for banning). When I was growing up, we kids would never even think of using such words or a host of others, in school or elsewhere. They were powerful and scary, and we didn’t ordinarily hear adults using them, either; it was a rare rare exception. You may have grown up in a different atmosphere, but that was the milieu in which I was raised, and my public high school was no stranger to minority students, either.
I’ve never used the n-word myself (except perhaps when directly quoting someone using it). Except for rap music—which I cannot stand and don’t voluntarily listen to—and movies and television and the like, I’ve never personally witnessed a person using it to address anyone.
Except for one time.
And that one time, the person was referring to me.
It happened when I was three years old. The elderly man across the street (who had probably been born in the 1870s, by my current calculations) said to me jokingly that I looked like “a little n***** baby.”
I had absolutely no idea what that was. But it didn’t sound like a pretty word, and the manner in which he said it didn’t sound nice, either. But when I asked him what the word meant, he just sort of chuckled at me.
By the way, this is what I looked like around that time. It was in the summer, when I played outdoors nearly every day and always got a very dark suntan (and no, I didn’t ordinarily carry a paper umbrella around; this was a gift I had been given and it only lasted a day before it broke):
My mother often used to call me something quite different, which she meant to be affectionate: sullen cherub.
That day, though, when I got home from across the street and asked her what the word n***** meant, she was very sharp with me.
“Where did you hear that?” she asked, frowning.
I told her that the old man across the street had called me that. She said it was a very very bad and rude word that meant the same as Negro people (which was the “right” word back then), but that I should never ever say it. And that was that.
But it scared me that a mere word could have such power, and I’ve remembered the incident all these years.
I find it amazing that neo can recall events from age three.
I suppose neo recalls her first steps.
I guess a precursor of things to come.
Cornhead:
You might be very interested to read this post about my first memory, and memory of childhood in general.
By the way, I remember a great deal from age three, and quite a bit from even earlier. I believe that the reason I remember the incident related in this n-word post is the emotional element–it was both disturbing and mysterious at the same time.
Sadiki Kambon, Imam Abdullah Faaruuq of the Mosque for the Praising of the Lord in Roxbury, and Chang.
Yep. Sure sounds like Boston, where the Cabots talk only to the Lodges, and the Lodges talk only to God.
As one who grew up in the South, I can tell you, Neo, that “nigger” is a perjorative, and “Negro” is entirely OK, as in the “United Negro College Fund.”
Just another start down another slippery slope of PC and interference in free speech. Free speech is the right to speak offensively. By writing “n*****” you have already started down that slope.
We shall see if you censor my remark or not.
Frog,
Why would I censor your remark?
I regularly use asterisks for the words I find offensive, including the f-word. It’s a matter of tone and decorum in the blog. For commenters I sometimes censor them by eliminating offensive comments (I don’t change them, just eliminate them). It really depends on the way the word is used.
In private speech with friends I’ll sometimes use the f-word (or by myself, as when I stub my toe). But I don’t use a word like that when speaking in public, ordinarily. I consider the blog a form of speaking in public.
We censor ourselves all the time in terms of decorum. On this blog I don’t use words I find offensive. On the other hand, I’m not PC. If I don’t find the word offensive, I’ll use it.
My family vacationed in the south in the 1960s one summer; my younger sister was then another small curly-haired sun lover. We were standing in line for some attraction, and the man behind us leaned forward and said to my folks, “I had to look twice at that little girl.”
My guess is that there’s already an informal ban on non-black students using that word.
Liberals love to ban words. It’s becoming harder and harder to find acceptable derogatory words.
http://www.lssu.edu/banished/index.php
So I also assume that Huckleberry Finn will be removed from all the BPS libraries also.
Does anyone really, seriously think the Boston public school authorities are serious about trying to ban use of the N-word by blacks?
By whites, yes, but not by blacks.
Call me cynical.
Well the gold standard for the whole N-word discussion is Chris Rock’s monologue: Black People VS. Niggaz Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3PJF0YE-x4
Excerpt:
“Now we’ve got a lot of things, a lot of racism in the world right now
Whose more racist? Black people or white people?
Black people….You know why? Cause we hate black people too
Everything white people dont like about black people
Black people really dont like about black people
There some shit goin on with black people right now
There’s like a civil war goin on with black people
And there two sides….
