Pardon me if these questionings are offensive in any way. That is not my intention. I am merely curious on the intricacies of the N-word and its uses.
It is commonly known, I think, that white people oughn’t say it, something which doesn’t extend to Black people. I wonder, though, if white people think of the word, in their head (assuming the person has some sort of inmer monologue). I would imagine thinking the word might increase one’s propensity to utter the word aloud. Or perhaps not. Certainly further exposure to content that features said language must increase one’s likelihood of using the term, no? Even if one never makes use of it aloud, surely the chances hypotetically increase, no?
Race is a social construct anyways, so what exactly are races? What defines a race? Is it from a 'Murican perspective? Asian is a race, innit? Is Latin American a race? If so, do white Latin Americans, or those with European descent, is that part of such race? How does the usage of the N-word apply to other races, assuming such thing?
Edit: I imagine race doesn’t just boil down to skin colour, right? There’s more to it than white = light skinned and Black = dark skinned, innit?
Edit 2: Maybe this was better for NoStupidQuestions. I may have mistankenly gone too soon for Ask Lemmy, seeing it is a question.
I’d like to add I am not questioning the N-word itself. I would not say it. I comprehend it is offensive. Seeing as it gets used by Black people, and it’s not to be used by white people, I was merely wondering on how this goes exactly. Whether it boils down to Black vs. non-Black, and what exactly defines being Black. (And also the part about thinking the word)
To add, I am not 'Murican, so no need to assume that. English isn’t even me first language.
Edit 3: to be very clear, I DO NOT WISH TO USE THE N-WORD. And I am not looking for some sort of loophole. I am merely trying to better understand things. I apologise if this is of any offense to Black people, as it is not my intention to harm anyone
Edit 4: mods, if needed be, you can safely delete this post. Not that you needed permission. I’d just like to let known if this is any problem, deletion is fine by me. I don’t intent on causing issues
If you have to ask it ain’t for you
Here’s my weird perspective on it, first of all it’s not a word in my vocabulary, so I wouldn’t say it anyways, and I don’t normally listen to rap/hip-hop or other styles that use the word, so accidentally singing it also isn’t a problem for me. But I think the most important point for me is that I’m not from the USA, and besides some random movie I have never ever heard the word being used in a racist manner, so to me it doesn’t carry the same weight as it does for people who have suffered it directly.
Personally I think it’s all related to the fact that a black saying that word implicitly has no racist connotations, whereas with non-black you can’t be sure. That being said, while I understand wanting to conquer the oppressiveness of it by incorporating it into your slang, if you prevent others from using it in the same way, the oppressiveness is still there and you haven’t removed power from the word. Think on how Gay used to be offensive, and things like the Gay Pride and similar reclaimed the word, to the point where even if heterosexual people use it nowadays it’s not necessarily offensive.
That being said, like I mentioned at the start, I don’t live in a place where people use that word, nor am I black, so I can’t possibly understand what hearing that means to someone who’s actually heard it as an insult, so me saying they should be more open with non-blacks using it in a non-offensive manner as a way to diminish the power of that word in the asshole mouths might feel insensitive. And at the end of the day I don’t care because it’s not in my vocabulary so I wouldn’t use it even if blacks were okay with me using it.
In 'Murica, it seems that you can make fun/insult/ somitimes simply have an opinion on a community as long as you are part of it
Don’t say it. That’s the rule.
You get a pass from a black friend? Cool. Still don’t say it.
Come up in a black neighborhood, only white kid, they say “it’s cool” because y’all grew up together? Don’t say it.
It’s about respect. If you’re not black, don’t say it.
Pretty much it, I’ve been made an “honorary black man” twice, once for handling my self well at a black fraternity a former roommate was joining, and once… well, for the alleged size of my wedding tackle. I don’t count that last one as a good reason, but I didn’t say it.
Are you black? No? Don’t say it. Don’t sing it. Do your best to remove it from your mental vocabulary and thoughts as well. Its an ugly word from an ugly time, that a fear we’re heading towards again, so… yeah. Just no.
Remember, race doesn’t matter. This is class warfare. We are villagers trying to survive pillaging dragons, ending lives and hoarding wealth with no benefit to any sort of greater good.
This is a time of dragons, look to the dragon slayers of old for guidance.
Nobody should say it imo and I mean nobody, some words can just be left in the past.
For me, the only grey area where it might be acceptable for a white person to use it in any circumstances is if they’re reading or quoting a very old work of literature. What if you’re reading Huckleberry Finn aloud? You can say, “N-Word Jim,” but that seems off. Or you be reading historical accounts. If there’s some Jim Crow-era newspaper that just openly says the N word, censoring it may actually take away from the impact of the word.
