The N-Word Special Report: Chapter III

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Then and Now: Can a bad tree bear good fruit?

 

For some, the N-word is an opportunity to take back a term that was once used as a tool of dehumanization. For others, the history is too painful to ignore.

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Sophomore D’Allah Dent learned what the word “nigger” meant in first grade. Her class was learning the history of the civil rights movement, and the teacher talked about the legacy of Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

The unit was surface level at best, at worst, incomplete. But when Dent got home, her mother, Edwina, and father, David, talked with their young daughter about the impact of the time period. There was no getting past the N-word.

“They went way back (in history) and then they brought it up to today,” Dent recalls. “This is what we have to deal with. Slavery is over and now we have Black History Month where we can celebrate, but we still have to deal with racism.”

That conversation still sticks with her.

And David Dent doesn’t mince words about why the conversations are so important. “Here we have, in our home, we have a racial dialogue. We teach them,” he says about his kids. “They come home…and they recognize what’s what. It’s a shame; we wish they didn’t and they were just them, but with people, it’s a reality. They see it, from the youngest to the oldest, they see it; they see what’s going on.”

For Dent and many Grant High School students, every day is a reminder. Walk through the hallways and there’s a good chance you’ll hear the word – or its euphemism, “nigga.” Sometimes from white students, other times from black students.

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It’s a sign that squares with what’s happening in popular culture. Consider famous musician Kanye West’s song, “All Day,” which uses the word a total of 42 times in five minutes. J. Cole’s “Fire Squad” says it 25 times. Today, it’s everywhere. For young people, it’s part of a movement to reclaim the word. Giving positive power to a word birthed by hate, they say, is what stands behind the idea.

 

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Grant junior Eric McGee, who is black, embraces the attempt at reclamation. “Back in like slave times, they used the word…as a derogatory term toward blacks,” McGee says. “Right now, if like somebody’s saying it, I just wouldn’t care because it wouldn’t mean anything to me.”

But the movement to redefine the N-word is stunted by the very idea of ownership. D’Allah Dent’s mother, Edwina, says: “I don’t think it’s a word that can be reclaimed. Reclaiming means that you owned it in the first place. It’s a part of our vocabulary, but for you to say, ‘OK, this is a term of endearment for something that actually was used to oppress us and was used for many generations,’ there’s a sick mentality to it. They don’t have to call you guys ‘niggers.’ Now, you call each other that.”

Darrell Millner, an Emeritus professor of Black Studies at Portland State University who is black, doesn’t think that a movement is sustainable and considers all present day attempts to be “self-delusional.”

“In my estimation,” he says, “that term carries such a load of historical animosity that I really doubt that that will ever be possible…There’s too much history attached to it.”

Millner says the word hasn’t strayed far from its degrading nature of putting blacks in a subhuman role.

“I think to understand the power of the N-word, you have to follow the history for about 200 years as it comes down to us from the period of legal slavery,” Millner says. “When you do that, what you see is that the N-word is a part of a hierarchy of racial terms, that in addition to whatever literal meaning it may have had, had a coded meaning that was understood both by the party who used it and the party who it was directed at.”

Millner notes that because of its divisive nature, the N-word remains at the top of the hierarchy of racially charged terms that have survived throughout history. Simply put, there is no other word in the English language that parallels its weight and thus it can never be divorced from its derogatory meaning.

Over time, Millner asserts that in attempts to create distance from the hatred behind the N-word, each new generation of black people over the years has “self-selected” a more desirable term to be referred to.

“For my grandparents, the term was ‘colored,’” says Millner. “My parent’s preferred to be ‘negroes;’ I preferred to be identified as a black person; my children were African Americans. And this latest generation has decided that they want to try to reclaim the N-word.”

Portland rapper Michael Caples, known by his stage name Mic Capes, recognizes the seemingly changing dynamic of the word. “I feel like it has been reclaimed, but I feel like it’s also like a generational thing,” he says. “You know, our parents and up…they come from a different time in America.”

Many students recognize this generational gap when it comes to the word. Deaijainae Tolbert, who is African American and used to consider the N-word a part of her everyday vocabulary, admits that “sometimes when (my parents) do catch me saying it, I do get a long lecture about it. So it’s not that they don’t like it, they just don’t feel like that word is respected no more.”

Diallo Lewis, one of Grant’s vice principals and one of the few black staff members, affirms this. “When I was younger…the word was used within circles of friends,” he says. “But I think once you become educated about the history of the word and where it comes from, you begin to look at things differently.”

