Why Is It So Hard To Talk About the N-Word?

by Sharon Davidson

Title adapted from TED. (2020, April 16). Why it’s so hard to talk about the N-word: Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor. [Video]. YouTube. January 15, 2022 from https://youtu.be/CVPl8jRaAqM

Trigger Warning: 

This paper includes uncensored examples of hate speech based on race, religion, and sexual orientation. In order to be clear about what was said, hateful words used will be cited in full once in the paper and then replaced by the first letter followed by two asterisks (**) or by a phrase using the first letter, such as “the N-word”.

This essay is informed by the words of Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor and Ta-Nehisi Coates on the public use of the N-word. Readers are strongly encouraged to watch their short videos cited in this paper.

Editor's Note: 

As educators with a commitment to do no harm, we must bring critical consciousness to the selection of materials and the pedagogical strategies used in our drama and dance classrooms. We must ensure that our work aligns with Board policies, procedures, guidelines and best practices. We encourage all teachers and artist-educators to seek the guidance, support and mentorship of Equity, Indigenous and Curriculum leadership at the school and Board level. Setting the right conditions and respecting your Board's guidelines regarding the "n-word", and all matters related to equitable, anti-racist and anti-oppressive practices is of paramount importance. 

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At the first Ontario school I attended after immigrating from Jamaica with my family, one of my classmates called attention to me by shouting, “Look at the nigger (n**) with the milk jugs.” His remark felt threatening and degrading to me, but he did not have any compunction in using that racist and sexist language because he did not believe the statement would engender a social cost for him. I felt humiliated and I retreated into myself, rather than telling an adult about the incident. Almost 40 years later, the N-word is still in use, but having a conversation about it is not any easier.

Recently, an encounter with the N-word occurred during an online conversation hosted by Cahoots Theatre. During the moderator’s introduction, a Zoom-bomber interjected “Shut up n**” (Cahoots Theatre, 2021, 0:1:07) and “I hate n**, n**” (Cahoots Theatre, Dec 15, 2021, 0:1:13). Later, Tanisha Taitt, the artistic director of Cahoots Theatre, posted a Facebook video explaining that a content warning was being added to the original video in response to a viewer complaint that Ms. Taitt was promoting anti-Black racism by not deleting the N-word reference (Cahoots Theatre, 2021, 2:58). Ms. Taitt responded that leaving the interaction in the video had value because it was a real example that would provide insight to viewers who had never experienced the direct impact of a racist attack (Cahoots Theatre, 2021, 9:00).  

The Cahoots interaction represents two perspectives on the wide spectrum of possible responses to the use of the N-word. In order to write this reflection, I consulted with a broader group of Black people. They were not particularly upset about leaving the N-word in the Cahoots video. For all of us, the more disturbing element was considering why this expression of racism still offers social capital to some people.

When I asked how he and his classmates had responded to that incident, he responded that his teacher had been (quite understandably) losing her mind when she saw the changes. All the students remained silent as it was near the end of class and they did not know who had made the changes. As a result, it does not seem that there was an opportunity to debrief and talk about the social significance of the hack. Incidents of hate speech must be directly addressed in the classroom. 

I believe that drama learning spaces can play a very important role in providing the opportunity to examine the power of words, particularly in the context of pedagogy grounded in anti-racism, Indigenization, and decolonization. I had the privilege of experiencing the power of a facilitated encounter in my first drama course. As a grade 10 drama student in Ontario during the mid-1980s, I was part of a diverse class. Near the end of the semester, our teacher took the opportunity to have a discussion about our use of stereotypes, their lack of factual support, and why we felt comfortable using them. I only understood how precisely hateful words reflect actual prejudices when two young men in my class, who were also people of colour of Caribbean descent, rejected my suggestion that using derogatory slurs based on sexual orientation was hateful and hurtful and similar to our personal experiences of being called n**. 

In the video, Why It’s So Hard To Talk About the N-Word (TED, 2020), Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor argues that “the single most fraught site for points of encounter with the N-word is the classroom” (TED, 2020, 11:03). She believes that “while student reaction looks like an attack on freedom of speech, this is an issue of teaching” (TED, 2020, 14:15). Her students’ daily social lives are permeated with use of the N-word in music, locker rooms, popular culture, museums, and video game chat rooms; “but they don’t know how to think about it, or even, really what the word means” (TED, 2020, 15:15). Her American experience is that people shy away from having open and honest conversations about the N-word, so it takes on the tantalizing taboo of “sex before sex education” (TED, 2020, 17:20).

Stordeur Pryor’s response is to try to create space in her classroom to have open and honest conversations about points of encounter with the word, without using the word aloud. For her, safe discussions are made possible by the following conditions:

not saying the word, not making her Black students responsible for

 teaching their classmates about it, always asking the same question – 

why is talking about the N-word hard? – and becoming deeply acquainted 

with her own points of encounter because the N-word brings with it all the

 complicated history of US racism, the nation’s history and her own, right 

here, right now. There is no avoiding it. (TED, 2020, 18:00)

While Stordeur Pryor’s observations have been made in the context of American culture and history, her conclusions about the N-word’s socio-historical and cultural significance and her suggestions for having a productive conversation about our encounters with it have resonance in a Canadian context. Looking back at the Cahoots Zoom-bombing incident, some of the dynamics that Stordeur Pryor discusses can be seen in the participants’ responses. 

