No, goddammit! White people do not get to use the n-word under ANY FUCKING CIRCUMSTANCES! We, white people, have used the n-word to oppress them, black people. We, white people, continue to do real harm to them, black people. We, white people, have so much just because we are white: our white needs, wants, and sensitivities are all assumed.
Non-whites know how to act white. White people only know how to act white. White people need to end racism. We can make a down payment on that by relinquishing any and all claims to the n-word. ; it will not hurt us to give up any claims to the n-word. We, white people, can use all of the other words.
We, white people, can do that as a small down payment on ending racism.
The Psy of Life 
This reminds me of something I read the other day that fits (just wish I remembered where). The author was saying that white people don’t seem to like being called “white people.” And why? Probably because they were always referred to as “people” before, and everybody else was “other.”
As a white person myself, I acknowledge that I’m a white person and it’s pointless not to, so I don’t care about being offended because I bet so many others already have been by labels. It’s like one of those things that kinda sticks in the back of your mind until somebody articulates it, because we’ve been saying we’re in a “post-racial society.” I swallowed the tripe myself, til I noticed that as I got older, family members let their guard down around their mouths and didn’t bother filtering their casual racism and stereotypes around me. That made me uncomfortable, because I thought we were over it, that only weird fringe people like the KKK were really racist. I’ll give the Dump era props–it taught me and other naive whites like me that racism is alive and well, so don’t pretend otherwise.
I know we’re all racist and prejudiced in different ways and different times, towards different people or groups of people. turn on the news and you can’t avoid examples. But I totally agree with what you said about the n-word. It’s been used as a weapon for too damned long (just look up “niggardly” in the dictionary–I was surprised how awful a descriptive word it was when I saw it, and realized the n-word was a derivation of that). I’ve never heard a white person use the n-word in any way that could even be loosely considered positive.
Hugs to all, and a better world.
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Howdy Chatty!
I couldn’t agree more. Until you’ve left the bubble of the white world and lived some place where you are an ethnic, linguistic, cultural minority, then you can’t really know what it is like. White people feel uncomfortable being called white people for the same reason they’re uncomfortable saying black people in public. It feels like to single out someone by race is to commit a social infraction and be prejudiced. The reality is that white society has never let the ethnic minorities that live among us forget that they are different.
Giving up racist symbols like the n-word does not hurt white people in the least. There is no harm done to us as individuals, as a culture, as a country, as a people. No harm. None. Zero. Zilch.
So, why not? Why not just pledge not to use the word? Why not pledge not to use the word out of deference to our history of slavery and violent racism, out of deference to the absolute real damage done everyday to people of color by the interpersonal, structural, and institutional racism that they encounter?
There is no reason other than white privilege.
Huzzah!
Jack
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As a logophile I am sometimes dismayed as to just how much power words can have
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Howdy Jad!
I too am a logophile! Language is amazing when you think of it. We can vibrate the air and propagate a controlled disturbance from our lips to another’s ear where it can be sensed, transduced to neural signals, and interpreted into meaning. We do the same thing with our written language. That is absolutely miraculous. And, like all of the other miracles the body and mind can perform, it can be used for the mundane and harmful. That is what is dismaying, to me: we waste this amazing gift with mundaneness and malignance.
But, when it comes to white privilege, we are so blind to the harm that we inflict on others. It can be depressing.
Huzzah!
Jack
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hell yeah we can ditch the “N” word!! And there are a few others too …Cunt comes to mind… but it is not relegated to any specific color of skin. It is a pejorative that falls off the tongue of many colors.and is used specifically to denigrate females… I think that there is a plethora of words that would be a kindness to humanity to be removed from common speech . Of course it would not be long before other words would take their place. It seems that humans just can’t avoid being jerks
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Howdy Francese!
There are a lot words I’d like to see lost and a few more used a little more often, but ain’t no one really asking me, now is there? The words that we use to denigrate the qualities of others are some of the worst, though. The more fundamental the quality, the worse the harm that comes from using them. The most obvious single characteristic of an individual is their skin tone. It is the thing that registers first, so what could be more fundamental than that? The thing that defines us more than anything else is our gender, and how many words for genitalia do we have to use as insults?
Huzzah!
Jack
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