For those attempting to reclaim the word, there’s an important distinction between “nigga” and “nigger.”

Senior Calvin Scott recognizes the difference. “‘ER’ is more of an insult where ‘A’ is like, ‘My brother, my friend,’” Scott says. “We go through the same struggle every day. We’re both black, we both get the same hate…it’s something we have in common that we can use together.”

Brianna Henderson, a junior at Grant who is African American, has had a complex experience with the word.

“I used to be ashamed to be black,” she says. “I thought it was a compliment when people told me: ‘You talk like a white girl. You act like a white girl.’ I let the white kids use the N-word around me because, ‘Hey, I’m cool and stuff’ and they think I’m cool.”

But things changed in high school and she took offense to such talk. Henderson credits the shift to several factors, including her social studies teacher, Marta Repollet. She teaches Living in the U.S., a history class that focuses on minority experiences throughout the narrative of the country.

“I remember coming to her class. It was right after Mike Brown got killed on the street like a dog,” Henderson recalls. “That was one of the first things we talked about and she did address that…she enlightened me of all my heritage. And learning about minorities in that class, it…was like a door. Like all this good stuff happened. We weren’t just slaves? That’s what we did?”

From there, Henderson threw herself into learning about her cultural history and the struggles of other minorities. She has become a leading voice in class discussions, especially in her Advanced Placement English class that has few students of color in it. “I make it my duty to always stand up for every minority,” she says. “I’m always the one to bring up race, like that’s my main question. And I feel like I get really killed about it because everyone’s always like: ‘Ah, here she goes again talking about race. Why do you always have to bring race into it, Brianna?’”

And while she is firm in her beliefs that race is an important point of discussion and largely avoided by her peers and teachers, Henderson’s stance on the reclamation of the N-word is evolving.

“I’m guilty of saying it, especially in rap songs,” she says. “Like I’ll just be like, ‘N-word, N-word,’ just throwing it around. But like, I don’t like addressing people by this.”

Still, Henderson says, that’s changing. “I’ve become more pro-black and so…I’m done with that word, even in music…I don’t want white people to look at me and be like, ‘Oh, she’s using the N-word,’” she says. “I don’t know how to argue against that when white people say, ‘Oh, well you said the N-word, why can’t I?’”

A question that Henderson’s experience brings up is whether or not the fight to reclaim the N-word within the African-American community encourages its use among non-black students.

“I think all kids…begin to think it’s very casual, a casual response to things, and I think that becomes very dangerous,” Lewis says. “When you’re the black kid and you’re using that word and you have a white friend and you’re using the word, all of a sudden your white friend turns and says it, you become angry and upset. It’s not a word that you should be throwing around lightly.”

Aujai Webster, an African-American junior, acknowledges there’s a fine line when it comes to the N-word being used by different races. But she doesn’t think that it should be strictly limited to a certain community.

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“If you are getting offended because one person is singing that same song, I don’t think that’s fair.”

The N-word, in all its usages, is a difficult topic to maneuver around. This is a stance that many members of the Grant community can agree on; and for teachers who attempt to spark discussions on the topic of race, generating conversations has proven difficult.

“I think teachers do try to facilitate those conversations, but the other students often are either uncomfortable with it or I think more often than not, kind of dismissive,” says Lukas Sherman, a white English teacher at Grant. “If you’re a white student, to acknowledge that there’s systemic racism or white privilege like that, you know that makes you somewhat complicit in something larger, and that means you’re probably responsible for doing something.”

With this perceived evolving definition of the N-word, many see shifting power dynamics that reflect rising tensions.

Russ Peterson is a white social studies teacher at Grant and taught African-American Literature last year. “I think it was a little weird for my students walking in to see a white guy teaching the class,” he says. “But you know, I don’t think it really matters. I teach women’s history; I’m not a woman. I bring up GLBTQ issues in my classroom; I’m straight.”

Each year, he spent several weeks teaching the history behind the N-word and leading class discussions. For Peterson, the conversations were productive, and he felt students benefited from the material and context provided.

A question that often came up in class was, he says, “Is it possible to say that it is being reclaimed only for a certain group of people or does it have to be a universal thing?”

His response, Peterson says, is the product of talking with students and exploring the history of the word. “If we’re going to talk about words having power, the ability to not only define a word but say who can and cannot use a word is how someone exercises power,” he says. “And so by the same token, African Americans, who as a group have been marginalized and not had power over language, to have this group say, ‘It is acceptable for we African Americans to use it and nobody else, and all white folks can’t use it,’ I’m totally at ease with…having African Americans be empowered in that way.”