One truth is that the N-word is hard to talk about. The difficulty of initiating the discussion was reflected in the length of time, over 10 minutes, that it took for participants in the Cahoots video to directly address the incident. Undoubtedly, there were many reasons for this delay, including shock and not wanting to give the Zoom-bomber the oxygen in the room. However, all the people who spoke to me about the video said that they spent the first ten minutes of the video waiting for someone to respond. As one respondent said there was a detailed land acknowledgement in the video, but it felt as if there should have been an immediate acknowledgement of what had happened here and now. 

That respondent was also disturbed because the Black participants in the video had the responsibility of addressing the Zoom-bomb. The person I spoke to stated very clearly that she did not believe it was her responsibility to explain racism to others; rather they have a responsibility to educate themselves. She also said that she should not need to be in the room for there to be a response to a point of encounter with anti-Black racism – White allies have the ability to speak up. 

The Cahoots video also included a discussion of an earlier workshop which had incorporated the word n** in a biographical spoken word piece by a Black artist. That piece then inspired a White participant in the workshop to respond by also using the N-word in a way that the workshop leader felt was inappropriate.  The artist wrestled with what happened, considering whether  he should have removed the N-word in this workshop/educational space, or if he could have framed his performance in a way that  didn’t allow for this to happen.

That interaction showed part of the process Stordeur Pryor calls "becoming deeply acquainted with your own points of encounter" and Ta-Nehisi Coates refers to as “words that don’t belong to everyone”.  

Both the spoken word artist and the workshop participant presented points of encounter with the N-word, but from very different places, different understandings and different experiences with the word. While this can be hard to talk about, how else can we dismantle the conditions that allow for use of the word in problematic or hateful ways, with disregard for the meaning and impact upon others present to the encounter?

It is possible to give learners space and freedom within the drama classroom, or any classroom, to make presentations, to perform, and to speak their truth, respectfully and responsibly. If a situation arises where boundaries are transgressed or language is used in a way that causes harm, the teacher must be prepared to address the encounter. If anything has been clearly illustrated to all of us in the past few years, it is that people can have radically different perceptions of the same circumstances. Someone who is aware of the history and who has personally experienced the social impact of the N-word, will necessarily have a different response to, and expectations for, the use of the word than someone who has only heard it used in popular culture. There is learning and understanding to be facilitated through encounters with this word, whether it is seen in text or heard aloud.  This learning can happen in drama classrooms and learning spaces when teachers and artist educators have done their own learning and are prepared to handle these discussions with candour and care. 

One of the participants in my focus group told of her experience going to see The Hate U Give in 2018 with her teenage daughter and her daughter’s friend at a movie theatre. When the protagonist’s young Black companion was shot by a White policeman in the movie, they cried because, as people of colour, that possibility felt very real to them. However the same scene provoked laughter from a group of White young women who were sitting in front of them. None of us can know what inspired the young women to laugh; it is possible the plot point, which involved the young man being shot because the policeman thought his hairbrush was a gun, seemed to be more farcical than realistic to them, pre-George Floyd. Whatever inspired the differing reactions, their responses reflect differing understandings of significance – tragedy in one perception skews into comedy in another. The experiences and circumstances that formed those differing perceptions need to be discussed openly, if there is to be any hope of mutual understanding. 

Stordeur Pryor wants us to understand that “When the N-word comes to school, it brings all the complicated history with it (TED, 2020,18:57)” and because of that “this 6 letter word is like a capsule of accumulated hurt (TED, 2020, 12:40)”.

Let’s ask ourselves:

Do we know that history?

Do our students know that history?

In what ways can our drama and dance spaces acknowledge this accumulated hurt and move meaningfully toward healing?

References

Cahoots Theatre Company. (2001) Support Us. Retrieved from January 15, 2022 from

      https://cahoots.ca/

 Cahoots Theatre. ( 2021, December 9). Shedding light on the final ConvoCahoots [Video].

     [Status Update] Facebook. 

    https://www.facebook.com/CahootsTheatre/videos/975975302994530/?extid=NS-UNK-

Cahoots Theatre. (2021, December 15). ConvoCahoots: Jordan and Luke. [Video]. Youtube.

           https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgpVD-QhQSM

         Random House. (2017, November 7). Ta-Nehisi Coates on Words that Don’t Belong to              Everyone. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QO15S3WC9pg

         TED. (2020, April 16). Why it’s so hard to talk about the N-word: Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor.        [Video]. YouTube. January 15, 2022 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?                             v=CVPl8jRaAqM