The N-word

[Carnevil9]

.....Do what you want do, but I'm sure you can understand that some people will love it, some will hate it, some won't care, some will think you're trying to hard to be edge, etc.

Getting permission from strangers doesn't mean shit.

Wise words.

 

[Erlikkhan]

Nigga Nigga Nigga

Just change the 'er' to an 'a' and you'll be fine!

 

[Deleted member 3041612]

A word is a word. Some people find it hurtful, some don't. Some who don't feel the brunt of the harshness of it (no matter the race) either does not care or does. To each is own in how they intend on it's usage. All I can say is, I wince at it's usage no matter who may use it. I may hold an insignificant opinion to some, but that's just only me. Who am I "to police" a word in how it's used when it has become so mainstream?

This is my last post in this thread. Happy New year to all of you. I wish y'all well.

 

[JaxRhapsody]

The word loses its meaning with each new generation as the idea of acceptance of all cultures and identities become more prevailent. In fact, cultural appropriation is a misnomer, for how can you be all inclusive if you can't embrace difference?

With luck, the N word will lose it's power in the next fifty years, and no one will claim to own it or allow themselves to be controlled by it.

It really doesn't.

 

[SimonDoom]

The word loses its meaning with each new generation as the idea of acceptance of all cultures and identities become more prevailent. In fact, cultural appropriation is a misnomer, for how can you be all inclusive if you can't embrace difference?

With luck, the N word will lose it's power in the next fifty years, and no one will claim to own it or allow themselves to be controlled by it.

I would have thought, 40 years ago, that this was true. But this has proved NOT to be true. In the US we are, overall, a more racially tolerant society than we were in the 1970s. But the N word is in some ways even more powerful, even more offensive, and even more taboo than it was then. It has much more taboo power with today's generation of young people than it did with my generation. The notion that if you are white there are certain things you cannot say and do is MORE powerful than it was 40 years ago. So, contrary to what I used to think, and to what I think you are saying, we can't predict with confidence what words will lose or gain power in the future. I'd like to live in a world where we have moved sufficiently beyond racism that racist words have no power to shock or offend anymore, but getting there is proving to be much more complicated than I used to think it was.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

I would have thought, 40 years ago, that this was true. But this has proved NOT to be true. In the US we are, overall, a more racially tolerant society than we were in the 1970s. But the N word is in some ways even more powerful, even more offensive, and even more taboo than it was then. It has much more taboo power with today's generation of young people than it did with my generation. The notion that if you are white there are certain things you cannot say and do is MORE powerful than it was 40 years ago. So, contrary to what I used to think, and to what I think you are saying, we can't predict with confidence what words will lose or gain power in the future. I'd like to live in a world where we have moved sufficiently beyond racism that racist words have no power to shock or offend anymore, but getting there is proving to be much more complicated than I used to think it was.

Thoughtful. Much more complicated.

 

[SimonDoom]

If you're still alive in 50 years, revisit this thread, so that one of us can say, "I told you so."

OK. And in the meantime, find a dictionary and look up the word "churlish."

 

[MrRandyWatson]

It seems to me that the civilized and enlightened and moral response to this problem is to stop discriminating, rather than to say "Group A was discriminated against for a long time, so now Group B has to be denied something because of its skin color." That's regress, not progress.

The contextual example you gave regarding use of the N Word between people is valid as far as it goes but it has nothing to do with whether or not one should use the word in a story. Let me give another example that's more on point, based on a factual incident:

A black rap artist is performing on stage and invites a young white girl to get on the stage and sing along with him. The song he sings includes the N word. The girl sings the word out loud while singing along with him, and she's criticized for it, including by the artist. I think that's wrong. I do. That makes no sense to me. She's not directing the word as an insult to someone. She's singing HIS song, in appreciation of his song and to have fun. I think it's very odd that it should be perceived as wrong for a white person to let the word escape her lips under circumstances where it's obviously not meant as an insult, and where the artist himself is performing in front of and to a crowd full of white people.