Still, the reality of a white teacher responsible for teaching black history left the class disconnected, especially when Peterson himself said the words before a Socratic seminar. Senior Clayton Harley, who is black, acknowledged that his white teacher had crossed a line.

“We were talking about the difference between ‘nigger’ and ‘nigga,’” Harley remembers. “I was trying to explain my point basically, but Mr. Peterson was kinda cutting me off. ‘What’s the difference between “nigger” and “nigga?”’ and he kept saying that over and over and so I got frustrated and I was like ‘OK, you’re being an asshole,’ and he sent me out of class.”

After class, the two had a conversation and found some common ground. But for Harley and others, white people using the word is still a complicated subject.

For Mathias Thelus, a senior of Haitian descent, the lines are blurred. Earlier this year, his English class read August Wilson’s “Fences,” which uses the N-word 28 times.

Prior to starting the play, there was little discussion on the topic of the N-word and how the class would address it. When the word came up, the atmosphere was charged.

A fellow student, who is not black, played Troy Maxson, the main character who says the word throughout the play. Thelus recalls: “The word came up and he is my good friend and I was like, ‘You can say it, man. I don’t care. It is a part of the story.’”

But the student chose not to and Thelus said the word for him every time it came up.

Courtney Palmer, who is white, is in her first year of teaching African-American Literature at Grant. The numbers this year dropped significantly, limiting the class to just one period. Of the 26 students enrolled in the class, a small number are white. Palmer admits the demographics were more evenly split in the beginning of the year, but many of the white students chose to drop the class.

As for how Palmer tackles the subject of the N-word, she doesn’t shy away from confronting it. In fact, early in the year, Palmer listed words offensive to the black community that the class would encounter throughout the year in certain texts. Among the words are “nigger” and “nigga,” which Palmer chose not to code with the moniker, the “N-word.”

“It has a historical value,” she notes.

This approach is controversial, but Palmer says it enables honest and open conversations about the nature of the word.

“I have a lot of students who use it amongst themselves, and I’m not going to crack down on that,” she says. “That particular word doesn’t have a derogatory sense to it between students of color. I think there is a reclaiming of the N-word going on socially.”

For many, the answer to understanding the connotations of the N-word lies with the education around it, and at Grant, that discourse is limited. Would students be attempting redefinition and using the word if there was recognition of its history in the classroom?

“I don’t know,” Lewis admits. “I mean what does that mean, to reclaim the word? Whose word was it in the first place? So what are you claiming? Why would you want to claim it?

“That becomes the question. And then you look at our society and our culture and you look at even pop culture in music media; there are so many things out there and so many images out there where the word is being thrown around so casually.”

Caples, who uses the word in some of his rap songs, recognizes the complexity of the situation.

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“Hip-hop, even though it’s black-rooted and it is black culture, it’s become more commercialized and then it’s included every race,” he says. “You got white kids that feel like they’re a part of it. Them being in the culture, they feel like they can say it. And I’m conflicted at shows, you know, there’s white kids who know my words, and they (are) rapping it.”

 

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For some people, songs that use the N-word offer a license to say it.

Thelus says if others – regardless of race – are comfortable using the word in music, he’s fine with it. “If I am in my car and I’m playing some dirty language music, and there are some other people that aren’t black in the car, with my other black friends, and the N-word comes up…if you’re like comfortable saying the word and like you know the meaning of the word, then it’s OK to say it,” he says.

Others are steadfast that non-black people need to refrain from using the word, regardless of context.

Senior Kinsley Daniels, who is African American, agrees with this sentiment. “Since it’s in so many songs and like Vines and YouTube, I feel like it’s easy to misinterpret it as something like you can…say,” she says. “So, I’ve definitely, like, stopped my friends multiple times from like saying it…I’ll just be like, ‘Yeah, you’re kinda not able to say that.’”

So, can the N-word ever be truly reclaimed? The jury is still out on a case that may never reach a conclusion.

Noah Evans-Kluthe, who is multiracial, says, “I have a feeling that this word…it will always have a double meaning, like the ‘A’ and the ‘ER,’ it will always have those two sides to it, two sides to the same coin.”

Millner says it’s an evolving discussion. “You don’t have much chance of changing the voice of the direction of the next generation; they select their own path.” ◊

 

Dylan Palmer and Joshua Webb contributed to this story.