Evening Exchange; 2805; The N Word

Should one of the most inflammatory words in the English language and the discussion of the evening X-Day. I am Kojo and I leave the N word conjures up images of slavery and Jim Crow segregation and inequality and African-Americans of the civil rights they were some of the hip hop culture consider the use of the N-word the term of endearment in this edition of the evening exchange we will discuss the controversy over the N-word with Jabari a senior editor in chief of Crisis magazine and author of the book the N-word. Who can say it who shouldn't. And why did Arias seem welcome to even today.

Thank you for having me. Why did you decide to write this book. I was motivated by curiosity more than anything else I didn't have a strong stand one way or another against the word. I wanted to just do the research and be led wherever it took me. And so that's what I did. Well when you say do the research it starts out with research I guess into the origin of the word itself. What is the origin of the word. Well you know actually linguists know a lot more about this than I do and what I found when looking into their work was that there's no consensus. But but it's principally divided between two schools of thought some one was believe it derives from a Dutch word for black and others believe it derives I guess more language probably derives from the Latin word for black which is Niger are. Well I guess more importantly though is that this word is perceived as a racial slur slur. Some think of it as an epithet but reading this book one discovers that it's really a lot more than that.

That the N word really has to do with the denigration of a race. The denigration of a people and the assertion of the intellectual inferiority of their people isn't that correct. Yeah it's really not possible as much as we might like to separate the word from all of its variants can attain Asians. I mean it worked very closely in conjunction with races laws and races customs and races culture to perpetuate this idea. At first that African-Americans were unfit for freedom and later that African-Americans were unfit for citizenship and all the rights and privileges of citizenship which I raise that because I'd like to make a distinction between something that you mention in the book but that George Jefferson on the show the Jefferson's routine of the fort of white people as Hunkies which is clearly a racial slur but which does not have any comparable history to the use of the N word. And in order for our viewers to completely understand that history I'd like you to go into how it is that blacks were

denigrated not just ideologically but media logical and sociological and biological. Let's start with biological. Well there were a group of scientists in the early 18th century early 19th century who sort of. Send it from Thomas Jefferson who had written the original observations about African-Americans and that they were those observations. Well he wrote a number of observations about African-Americans published them in 1785 in a book called Notes on the state of Virginia. And these were really racist over-the-top descriptions of African-Americans. For one he said that African-American men were more predisposed toward toward sexual behavior outrageous sexual behavior. He compared the sexual behavior of African-American women with a ring of tanks for example. He said that we were induced easily induced by amusements. He said he had never met a black who had uttered a thought above the level of

play narration. So in other words we were in a particular that we were we were not intelligent. We spent all our time giggling and fornicating basically. And his book on African-Americans was the most influential book about black capabilities for more than a century. And it was picked up in the next century by the leading American scientists who called their study of African-Americans nigger ology and they published very influential books about African-Americans. And these were used as techs at places like Harvard University and elsewhere. The reason. Underscore emphasized that is that a lot of people don't understand this all started out with the notion that it was but that was prevalent among white scientists that African-Americans were genetically and biologically inferior. And they set out to demonstrate and provide evidence of this. Right and they were always the scientists were always in in opposition to abolitionists and others who argued for example well what about the story of Genesis

all all people derive from the same couple so they must be equal. So these scientists at Harvard and elsewhere came up with a theory called poly Genesis. And in that theory they argue that the biblical story of Genesis does not include African-Americans because African-Americans were in fact a separate species. And this was called. You should repeat for our audience. Nic Robertson Yes that was a term coined by Jos I amnot who was one of the three leading American scientists on racial difference it was Samuel George Martin Luis Agassi's and Josiah not Josiah not actually coined the term for the study of racial difference. He called it nigger Elegy. How long did the rationale that blacks were intellectually inferior beings intellectually inferior creatures. How long did that rationale persist in the mainstream of American culture. Well you know you could make the argument that it still persists in mainstream American culture I mean it's as recently as the 90s with the publication of The Bell Curve by Charles Murray you see some of these

same ideas before him. Arthur Jensen and they use the term genetics to describe racial difference. But you can you can draw a line from their descriptions of alleged black intellectual inferiority all the way back to Jefferson. This was something that Frederick Douglass stright struggled mightily against as as was demonstrated in your book what did he do. Well he argued quite a bit against this notion of African-American theory already even wrote. Fiction as well as nonfiction we know about his memoirs but he also wrote one of the earliest novellas by an African American in which he turned on its head these various notions of African-American inferiority and he encountered them when he spoke. Even as analyze it you speak to well no one will ever believe that you were actually a slave. Better to have a bit of the plantation dialect in your speech because this is what is considered authentic black speech. So much for the biology the theology of it. As you point about earlier some people said look the Book of Genesis other said in the Bible all then are supposed to be the eyes

