(Name-mce) ListServ Using the "N" word

[bill at billhowe.org]

Note: another provocative column from one of my favorite columnists. The use
of the "N" word comes up in almost every multicultural education course that
I teach. It usually comes from a very well-meaning white teacher who
struggles with this in class on a daily basis. Would love to hear comments
from subscribers... Bill




Does Past Slur Matter? 

 

Frank Harris III

 

October 9 2006. Hartford Courant

http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/op_ed/hc-harris1009.artoct09,0,3757749,p
rint.column?coll=hc-headlines-oped

 

 

On several occasions as I walked home from the white public school I was
attending, there appeared this little white boy who would drop whatever he
was doing to run over and spit on me - and call me "nigger." 

 

I was in the sixth grade, the oldest of three blacks attending Clearview
Elementary in the early stages of integration of schools in my hometown of
Waukegan, Ill. He was a preschooler, age 3 or maybe 4. 

 

There were others who tried their tongues with that word - like the two
young white boys watching a pair of rubber band-tied clothespins spinning
crazily on the sidewalk that they cheerily referred to as niggers. 

 

The white classmate who whispered the word during class - and his friend who
surreptitiously pointed his finger at me as the other nodded.

 

Before my Clearview Elementary experience, there were the two white teens
who stoned and called my brother, two friends and me that word at a creek
bordering a parking lot in Waukegan.

 

After Clearview, there were the white boys and girls in cars and buses in
Waukegan, Carbondale, Ill., and Austin, Texas, who shouted that word as they
sped by.

 

I could go on.

 

My flashbacks come to mind in light of Virginia's Senate race, in which
first the Republican candidate, George Allen, and later the Democratic
candidate, James Webb, were accused of having used the word "nigger" in
their past. And not just the word: One was said to have placed a severed
deer's head in the mailbox of a black family in the early 1970s; the other
was said to have gone through the black neighborhood of Watts in the early
1960s and shouted that word while pointing fake guns at black residents.

 

Both sort of deny it, with the latter saying he never used it as an epithet
against anyone, which is a way of saying that word was part of his
vocabulary.

 

That word.

 

I was wondering whether a person's use of that word in the past should be
held against that person when running for public office in the present.
Should the fact that someone once used that word as an epithet or in the
context of casual discourse be brought up as a litmus test of one's
suitability for public office?

 

As such, should this litmus test be applied to blacks as well? There are,
after all, so many blacks who have used the word at some point in their
lives, myself included. Yes, once, I, like so many other blacks got caught
up in the view that when we say it, it's out of endearment. I shed that
ignorant thought more than a quarter-century ago. 

 

There are many others, blacks and whites and others, who have also banished
that word from their vocabulary. 

 

That banishment of the word, however, does not negate the fact that the
word's usage by anyone in the past says something about that person's
character and mindset during a particular point in one's life. At the same
time, that word's past usage does not forever brand its user as a racist or
ignorant person in the present. One of the great capacities that people have
is the capacity for change. 

 

Asking the question, however, would enable candidates to explain, if
necessary, their change, as well as where they were in their thinking then
in comparison to where they are now. 

 

Still, the issue of that word's use deserves consideration as a litmus test
for candidates for public office, as well as individuals in such fields as
religion, law enforcement, education and medicine.

 

I think back to the first three white boys mentioned and their use of the
word - the one who could barely talk but spat and called me that word, and
the two who used it in referring to spinning clothespins. 

 

If these boys are alive today, they would be in their early to mid-40s. If
they were in the running for an important position, the fact that they once
used that word either as an epithet or during casual discourse would be
something important for people to know. 

 

It would give us a sense of how far they have come - or how far they still
need to go.

 

Frank Harris III is chairman of the journalism department at Southern
Connecticut State University in New Haven. His column appears every Monday.
He can be reached at harrisf1 at southernct.edu. 

Copyright 2006, Hartford Courant 

 

 

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Bill Howe 
 <http://www.billhowe.org/> http://www.billhowe.org

 
Past-President 

National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME)
 <http://www.nameorg.org/> http://www.nameorg.org

 

 

 

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