The n word is truly a unique and important word in the English Language. I am truly glad our class was able to discuss it for an entire period like we did. It's a word that has always made me slightly uncomfortable and addressing it helped me a lot. After all, entire college classes have been taught with the sole goal of further understanding the evolution of the word. We have already seen it used in Native Son as well as Invisible Man and I'm sure we will see it in upcoming books. I had a few thoughts from our classroom discussion that I wanted to further expand upon in my blog.
In class, I remembered noting down how many times students used the words white and black when talking about the N word. Person after person talked about how uncomfortable they felt when a white person said the word. How it made them sick. Someone brought up the point that white rappers and artists never use the word in their music. Throughout this conversation I couldn't stop thinking about people who aren't white or black. What about a Latino rapper? What about a Chinese rapper? Did he have a pass to say the N word? Was it as bad or slightly less bad for him to say it? It is rare to find a white rapper who has used the N word, or a popular one I should say. However I did some research and found several non "white", non "black" artists who often use it in their music and seem to get away with it. Jennifer Lopez used the word in her "Im Real"music video. A puerto Rican rapper named "Fat Joe" says the word quite often. There are several other examples.
Even though the N word is a part of American history, it seems like other countries and cultures have adopted it in their everyday life and in their music. Asian artists are making music and throwing the word around yet people don't seem to be outraged. This is understandable, yet I personally think that if one group is held to a particular standard, all others should be held to the same standard too. Certain people shouldn't be allowed to say it.
I think this commentary is interesting. I do agree that there needs to be clear restrictions on who says the word. I think that our society's system of oppression allows slightly more freedom for other oppressed races to say the word. Yet, that doesn't make it right. I think that at the end of they day, it was Black individuals and communities that were mainly described using that word. Therefore, it is their right to "reappropriate" it, not anyone else's. I guess the line where it starts to get fuzzy though is when the "n word" is used as a general insult to the oppressed (without the specific Black implication). Nonetheless, I still think that those who identify as Black or Brown have the sole right to using the word in order to reappropriate it.
ReplyDeleteYou might remember from last year's Short Story class that Junot Diaz uses the word in the fraternal sense throughout his short stories, with Dominican American young men using it to refer to each other. This isn't Diaz's invention; he's realistically reflecting the language practices of the Dominican community in urban New Jersey he grew up in in the 1980s.
ReplyDeleteYes I do remember! It would be interesting to study the usage of the word among non-blacks in the 1980s like you talked about and the present. I wonder if the word has become more popular lately.
DeleteInteresting post. I completely agree with Carissa. Non black people people of color
ReplyDeleteI believe are less attacked because they too experience racial discrimination, but this is in no way relates to the n word or gives them a right to say it. Black people have been the only ones affected by the n word and should therefore be the only ones with the right to say it, regardless of what any non black person of color has experienced.
In response to Carissa's comment:
ReplyDeleteThe "n word" alone is rarely ever used to describe non Black POC. The few exceptions include words like "sand-n*****", which refer to people of Arab or Middle Eastern descent. But even then, the implied insult is that Arabs are so lowly that they should be tied to black people, with the oh-so-considerate "sand" attached to it in order to distinguish it. Otherwise, I don't think using the N word on its own to non-black individuals is a very common practice, if it is a practice at all. Brown people cannot reappropriate a word that has no historical significance to them on its own. And in response to Varun, this includes Asian people and Latino people. Simply because a few people say it and you can't find any backlash doesn't mean there isn't a standard to be held to.