Some Thoughts on the N-Word

“Content warning.” Isn’t that what you’re supposed to say anymore, before addressing a potentially inflammatory topic? We’ve taken a perfectly reasonable premise, that you shouldn’t discuss possibly offensive topics in public, and interpreted that to mean everyone is a time-bomb of hurt feelings waiting to explode. Which means we can’t name certain topics directly; we can only broach them surreptitiously, like talking about a kid’s birthday party, only more destructive.

I first remember hearing the phrase “the N-word” during the O.J. Simpson trial, in 1995. Simpson’s defense team purported that LAPD detective Mark Fuhrman had used a certain piece of racial invective in the past, sometimes on-the-job, sometimes directly into a tape recorder. They thought Fuhrman’s racism disqualified his testimony about Simpson’s involvement in his accused crimes. But though everyone knew what word Simpson’s lawyers meant, they never said it.

Thus, “the N-word” entered the pantheon of words I learned, in childhood, you mustn’t ever say, because simply arranging those sounds with your mouth caused irreparable harm. “The N-word” landed alongside “the S-word” and “the F-word” as terms we acknowledged existed, and everyone knew what they were, but nobody ever said them, knowing that some authority figure waited to punish us for speaking them. (Let’s ignore The L-Word for now.)

As I’ve gotten older, my understanding has bifurcated. The S-word and the F-word are Anglo-Saxon terms which describe bodily functions everyone performs, yet everyone is embarrassed by. Combining that embarrassment with the common language of a despised conquered people made the words themselves embarrassing, a reminder that having a shit, or fucking your spouse, is a common thing that peasants do. The horror!

Get over yourself.

Actually speaking the N-word, however, conjures up memories of historical injustices perpetrated against a population designated subordinate and inferior for completely arbitrary reasons. I understand why people who look like me shouldn’t speak that word, shouldn’t revive those memories, because us White people can’t go there without getting some “there” on us. Unlike “shit” and “fuck,” the N-word really does belong in the ash heap of history.

However, you know I wouldn’t be writing this if the story stopped there. Because in thinking about what happens if us honkies say that word, I’ve come to distrust the power with which we invest that word. We ofays perform elaborate verbal tap-dances to avoid speaking that word, because the very sound sullies the conversation. Like Lord Voldemort, or saying “Macbeth” in a theatre, the word, in isolation, is so powerful that its very sound causes damage.

Philosopher J.L. Austin, in his 1962 book How To Do Things With Words, describes the ways words change reality. Words like “I christen this ship the USS Valiant,” or “I do,” change the world around them. Sure, they don’t make physical changes. The piece of tooled iron doesn’t become alive by giving it a name, and the married couple is still comprised of two people whose physical presences remain the same.

Yet despite this physical continuity, reality changes, because—follow me here—reality doesn’t exist without humans to organize it. Sure, objective physical reality exists, but that isn’t what we mean when we say “reality.” We mean our capacity to understand, name, and use those things which exist before us. Humans breathed oxygen before we discovered its chemical nature, but by naming and cataloging oxygen, we changed our relationship with matter, and thus changed our reality.

So yes, saying the N-word changes reality, letting the history of racialized violence into the room. But must it, necessarily? Like Lord Voldemort’s name, the word lets evil in because we expect it.

Consider it this way: if I say “the N-word,” you know what word I’m avoiding saying directly. But I’m not avoiding the word’s meaning, I’m just avoiding saying it. I expect you to, silently and internally, insert the content I’ve deliberately omitted. So I’m not saying the word, I’m making you say it. It’s the same as bleeped words on network television: the word doesn’t vanish. They’ve just offloaded the responsibility for saying it onto you.

All this means, in short, that after thinking about this topic, I’m more confused than ever. The N-word isn’t Lord Voldemort, but it isn’t harmless either. Saying it directly invites harm, but avoiding saying it just moves responsibility around. And ignoring it, as we learned in Charlottesville, doesn’t make it go away. We White English-speakers have created a linguistic tapeworm. Now it’s up to us to decide just how much we’re going to feed it.