There’s black people, and there’s niggas
And niggas have got to go”
Neo
Thank for your informative subject, sadly these day few families spare time with their kids talking to them about good and bad, schools no loner have the attention though,
Now days kids more interested by bulling others with social media and smart phones the limits were broken all our kids exposed to bad acts and words larger than simply ” one old man accross the street”
Today kids have more to do:
“Let me ask you kids something. What do you really care about? Because, let’s be honest, dressing up is a distraction from the real issues. Look at this block. Who’s giving out the candy? A tiny group of individuals. And they’re diverting you with their decorations–the cobwebs, the skeletons, all that candle-in-a-pumpkin hullabaloo. ”
Bernie Sanders Greets Trick-or-Treaters
physicsguy: I am confident that evil Mark Twain has been dealt with by Bahstan.
I guess I should burn my copy of Uncle Remus…
Cute picture of you, Neo. Hard to recognize you without the apple.
On to a serious subject: banning a word. I am guessing, as you have, that this ban is directed at black students, not non-blacks. Partly because they use the word far more often than anyone else (they can do so with few repercussions, but that is not true of non-blacks), and partly because in my (limited) experience the word really is used a lot more these days than 50 years ago. But a more serious question is probably “why has our society become so coarse?”
Will banning a word change that? Will it reduce the coarseness? I think not. And I would really like to see us reduce that. Whether in our popular culture or in public discourse, I would like Americans to be a little more polite and refined. Now if Sadikki Kambon and Imam Abdullah Faaruuq could do something about that, they’d get my support.
Phil and Joe Niekro beg the world’s indulgence to be allowed to keep their patronym after seeing the rough treatment of ‘niggardly’ in these days and times. Mel Brooks merely mutters to himself.
F:
You might be interested in this post from early in my blogging career.
D.C. Mayor Acted ‘Hastily,’ Will Rehire Aide
By Yolanda Woodlee
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 4, 1999; Page A1
D.C. Mayor Anthony A. Williams said yesterday that he will rehire a former top aide who resigned last month because some city employees were offended that the aide used the word “niggardly” in describing how he would have to manage a fund’s tight budget.
Williams, whose quick acceptance of David Howard’s resignation last month led to a national debate over racial sensitivity and political correctness, indicated in a statement yesterday that he had made a mistake and “acted too hastily” in allowing Howard to resign as head of the city’s constituent services office.
The mayor said that an internal review had “confirmed for me that Mr. Howard did use the word ‘niggardly,’ but did not use a racial epithet” during a Jan. 15 discussion with two employees of the Office of the Public Advocate. “Niggardly” means miserly and has no racial connotation.
[ dot dot dot ]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local/longterm/williams/williams020499.htm
born in the 1870s, by my current calculations
You have jogged my memory to recall a neighbour of mine when I was small who must have been born in the same decade. How strange it is to think of knowing someone who was an adult in the Century before last. Time seems very different when considered through personal connections.
The memory is, by odd coincidence, not far off topic. Her daughter was a witness for the defence in the famous Lady Chatterley Trial. That was in a different century too.
I see the gears whirling underneath that parasol.
!
My first exposure to the dreaded n-word took place around the time I was in first grade. Heard someone use it on the playground, didn’t have a clue as to what it meant … since it wasn’t a word my parents or any of their friends or acquaintances ever used. (This would have been So Cal in the very early 1960s.) Asked Mom when I got home … did I get a lecture about that. Never used it again, and still can’t feel comfortable using it in my own writing, although historically it would have been correct.
I suppose what galls me now, is how blacks seem to throw it around it abandon without turning a hair, but let one white person use it (or even famously, a word that sounds like it) and the screeching commences.
If it’s a coarse, insulting and all around bad word, then it’s a bad word no matter who is using it.
Caedmon:
You might be interested in this.
blert:
🙂
I confronted a Leftist online about why whites couldn’t use nig, but blacks could.
I could hear the gears of obeying orders churn around and around in their heads.
I too think that this was directed more toward the black students than the white students.
I grew up in the fifties and early sixties in a white working class neighborhood, and heard the word all the time, by my uncles and other adult men. Things have changed though, and I can honestly say that in the past thirty or so years I can’t recall hearing a white person use that word other than, as Neo said, quoting someone else.
The bottom line for me though, is banning any type of speech, even the most offensive is un-American and wrong, although it’s beginning to happen in this country more and more often.
In my neighborhood, we used ini mini mini mo to choose up sides but it was always a fiddler. Didn’t even know there were other lyrics until I was into my 20’s.
jvermeer:
See this.
The version I learned as a child always said “baby.”
Thanks Neo, I was very interested.