But even in these cases, there’s probably a better way to handle this than to just outright say the N word. I’m just not sure what that way is.
I’m glad you pointed out that this is in reference to old literature. Whenever I see a white person singing to a song and they say it “because it’s just part of the song,” hard cringe. Just didn’t say it. Skip the word. It’s easy.
A good example I can think of is that young white man at the DNC singing along with Not Like Us who was so joyous and animated and went viral. When it came to the n-word, he just skipped it. Just fist pumping and keeping the energy, and closing his mouth for one word. A lot of people noticed and were grateful that he was respectful in this way.
Yeah the only cases I would consider it even remotely conceivable to use the word would be when you’re actually trying to capture its horror in a historical context. Like if you’re reading some newspaper from 1910 Alabama as part of a history lesson on lynchings. I don’t know if those just casually drop the N word, but it seems likely. Same reason you might show examples of Nazi-era anti-Jewish propaganda. Sometimes we have to look at the ugly parts of history.
But even then, actually saying it out loud probably isn’t necessary. If I was having students read some Jim Crow era news clipping, I wouldn’t cross the word out from the page itself. The students can still see and read it with their own eyes. But we also don’t need to read it out loud. Hell I would probably just have a frank discussion about it at the start of the lesson. That would probably be a good learning experience in and of itself.
It might help to know that Mark Twain was satirically using that word to juxtapose its offensive nature with Jim being the ONLY good adult in the book. It wasn’t simply “a product of it’s time” or anything like that.
I’m not saying to belt it out loud and proud while reading the book, but at the very least Mark Twain was being deliberate on his usage of it and it wasn’t to be malicious and was in fact to highlight the humanity of Jim in the face of his oppression. Some will say that Twain fumbled on his execution by making Jim a characature of stereotypes, but, at least it was just mindless racism, for what that’s worth.
ETA: To actually answer your question though “n-word” gives all the context you need, no need to say the word, it’s history is strong enough to be fully conveyed by “n-word” in almost all contexts when being spoken by a white person especially.
You self censored defeating your own point
Samuel Clemens would be proud. Read this comment in Mark Twain’s voice, and it is absolute perfection. Bravo.
What if I’m singing along to a song written and performed by a black artist?
I tried to find this video not on tiktok but couldn’t, sorry. But here’s an example: https://www.tiktok.com/@donnarodgers492/video/7398470961059712299
Just don’t say it. Just skip the word. And if you do it when singing privately,it should be an automatic habit when you do it around other people.
This might sound dumb, so bear with me.
I grew up in a super poor city, predominantly black. All my friends from there listened to hip hop where it was used a lot, they said it, their families said it, etc…
What I did was sub that word with another when I was singing. It became a habit. I thought that was a better idea than getting into the habit of singing it, where I might slip up and say it around them (since it was commonly used around there).
It’s a lot easier to create a new habit than break an old one, you know?
This sounds like a decent approach, although it might struggle in instances where the n word is key to a rhyme.
For example, in Nas’ NY State of Mind, there’s the sequence:
But just a n___a walkin’ with his finger on the trigger
Make enough figures until my pockets get biggerIf I’m singing along to that, I now tend to leave a blank space rather than substitute another word. Especially because another word which rhymed could easily be mistaken for the real thing!
I would absolutely never use the word in casual speech, but there was a brief period in the past where I felt that it was more respectful to the artist/material to use the words exactly as written.
However I realised that I would only ever do that when I was alone - and thinking about why that was the case made me rethink what was really most important and stop doing even that.
I use “brother” in my head when I’m listening to music.
I use “kitty”. It amuses me when Straight Outta Compton becomes about kitties with attitude
Oh man, I can’t wait to listen to “Blast if I have to” by E A Ski using kitty! 😄
Then don’t say it.
That is famously a bad idea.
Find better songs.
Plenty of superb songs use that word. Abandoning the songs altogether isn’t the answer IMO. Not singing the word is a better approach than never listening to the music.
Race being a social construct does not make slurs any more permissible to use.
That isn’t really what I was questioning there. I was just wondering what makes race. One might associate, for instance, skin colour to race. But skin colour is more of a… idk, a range? It’s not just two different things, black and white. There are darker skin tones, and lighter ones. It’s a scale, really. So if we were to take skin colour as defining race, one would have to draw a line somewhere, where one becomes dark enough to be deemed Black (assuming you’re taking skin colour as the indicator for race, that is). And that doesn’t even account for other races one might see. If one, for instance, were to imagine Asian as a race (idk if it is. Is it?), Asians are (generally) white, no? As far as skin colour. Like, what is it that defines a race?
