The Importance of the N-Word

Quite a few years ago my friend and college roommate, Dennis Renault, drew an editorial cartoon for the Sacramento Bee in which he had a KKK member in a sheet using the term "nigger." The obvious intent of the cartoon was to attack racism--much as Mark Twain did in HUCKLEBERRY FINN--and thoughtful people understood that. Others did not. The same editorial board that had okayed the cartoon and published it, backed down as soon as some African American community leaders called for resignations, and the board issued a public apology. Seminars on the word "nigger" were held around the nation, including one on Long Island, 3,000 miles away. My wife attended that discussion, where she was told by an excellent African American law professor that no white person should use "nigger" under any circumstance. "The word is forbidden," she said.

That level of response was, in retrospect, childish. I mean that in this sense: children do not grasp irony. Neither did many of the cartoon's detractors.

That was then. Now we live in an age where a heavily racist term like "nigger" has been desensitized by rappers (at least for the young, who listen to rap). What I want to argue is a little different. I believe that "nigger" is the single most important word we know. Its contempt for other human beings points directly to the founding of this nation, which enshrined slavery in its Constitution. "Nigger" points to our original sin and one that we have hardly begun to correct.

Look at the Republican Party, home of those who claim that President Obama was born in Kenya, raised as a Muslim, graduated from Harvard without writing his own papers, etc. The tortured logic and invention of false facts dates back to the twisted intellectual defense that the South made of slavery. The South is still entrapped in rubbish. Many still believe that slavery was good for African Americans, a civilizing experience. Or they hide, as Robert E. Lee did, in the claim that the Civil War was not about slavery but was about states' rights (the right to own slaves). In fact, slavery was vicious and a curse that twists in our political system.

We need to repeat the word "nigger." It calls up a central fact of history. We would like to forget slavery, of course. We would like to forget the ugliest parts of our past and pretend that Robert E. Lee was a gentleman, not a slave whipper, but that would obscure who and what we are and what we are capable of doing again. We'd do better to keep our history in mind.