Another example: A white professor is teaching a class, covering the topic of offensive words and the degree to which they should be tolerated. He utters the N word out loud in front of his class, and some black students take offense, to the degree that some believe he should be disciplined, or even fired. Has the white professor done something wrong? I don't think so. How do we talk in truly meaningful ways about things without using the words? No one would think twice if he said the F-word (although at one time in the past, a professor publicly saying that word in class probably would have been regarded as scandalous).

There are plenty of movies in which the N word is uttered. Watch any Tarantino movie. Is that wrong? Is it wrong for a student to recite a passage from a book in class and utter the N word?

I'm inclined to think we have regressed, rather than progressed, through the expansion of concepts of taboo in our society regarding the use of words. Of course, people should not try to hurt other people, and should be criticized for doing so. But the examples I've given are NOT examples of that.

I question, too, whether any of this has done any good. In some ways, at least in America, we have been going backward on racial progress in some ways for a while, and I think some of that is the result of the animosity and resentment built up by the actions of the overly zealous language and culture police.

This issue is the language equivalent of hiking through the DMZ in Korea - frought with land mines. Some people have tried to take an honest look at the word and try to ascertain a better understanding of how it really fits into the lexicon.

Let me preface this by saying I am white and do not use the word. I don’t even use it in my stories here, and interracial is kind of my specialty (my stories here have involved a white man and a black woman, and at no point did anyone who wasn’t a villain even hint at the word, and when a character used it, I ducked using it in the story myself.)

I don’t get how it feels to have that particular word used against me, but I do get how a dog-whistle or veiled statement can make someone upset or distrustful of another.

I also know that, in nearly any context, the word is bad news. It’s probably best for anyone if they just don’t use it - Chris Rock and Samuel L. Jackson have pointed out that, by using the word, a black person makes it more acceptable for a bigot to use it. And I don’t know if that’s true, but it makes sense.

I know that it’s one thing for a fictional character to use the word. No one thinks Stone Cold Steve Austin is a racist just because his character in The Longest Yard used it against Nelly’s character. No one thinks Obama using it in an interview was designed to give people permission to use it. And no one thinks that a Big Brother contestant from 2018 is a racist for using it to make a point about another slur.

If you want to use that word in a story, use it with extreme caution and be absolutely sure you want to use it, and at that point, it doesn’t matter if you use it once or fifty times (South Park used it more than 40 times in an episode, and again, no one thinks Parker and Stone are racist because of it.)

 

[Chimney Sweep]

OP here - thanks for all the input

I knew I was getting into deep and troubled waters on this one. Thanks to everyone who chimed in, for or against or otherwise.

I have decided not to go forward with the project. I started it, and I went for the hardest part first - white-hubby tries to talk black-acquaintance into fucking his jungle-fever wife. I could write for a race or gender different from mine (maybe poorly, but I've done it before with at least not total failure), but this felt very wrong to me. Even trying to use the voice of a black male friend of mine, knowing the way he speaks...it felt very wrong to assume how he would feel about the N-word. I just felt like I was exposing my own stupidity/lack of understanding/racism, and for what? Not ART.

Some of my work, I hope, approaches ART. This story was never going to be that. This was all preamble and justification for a white woman to call the black man fucking her the N-word just to satisfy a personal kink. Stroke material isn't ART. At least, what I was working towards wasn't ART.

If I thought I was making ART then I would have forged ahead. ART needs to be brave and unapologetic. ART can be offensive, shocking, wrong, etc, as long as it is in the service of something greater. Hell, not even that - ART has got to be able to stand alone and just be what it is, for better or worse. I think I've got a smidgen of ART in me, on a good day. But this ain't that.

Thanks again to everybody who replied. You've given me plenty to think about.

Now I'm gonna go write some jerk-off material that isn't quite so controversial. Maybe something about my developmentally challenged nephew who is 6 foot 6 and looks like a Hollister model and apparently roams his neighborhood banging soccer moms and high school girls...you know what, maybe I should go watch some TV...

-CS