Permissibility also a social construct. Society, too.
It seems like you maybe thought I was saying the exact opposite of what I was trying to say. I’m not sure if that’s your error or mine, so let me be clear: “Social construct” doesn’t mean “not real”, it means “important to consider when dealing with other people”.
There’s no confusion. I was merely adding that they’re all social constructs. (As real as money.)
Partly inspired by socks.
Welcome to society. Don’t like it? Isolate yourself away from everyone and everything. Best of luck out there champ!
Social currency & sanctimonious displays to gain it: also a social construct.
Well, since humans build societies, everything is a social construct.
Anything independent of human convention (like the rest of nature) isn’t. Neither is anything a priori (like logic).
One of the things I miss about not going to college, how to have a proper discussion about metaphysics.
So when racists use it its with their signature attention to the social construction of race and nuance that we’ve all come to expect. I.e. they’re mad at someone they think is a bit dark and they call them a slur about it.
To try and answer what you’re asking genuinely, since I don’t see indication that this is bad-faith:
The reason African-Americans and some black people get a “pass” to use it isn’t because it isn’t offensive. Its because they’re expected to have a better understanding of their own oppression than someone who hasn’t lived with it, and because it can generally be assumed to not have racist connotations. The word has such heavy history that if someone who isn’t black uses it, it is usually (and reasonably) assumed to be racism. Even among those who are black, theres a lot of nuance, with many feeling uncomfortable with saying it, either because the word is so loaded that it can be offensive reguardless, or because they don’t feel like they’re connected enough to the history to have the “right” to say it (I.E. someone who grew up in a black-majority country might feel this way.)
Just to add to this: It was a term used by white people for slaves, it is directly linked to slavery. This is what makes it so offensive, particularly in the context of the US, if your ancestors weren’t slaves, or even from Africa.
A rough explicit version would be to call someone ‘slave’ to their face. The US context adds insult to injury because descendants of former masters and slaves are living together, so not only is it a personal insult, but a cultural one. Like saying ‘you should still be slaves’. White people know this, nobody can’t claim ignorance, this makes it even MORE offensive, because the speaker doesn’t have the benefit of the doubt.
I personally don’t like hearing it, even from African Americans.
I won’t say anything about it when I hear them say it, but I’ll call anyone else out.
Likewise, I don’t like hearing other racist terms used for other nationalities. Humans as a species share 99% of the same DNA. We’re basically a monoculture, which is why pandemics are possible.
Just no.
As a white guy in the US South, it’s just… No. Don’t go there. Don’t even think it. You don’t want any part of that can of worms.
However, I remember hearing KRS One discussing the words usage a long time ago.
This video isn’t the discussion I remember, but it’s similar in content:
Not sure who KRS One is, but that was rather insightful. Never thought of it like that
Oh, I think I’m familiar with that “chorus” (?). Maybe it was featured on Djs From Mars’ The History of Hip Hop. It was also sampled in Timmy Trumpet, Marnik & Ely Oaks’ Sound of da Police (with DES3ETT)
Yeah it’s different down here. All the history down here, plus some of the older white folks still using that word… ugh.
And KRS One is one of the best MCs of all time imho!
And I know, because KRS One.
Just look up the dictionary definition of the word. It pretty much explains everything and why it’s pretty much the worst word ever.
I’m not Black but I have been around Black folks and i only recall them calling each other that in the 90’s. Maybe I just haven’t been around enough idk.
Rappers who used that word have been promoted in the past and new rap artists seem to follow their lead.
The rule is it’s a taboo word particularly in the US and in English-speaking communities aware of its US history. In the US, there’s an ingroup & outgroup dynamic with the black community where in less formal registers the ingroup may use it
- for ingroup disparagement
- neutrally
- for ingroup solidarity or camaraderie.
However, the ingroup speaks in black vernacular English, so the word sounds different.
You’re recognized as a member of the ingroup community if they generally perceive you as such: culture, speech, appearance, other social markers.
Usage by the outgroup is typically treated as insensitive & insulting outside special cases such as quotation & academic discussion. The euphemism n-word is typically employed to minimize offense.
Don’t.
What is it? You make kinda riddle here…
‘Next president’?
/s
If you say the N-Word, you might be elected the next US President!
Too Soon?
Thank you for the warning! So I’m going to avoid it thoroughly.
