Now, Jesse Jackson is urging artists and the media to refrain from using the "n-word." What a great idea!
Some time ago, I watched a documentary about the use of the "n-word" -- I believe it was called "The N-Word" -- in America. Some people -- black and white -- said the word is reprehensible, and should never be used. Others -- mostly black -- felt the word should be used by blacks about blacks because it takes away the "power" the word has had for so many years.
But after all these years, every time a white person uses the word, it seems as painful as it ever was. So I'm quick to argue that these efforts to strip the "n-word" of its power have not been successful, and likely never will be. To remove the hate from a word used in hate as deep and cruel as this particular word has been, might seem as likely as ending terror. It's just not going to happen.
There are two big problems with the "noble" effort of making the "n-word" anything less than hurtful.
First, to remove its meaning is to begin to forget the cruelty forced upon people for no other reason than the fact that their skin was of a different color. A favorite Twilight Zone episode of mine, "Deathshead Revisited," tells the story of a former Nazi officer who returns to his old haunts at Dachau, and while visiting the buildings of the former concentration camp, he encounters a ghost from the past who ultimately exacts justice upon the tormentor. In the closing monologue, after one of the characters asks why they keep the camp standing, Rod Serling utters these lines:
"They must remain standing because they are monuments to a time when some men decided to turn the earth into a graveyard. Into it they shovelled all of their reason, their logic, their knowledge and worst of all, their conscience. And the moment we forget this, the moment we cease to be haunted by its remembrance, we become the gravediggers."We shouldn't forget that people have been killed because of the differences among us, whether those difference were based on religion, skin color or orientation. We shouldn't allow ourselves to forget the hate that we've tried -- some more than others, no doubt -- to erase and prevent. We certainly shouldn't celebrate it, but we shouldn't pretend that it never happened. And we shouldn't forget that in many ways, it still happens.
But then there's the simpler reason that the "n-word" shouldn't be used: It doesn't come with a disclaimer. We're too stupid a people to go through life without being reminded of the obvious, and without constant reminders of things we should already know, we make stupid decisions.
Consider all of those toys parents will buy this holiday season. How many of them will say, "batteries not included," as if anyone expects things to come with batteries nowadays? How many pieces of furniture, shipped in small boxes, don't carry the message, "Some assembly required," as if there was any doubt from the size of the packaging alone? How many DVD cabinet boxes come with the warning, "DVDs sold separately," as if anyone really expects to buy a $29 DVD storage cabinet and open it up to find hundreds of dollars worth of free movies? Or there's the famous alert on coffee cups: "Danger! Hot liquid."
Could anyone really need to have these things pointed out? Yep. We're really that stupid.
When a black person uses that "n-word" in jest among his peers, no disclaimer floats through the air for observers or listeners, reminding them, "This word only allowed from black people." When they laugh and joke about its use, the rest of us don't see words hanging over our heads as we see in so many commercials that point out, "This joke should only amuse people of color."
Some of the less-bright among us, without those magical disclaimers, come to think that it's okay to throw the word out there at times, when the reality is that it almost never is anything remotely near "okay." And when some of those less-tolerant, less-educated among us use that word, the pain others experience upon hearing it is but the latest reminder that you can't remove the pain from a word imbued by decades of hate.
The same goes for that three-letter "f-word" that some gays use among themselves. And I'm sure there are countless other words, originally designed to be words that hurt, now hoped to be words that no longer hurt, that always will.
How long will we pretend that we can forget the past? And how long will we hope that we're not doomed to repeat it?
