Language Matters II

In my previous post, I discussed the ways that gendered and misogynistic language exert effects in contemporary life, sometimes without their users even properly realising it. I love language, and the power that it has over how we view and react to the world. I love analysing this potence. I think that people underestimate the power of words in everyday life, and I am interested in investigating the impact that they have.

This impact, however, can be negative. Powerful groups have manipulated language to create narratives which oppress and disenfranchise others. As Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie stated in an insightful TED Talk, 'Stories matter ... Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize'. Language is a powerful tool, but we must wield it mindfully.

The topic of this post, then, is the story of racism, and the language that has been used to perpetuate and reinforce it into the present day. I want to particularly focus on attitudes fostered by white people in discussions of the use of the N-word. I would like to think it’s common knowledge now that we, as white people, should not be using this word, regardless of context. This racial slur is so pervasive that we do not even need to say it in its entirety to know what it is. But mine and others’ experiences in discussions of racism have shown that this still needs some clarification.

Throughout history, white people have rarely been silent, even in areas of the world where we are the minority. We have forced our language upon others through colonialism, and then manipulated it to stereotype, oppress and justify our violence. Think about how the word ‘savages’ was used by colonists to position those inhabiting colonised countries as ‘other’, to make them appear less human, to distance them from the 'civilised' white man and therefore justify his violence towards them. This is an example of a story used to dispossess and malign.

In So you want to talk about race? Ijeoma Oluo states that 'As long as we have had the spoken word, language has been one of the first tools deployed in efforts to oppress others. Words are how we process the world, how we form societies, how we codify our morals. In order to make injustice and oppression palatable in a world with words that say such things are unacceptable, we must come up with new words to distance ourselves from the realities of the harm we are perpetrating on others. This is how black people—human beings—become n*****s'.

The N-word has been used as an othering tool, during slavery, reconstruction, the Jim Crow era, the civil rights movements, and today in both the US and the UK. It has been a device used by those with power to stereotype and dehumanise entire populations. But now, amidst a renewed civil rights push, we are being asked to be silent; for once in our history, we are required to abstain from speaking, from expressing this one word. For some white people, it appears, this is unfathomable.

And so some enter discussions of ‘why can’t I use this word?’. The trouble is that, in entering these debates about whether this word should be used, many white people are more focused on defending their ‘right’ to use it, than understanding why they shouldn’t. The truth is, we granted ourselves the right to use it for hundreds of years – and look what we did with it. Our blind entitlement to use and abuse language as we see fit, at human cost, is what got us to this point. We must disentangle ourselves from this to move forwards. We have had our time wielding this word, and we have shown that we cannot be trusted with it. We must give it up.

Some may argue that no one at all, Black people included, should be using this offensive word, and maybe we will get to this point some day. But we need to understand that reclaiming an offensive slur is a powerful act of self-determination for marginalised populations. Our political and economic systems still exist to disadvantage Black people, but language is more malleable, it can be reclaimed for good. In reclaiming a slur, populations claim their right to use particular parts of language in a way that suits them, in a way that attempts to repair its violent history by using it as a sign of affection and familiarity. This is an act of survival in the face of oppression.

Awareness is key, and if you aren’t familiar with the brutal history of the N-word in Western culture, familiarise yourself with it. If we educate ourselves in the stories that white people have historically used this word to tell, I would hope that we would never even want to use it. Why would you want to be personally associated with a word that represents so much trauma? We are unavoidably implicit in its history, and if we continue to use it, we continue that history in the present day. While white people have inherited the privilege of still being the gatekeepers of the English language, 'people of color have inherited the pain of these words. The oppression they face today is a direct result of how these words were used in the past' (Oluo). Every time a white person uses this word, they resurface and reinflict the pain of its history.

My rule of thumb has become: If you wouldn’t say it with a person of colour present, don’t say it around your white family/peers/friends/colleagues. If we do, we strengthen these white ‘safe spaces’ where racism can go unchecked. This also applies to many other words traditionally used as slurs or insults against or marginalised groups. If a LGBTQIA person or a person with disabilities, for example, were in the room, would you say it? If the answer is no, it’s probably best to erase that particular term from your vocabulary.

As Oluo states, 'Words have power. Words are more than their dictionary definition. The history of a word matters as long as the effects of that history are still felt'. So, in a time where the effects of this word's history are very much still being felt, we need to be conscious of the baggage that it comes with and act accordingly.

Imagine if white people used the time that they would normally spend defending our right to use offensive slurs to understand this language’s implications and history. Perhaps then we could create a system of language used to empower and educate instead of oppress.