In an interview with Marc Maron, president Obama used the n-word quite casually while making the pretty obvious point that its use or non-use should not be the measure of the state of racism in the US. Of course, his use of the word gave many people the vapors. As a result, the rest of the hour-long interview has been pretty much ignored but you can get a synopsis here.
Larry Wilmore explains what the fuss is all about and provides the appropriate context.
I simply don’t understand why some people feel offended that black people can use the n-word without too much pushback while others cannot. I don’t feel oppressed by that fact. In fact, I have never had the desire to use the word at all and if it becomes necessary to discuss it, there are ways to do so without using it. While in general the use of euphemisms seems ridiculous when everyone knows what the actual word is, there are times when it is appropriate. The reason for using an euphemism is not because the actual word will cause offense but in order to dissociate oneself from the harmful associations that the word connotes. Over four years ago, I explained more fully my reasons for sometimes using euphemisms.
I recall that there was a time when some people moaned about how that perfectly nice word ‘gay’ had been co-opted by the LGBT community and now they could not use it to mean ‘happy’. Is that really such a hardship? There are plenty of synonyms for happy that you can find in any thesaurus (this page lists 48) so why the fuss?
Why the fuss? How can we dance the “Gay Gordons” in this modern day and age?? As for the presidential use of language, it says so much more about those complaining, for whom it ain’t really about language, is it.
Tim Minchin:
The trouble with words is that you can hold people to the dictionary for certain levels of meaning, but you absolutely can’t dictate to people the connotations of a word or their emotional responses. If that’s what the word did, it’s what it did.
Well it certainly changes that old joke about the writer and the producer of the Beggar’s Opera that it “made Rich gay and Gay rich”!
Obama didn’t even use it, he mentioned it. There’s a difference: you mention the word when you are talking about the word, you use the word when you employ it to convey meaning.
I’ve always found it absurd that we can get ourselves into a situation in which we don’t feel right mentioning a word when that word is the topic of discussion.
@Mano
Interestingly enough I’m in the middle of a draft for a post on the functional use of the n-word and racial pejoratives in contexts like this from the perspective of a non-neurotypical white male.
I’m slightly reorganizing your post.
I think it makes sense from a social competition/conflict perspective.
From my perspective when a white person uses the n-word without a very specific context* it essentially summons the emotions associated with that words negative history and the modern racism that black people face. One of the functions of white people not being able to use the word is that it is a social reminder that things still suck for black people and we white people are the ones that need to fix that. It’s a reasonable and useful social tool and the least I can do as a white person is cooperate and shame fellow whites. As far as I’m concerned to earn the right to use the word we must fix racism, and even then we should wait until everyone who was harmed by it’s use is gone.
However we white people are the dominant racial class in the US and that comes along with it’s own set of (conscious and unconscious) behaviors that are meant to maintain and even grow that dominance. The negative emotion associated with being unable to use the n-word is the whole point. Feeling that it is “unfair” can be connected to a desire to remove the social advantage that is present in a “black word” being forbidden for whites to speak. We basically don’t like to feel like we can’t do something socially speaking. I would imagine that white people who tend to be more aggressive and authoritarian would see the situation as unfair more often.
I know less about the history, but I would imagine that for “gay” a useful observation involves how it is people who don’t like gay people who tend to obsess over gay sex instead of think about relationships that gay people have. I imagine the same people would have had gay sex connected to happiness in their minds. Certainly a happy connection, just not to a homophobe.
I agree but would say that avoiding inflicting harmful associations on others is the most important one to me. The neurobiological reality of language means that the specific set of lines or compressed air molecules will be stored and associated with emotions. When a white person uses the word those associations are recalled regardless of intent.
*I’m sure there really are white people who have relationships with black people who can use the word around them, but in a public context they would still have to avoid it. Even using the word academically summons the emotions. We are emotionally sloppy creatures and that requires acting like it is true.
Hang on: I can´t use the word “gay” in the archaic sense anymore? When I try to, will people in black limo´s and helicopters come to my house to tell me off?
@lamaria 7
No but you may discover that your dating pool has expanded.
Sillier still are those that insist that because ‘gay’ is no longer used to mean happy, that must mean gay people are somehow associated with depression.
There’s nowt as queer as folk.
Hey now, leave the nowts out of it. 😉