The "N" Word

I feel like I am set up to learn a lot about race and acceptance in my future years teaching in Brooklyn. And I also think I’ll have my heart broken due to race-related slings and arrows of prejudice. What credibility does a white girl have walking into an inner-city high school where the students are mostly black with a dash of latino? How do you react when calling a student African American gets you looked at like you’re speaking another, slightly offensive, language? My students aren’t African American; they see the word as an invention of white folks to make them more relatable. Like politically correct pets. But I get the idea they don’t want to be supported on the white world’s words. They rather be black on their own terms, in their own community than be African American and beholden to “the white man.”

So where do I fit in, the white educator?

Case in point: Today during class I was reading to the group the beginning chapters of River, Cross My Heart, by Breena Clarke. It’s an Oprah’s book club type of book, and it takes place in a black society in Virginia containing many of the issues African Americans face, including racism. So, I’m reading a passage about a prejudiced woman who is both white and in poverty and reading straight from the book I say the word nigger. Now, it wasn’t my word, and it wasn’t directly from me, but one of my students shot up and demanded I apologize. I was kinda stunned, but not terrible so after the initial shock with the Sha-sha incident. I asked Ramel what the problem was, and his response was that nigger was an offensive word, and that I should say “The N word” whenever it comes up in a book.

I tried to explain that nigger was only a word, that it only had the power a person allowed it to have. I also mentioned that editing the book in that way because it was offensive was censorship. It was a roadblock to the liberal inside of me; it killed me that a student could be stopped in his tracks because of a word. Sticks and stones, I thought ruefully. How can I, as an educator, explain that making the word nigger taboo by having it referred to as "The N word" only gives it more power? What kills me is that I doubt the issue would have come up if I were black. I’m not part of the club, and I can’t borrow the language even if I’m reading a novel about black people that is written by a black author. My smartest move, in the end, was letting it go. I can’t change what offends someone; I can’t even enlighten them if they don’t want to be.

God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
the courage to change the things I can;
and the wisdom to know the difference.