I hate that "the N word" has so much power in our society that you're not even supposed to say what it is -- as if calling it "the N word" doesn't draw more attention to this tiresome insult than it deserves. What I hate even more is that, more than 40 years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the word "nigger" is still around.
It's hard to believe now, but after the successes of the Civil Rights movement, many of us thought the issue of race was settled and that, with the exception of a few segregationist diehards, we wouldn't be hearing much about it in say, 20 years. Those days of heady optimism are nearly forgotten, of course, and it's obvious that the complex, sticky, culturally electric issue of race will be with us in America for God knows how long. As will, apparently, "the N word," which has become a rude prism through which we examine our uneasy race relations.
How to deal with a word? I'm not sure, but I do know that my First Amendment absolutism won't allow me to even imagine supporting a ban. How do you ban a word, anyway? If it works anything like banning books or music, I can tell you that any attempted ban would increase the use of the word -- and plant it deeper into national consciousness -- than almost anything else we could do.
Before I go any farther, let me be clear that I'm writing here about how white people can, or can't, deal with the word. There's no question that black entertainers who use it, for whatever reasons valid or not, have made it much easier for culturally clueless whites to think they can use it, too. But, frankly, the use and misuse of "the N word" in black music, comedy and conversation is too complicated and subtle for this Euro-American white guy to completely grasp, much less feel competent to judge.
With that said, I think we white Southern baby boomers, whose lives have straddled the Jim Crow South and the post-Civil Rights era, need to help defuse the power of the word. At the very least, we should agree it's a lousy idea to use it in any kind of public setting.
If you're a white Southerner of a certain age, you heard "the N word" so many times while growing up, you hardly even noticed it anymore, overlooking it as casually as one would fail to see a familiar stain on a favorite chair. I honestly don't remember the word ever being used in our household, but that didn't mean much when the whole culture outside our home was awash with it.
In my little town, typical of small Southern burgs of the '50s and '60s, "the N word" was in the air you breathed. The black part of downtown was known as Niggertown. When kids had to make choices, they said, "Eeny meeny miney mo, catch a nigger by the toe." If someone let the appearance of his house and yard go, it looked niggery. If you improvised a sloppy, temporary repair of your bike, it was nigger-rigged. If you bought a bag of nuts, it would usually include Brazil nuts, or Nigger Toes. A long-blade knife was a nigger sticker. If you spent all your money on payday, you were nigger rich. Some people even made up new, ever more ridiculous ways to use the word. I remember a junior high classmate telling me that his father had told him, "If you see a nigger in a foreign car, it's good luck."
In case anyone thinks only Southerners, or even only Americans, indulged in this despicable brand of twisted silliness, note that esteemed British mystery writer Dame Agatha Christie's original title for Ten Little Indians was Ten Little Niggers, and was sold as such on U.S. newsstands well into the 1960s.
Ultimately, it's African-Americans who are going to work out the acceptable parameters of the use of "the N word," but meantime, surely well meaning whites can agree that any public expression of the word in an interracial setting needs to be completely off limits.
Privately? Well, I don't think anyone has much to worry about from a group of whites watching the NBA together who might react to a spectacular dunk with, "That's one bad-ass nigger," and high-five each other. They're usually just trying to seem hip. A similar outburst in a public venue, though, could easily wound someone who doesn't get the subtleties of racial expression among whites (yes, there is such a thing) anymore than we grasp all the nuances when blacks use the word.
I hesitated several times over the past few months before finally deciding to write this column. The fact that I hemmed and hawed before writing about the unfortunate power of the word is itself an indication of just how much energy we've chosen to give it. It's regrettable, but it's a fact. The least we crackers can do is agree to stay away from it in public.