Even one ordinary human lifespan is enough to make some powerful connections. At this time of year, when we hold Remembrance Sunday here in England, I recall paying my threepenny bit to buy a paper poppy from an old man outside church when I was a small boy. Oddly, Remembrance Sunday is much bigger now then it was then. In London in the 1960s nobody needed to be reminded about war and a lot of people wanted to forget it.
The old man with the tray of paper poppies barely noticed me. He was chatting to two or three other old boys. I realise now that these old men had fought on the Somme. When one is a child it is hard to take in that the old have ever been young. Some never develop enough imagination to make the connection,
And inside the church lay Samuel Taylor Coleridge. This poem written by Walter De La Mare in 1927 catches the six degrees of spearation in history very well.
My aged friend, Miss Wilkinson,
Whose mother was a Lambe,
Saw Wordsworth once, and Coleridge, too,
One morning in her p’ram’.
Birdlike the bards stooped over her –
Like fledgling in a nest;
And Wordsworth said, ‘Thou harmless babe!’
And Coleridge was impressed.
The pretty thing gazed up and smiled,
And softly murmured ‘Coo!’
William was then aged sixty-four
And Samuel sixty-two.
As for coarsening culture, people can just follow the money back to Hollywood and the NFL.
https://ymarsakar.wordpress.com/2015/11/01/lingerie-football/
It takes money for a sub culture to expand and become the mainstream. Money, power, leverage, but it starts with the money.
In a non capitalist non free society, there would be barriers to entry, some kind of patriarchy or religion holdings down to a keen boil. The US Constitution, however, isn’t going to clean up people’s dirty language, that wasn’t the point back then. They were reliant on strong men, bounties, and various other ways for society to control themselves, like virtue.
Trying to centralize control of an individualistic society, from the top to bottom, is probably futile in more ways than one.
Good article, Neo. Thanks for that link. F
Boston public school demographics, 2013:
Hispanic 40%
Black: 35%
White: 13%
Asian:9%
“VISION OF THE BPS GRADUATE”
from the bostonpublicschools.org website
– Loves to learn, views the world as a classroom without
walls, and thinks critically about the issues within it.
– Succeeds academically in college-level courses across
content areas.
– Masters verbal and written expression in English, with
emerging proficiency in a second language.
– Uses mathematical skill, scientific inquiry, and state-ofthe-art technology to invent new solutions to persistent
and unanticipated problems.
– Exhibits growth, self-discipline and reflection through
innovative expression and artistry.
– Acknowledges and respects people with diverse
backgrounds, histories, and perspectives.
– Assumes personal responsibility for physical and
emotional well-being by making healthy choices.
– Contributes confidently and positively in professional
and social settings, both independently and as a
member of a team.
– Demonstrates resourcefulness and resilience in the face
of setbacks and obstacles, relying on personal assets and
support from others to achieve goals.
– Participates actively in a democratic society as a
responsible, courageous leader who challenges injustice.
——————————————–
Right.
Such poppycock. Who can live among people who think and write this crap? Neo?
Frog:
I wonder if the demographics for church and private schools are more or less the reverse?
I t-word th-word th-word th-word h-word c-word g-word o-word o-word h-word! N-word i-word!
WM-word
Parochial and private school data are not given by the Boston public schools.What is given is demographics for the other towns in MA, including the many Boston suburbs. Most of the ‘burbs have less than 2% black, including my son’s town, where a great deal of lipservice is paid to “diversity.”
Interesting are the data for Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard. which have more than 10% black and latino in their schools. The fat cat property owners do not winter on the islands, so these must be the kids of the caretakers aka serfs or indentured servants.
I guess we Wisconsinites are tougher than the rest of you, we caught tigers by the toe.
While he was in the Florida legislature Rubio did more than vote “present”.
I’m opposed to speech restrictions, everywhere. The whole purpose of the first amendment is to guarantee free, open political discourse.
I also don’t believe that companies have a right to fire or punish employees for writings and activities outside of work. It is a free country (at least founded as such) and work is just a contract to perform specific tasks.
So I’ll publish the N word—-noisome 🙂
My young friend, Jarvielle W., out in a tough little ‘hood in Clermont, Florida, referred to the “repair job” he’d done on his eyeglasses as “Niggah Riggin'”. I, Mr.WASP who helped ‘Mentor’ the ‘yoot for 5-recent years, said,”Jarv…Dont’cha mean (Cough!!)’jerryrigging’? Naaaw, Mistah Mikey, he replied,”It’s Niggah Riggin'”.
Love It.