When I was a freshman in college, I served as the social chair for my 200-person dormitory.  I decided that Thursday movie nights would be a fun, easy tradition to establish to bring all of my dorm mates together before the inevitable mass migration to the frat parties later on in the night.  For the first week, I wanted to pick a surefire crowd pleaser, so I went with one of my all-time favorite comedies: Mel Brooks’ classic Blazing Saddles.  About fifteen of us were gathered in the commons room, enjoying it and laughing away when the only two black residents in our dorm wandered by.  They watched for a few minutes, never having seen it, and were shocked by the number of times the white characters in the movie dropped the N-bomb.[1]  They were furious with me for having rented the movie and claimed that it was racist.  I tried to explain that the hero of the movie, Sheriff Bart, was, in fact, black and that Mel Brooks was trying to make fun of white people and the stupidity of racial stereotypes both in the old west and in 1974 when the movie came out.  They were having none of it and left upset and unpersuaded.  But I wrote off their complaints as overly sensitive and politically correct.  I wasn’t a racist, I was a liberal.  I was on their side.  They just didn’t get it.

In many languages, there are words for which there is no good translation that truly manages to capture the essence of a word or its cultural significance.  In Portuguese, for example, the word saudades evokes a sense of missing someone or longing for something, but this description doesn’t do the word justice in communicating the range and depth of emotion often conveyed by the expression or the person expressing it.[2]  So it is with the N-word.  Certainly, it puzzles people from other countries why this word carries so much weight and hurt (though I imagine South Africans have a pretty fair idea, having a similarly-wrought word of their own) and continues to create controversy in popular culture.  Even within American society, non-black cultures often have a difficult time appreciating the depth of the word’s significance.  We understand that it causes hurt, dredges up painful memories of past injustices, and should not be uttered under any circumstance.  But we don’t necessarily feel its sting.

And it is precisely because of the weight of the word that those of us who aren’t African-American are often puzzled at its liberal and casual use by some people within the black community.  “How can they use a term they find so offense with one another?” we ask.  “Why is it so common in the lyrics of certain rap songs?” we wonder.  “When is it OK for people to use it and when is it not?” “Can I use it with my black friends if I put an –a on the end of it?”  What I think we fail to understand in asking these questions (and I myself have certainly been guilty of this as well), is the deep, historically-rooted pain that word carries with it.  There’s a brilliant scene in the recent Netflix show Dear White People where a white character sings the N-word in the company of some black friends during a house party.  When an argument breaks out among these friends about why he can’t say it while they can, his black friend explains that word itself causes him pain every time he hears a non-black person say it.  “But you know I’m not a racist,” the white friend contends.  “I know, but it hurts me to hear you say it,” his friend responds.  He then asks his white friend, “Does it bother you if I call you a honky or a cracker?”  “No, not at all,” the white friend comes back, seemingly scoring a point.  “Exactly,” his friend replies.

Before watching this scene, I hadn’t fully conceived of the implication of the word in this way.  Of being uniquely painful, of carrying all of these historical overtones, as a vocal weapon of hurt inflicted upon a particular culture by another.  I’m certainly not ignorant of the charged history of the word, having taught American history, but I’m not sure I appreciated the profound cultural link.  I tried to relate it my own experience, and the only equivalent I could come up with was the residual emotional link of the Jewish people with the Holocaust (I’m half Jewish for those of you who don’t know).  People will complain that the Jews or the Israelis always bring up the Holocaust when there is an anti-Semitic incident or an attack that targets these communities.  That not every slight is an attempt at total Jewish annihilation.  Which is true.  But these people also don’t know what it’s like to have their specific sect targeted for thousands of years of persecution in addition to being the victim of the most concerted, maniacal attempt at genocide of the industrial age.  Similarly, I believe, the N-word conjures images of a long history of oppression, subjugation, and discrimination perpetrated upon the African-American community for hundreds of years as well as the many unresolved racial injustices that persist in our society until the present day.  We simply don’t have an equivalent of the N-word in white American society.  A word that carries all of that historical and cultural baggage.  So we can’t truly appreciate the hurt and pain it causes.

When I did teach US history, I struggled with the inclusion of the N-word in the curriculum.  Any good history teacher uses primary documents as a key resource, and any in-depth inquiry into slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, or the Civil Rights Movement is sure to come across it.  I ultimately decided, and I think I still would, that it was important to include it as a teachable moment to discuss the history of the word and why it remains a sensitive subject going forward.  I have never believed that we should ban Huckleberry Finn but should discuss the word in its historical context and how it was used and why we don’t use it today.  When Bill Maher used the N-word in a wrong-headed attempt at comedy on his show Real Time a few weeks back, he was justifiably condemned.  I thought that Michael Eric Dyson (a Georgetown sociology professor and friend of Maher’s), his guest on the subsequent show, did an excellent job of explaining why exactly it was so wrong and inappropriate, even in a comedic context.  Dyson explained that N-word caused people pain, and because it is so profoundly hurtful and laden with context, should not be used by those outside the black community.  To his credit, Maher owned up to his mistake and apologized, seemingly sincere and contrite in recognition of the seriousness of his transgression.  Do I think Maher should be taken off the air because of this?  I do not.  I don’t think that it helps the dialogue or furthers the discussion.  Wesley Morris, in a New York Times op-ed, argued the same point, saying that it would be better for Maher to stay on the air to have to answer for his sins and have the painful discussion that would ensue.  For his part, Maher has long been a defender of equal rights (even if I am not a fan of his views on Islam), and his past comments and actions should be considered.  Because of this record, I think that he should be given the benefit of the doubt—given that he realizes and owns up to his fuck up, which he has.

Which brings me back to freshman Bill.  Should I have self-censored?  Should I have realized that the movie could have been hurtful to some of my classmates and chosen a different film?  I’m pretty positive I wasn’t that self-aware at the time.  Was it merely a PC issue or a part of a larger issue?  And what would I do today?  If I’m being honest, I still love Blazing Saddles.  And I think that satire, especially cutting satire, absolutely has a place in pushing difficult discussions forward.  And that college campuses need to be places where people openly discuss trying and challenging ideas, without undue censorship or safe spaces that overly constrict dialogue.  But I would also hope that I would be more sensitive to the hurtful power of certain words.  Of one word in particular.  And be willing to look within myself and be a bit more empathetic toward an experience and a legacy that is not my own, one that I may not have thought about very much.  A large part of white privilege, I think, is not having to think about it.

[1] If you’re  curious, read this 2016 Rolling Stone article that discusses the movie’s use of the N-word: http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/features/mel-brooks-on-gene-wilder-and-making-blazing-saddles-w436989

[2] Though, admittedly, I have seen it used liberally and possibly somewhat glibly.