The N-Word

 N-Word - Nieema Foster

Many words once branded obscene and not fit to print or be spoken aloud in decent society - words mostly related to parts of the body below the navel and to acts associated with them - have now lost much of their power to shock. Gradually, their letters have been reinstated and the little stars removed and we should all be grateful for this.

Unfortunately, however, this hasn't stopped society from engaging in word taboo and today there's a new list of terms branded as so offensive that even to speak them when reporting their usage or read them in an entirely appropriate historical context is now thought unacceptable. Indeed, it can cost you your job, your reputation, and perhaps even your liberty if some oafish policeman or other exercises his right to arrest you. 

The word nigger is perhaps the term most likely to cause moral outrage and horror today and we are expected to write and to say the n-word whenever its usage becomes unavoidable. Obviously it's a term loaded with a lot of shameful cultural baggage and carries ugly and violent racist associations. Obviously it would be a nicer world if the word was not used in order to insult and dehumanize persons of colour.

But, nevertheless, it's absurd and unbecoming when a term such as this is allowed to terrify social consciousness and haunt the conscience of white liberalism. The more we attempt to repress usage of the word and drive it into a non-discursive limbo, the more it returns and looms up magnified out of all proportion, frightening us silly beyond all reason. 

As Lawrence writes, when certain words, certain ideas, and certain memories become taboo and subject to censorship then we risk driving ourselves insane with a degraded sort of terror and nothing is more dangerous in the long run in a society such as ours as mass-insanity. And so, ultimately, I find myself in opposition to all those who react with a kind of hysteria whenever they hear a taboo word; ready in an unthinking instant to take to Twitter and other forms of social media in order to express their mob-indignation and mob-condemnation. 

Further, I don't support the cleaning-up of history, the alteration of literary texts, or the use of euphemisms which are not only dishonest and hypocritical, but patronising to the people directly affected. As the African American comedian and social activist Dick Gregory points out, using the phrase n-word instead of nigger ultimately denies the hard truth of the modern black experience in relationship to the white world.   

Note: whilst this post was partly written in response to the Jeremy Clarkson eeny-meeny-miny-moe case, I in no way wish to defend him. For if he wishes to wilfully engage in casual racism either as an act of bluff bravado or in order to court controversy that's his choice, but he must then be prepared to accept the consequences. His absurd and embarrassing attempt to both explain and apologize for reciting a nursery rhyme which contains the word nigger whilst filming an episode of Top Gear, only added insult to injury.