I would argue that white people using any form of the word is at the very least problematic, except perhaps in a totally descriptive context (and even that sometimes still makes me feel weird: for instance if the title of this thread had instead used the full word). As to WHY it is problematic, I'm not surprised many people have not thought about it, or at least not given enough empathic listening to that perspective which says: white people shouldn't use it even though people of color (at least many of them) have reclaimed usage of a form of it.
With regard to your first sentence, I don't think many disagree, at least in present company.
With regard to your second sentence, I'm not sure why there NEEDS to be any thought to why is it problematic. People understand that it is, so why do we need to get into the why of it?
But issues like this Kendrick Lamar incident muddy the waters. When it is used in popular music, and music is by design meant to be sung along to, it muddies the waters. In Kendrick Lamar's defense, it didn't look like he personally had any ill intent. It just seemed like the incident wasn't thought through very well, and then wasn't handled well in the moment when it went wrong. But in my
opinion, I think we are too hypersensitive to certain things, like the use of that word. Hyper-
awareness is good, because it leads to greater understanding. Hyper-
sensitivity--i.e. where we collectively gasp at even the unintended or innocent use of the term without regard for context--seems counterproductive to me. It prevents any sort of understanding or common ground to be found. This girl was dumb, or just caught in the moment, or whatever. But I don't think use of the word in that context makes her a de facto racist or even racially insensitive. I mean, maybe she is. But maybe we {the collective we) could have more productive conversation and understanding if we didn't overreact to any use of the term.
Here's an anecdote: Years ago in law school, an elderly White professor used the term "niggardly" in class. It was used perfectly in context. There was not a hint of anything racial in the discussion whatsoever. And yet, a couple of Black students took offense and made a huge issue out of it and tried to generate publicity and have the man's job threatened--simply because they had no idea what the word meant and wrongly assumed that since it
sounds like the N-word, it must be racist comment. Yeah, in this day and age, we're best avoiding archaic terms that sound like hotbutton offensive terms. But, again, we've gotten to the point where we are so hypersensitive that we often overreact, and often wrongfully so.
EDIT: And, yeah, I'm probably just restating what I and others have said on the subject in the past, but I keep hoping that approaching it from different angles may be helpful somehow.
Topic: The n-word and its use (Read 11046 times)