of God created equal. How was that rationalized in terms of religious doctrine. Well a couple of different ways and Christians were really divided. I mean they were fairly There was a consensus among Christians and abolitionists that African-Americans were inferior. But what form did this inferiority take. One of the images was that the black man for example was beast like and rapacious. Then there was the other school the Harriet Beecher Stowe school radical Thomas I have an Uncle Tom's Cabin. She saw black people as potential Christ like figures that we were simple childlike and that morals and superior Christian values could be imprinted on us as if we were blank slates. So there were there were varying views of African-Americans but they all seem to come together around this idea that we were in fact in theory. So now there was the example of Mark Twain who despite his excessive use of the word was able for quite right it to create more multidimensional African-American characters despite the fact

that because of the use of that word his work still remained to some extent controversial among blacks. Sure he uses the word 200 15 times in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn but I am one of those who don't believe that it is a razor's work. I think that it's a it's a fairly scathing send up of racism and in American society. But at the same time I do take issue with some of his characterizations of African-Americans I do think that they were more sympathetic than most of what we've seen but I don't think that they were necessarily authentic. For example he was praised for his use of black dialect and supposedly was based on his in-depth study of African-Americans. I could find little in my research to support that idea. This is actually how African American spoke. And then we talk about biology we talk about theology and then sociology in the final analysis and I guess this can be argued still exists today. The argument for the inferiority is well look at how they behave. Come to sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy. And you know one of the notions

behind that sociology when we talk about sociology was this other weird idea that that African-Americans were somehow not just more childlike but more them and more gentle. So you have this in complete opposition to this idea that that African-Americans were rampaging beast but there was a very influential book called Introduction to sociology by Ernest W. Burgess which was used at Howard University and other historically black colleges up until the 1950s. And in that book he argues that the Negro is the lady of the races quote and that it's fascinating in concept but even going back to the days of slavery when Ann Ward was used even by black people it was generally understood to be a derogatory term. Black people would use it to put down one another in front of white people. You meant an example of the. Sure sure. Well I looked into that because there was this notion that the N-word was once a race neutral term and morphed over time into a pejorative and you know that I would have been happy to discover information that

confirmed that all the information that I have found challenges that assertion. I looked at arguments that it was once a race neutral term. The only example that ever came up was an abolitionist named Samuel Sewell who argued that African-Americans should be free. But he used the N-word so that was the example that it was a race neutral term. But in fact it was a pejorative from the very beginning and pejorative from the very beginning it was meant to suggest intellectual inferiority. It was meant to suggest physical ugliness. It was meant to suggest dysfunctional behavior. Absolutely. And I'm not sure at what point that African-Americans begin to attempt to make this ward. Well I mean that really really depends on what we can say is an attempt to make the word out. I mean for example there are some defenders of it who say we're claiming this word we're taking it back. And my argument is the word never belonged. You know it's so like saying let's get some slave shackles and put them on our ankles because. We're taking them back. There used to be there and we want them back. It's not quite an argument that

holds water with me but it really began to gather momentum I guess in the late 80s early 90s when it really becomes pervasive in popular culture. And we began to perpetuate this idea that it is a term of endearment when we begin to perpetuate the idea that it is a term of invariant and there but does it mean that we have to either consciously or subconsciously or unconsciously forget or erase its history. If that were possible you know I argue in the book that there is no God higher than history. And if there's anything that we need to listen to its history particularly our ancestors and their experiences. And we need to be really careful about our attitude towards those. So I would think it would be history would be reason enough not to use the word in terms of it being a term of endearment. I really celebrate this idea of fraternal kinship among African-Americans. It's really important to me and I value it highly. But if you want to express your affection for me or your fondness for me in the sense that we are brothers in some joint struggle and some common

destiny. Think there are better words to express that connection. There are those who make a distinction between the spellings of the word they say. If it's spelt and i g g r then it's meant in a hostile manner if it's spelt and I D G A then it's a term of endearment. What do you make about that technical distinction. Well there's a couple of fundamental inconsistency there one is an I G G A was the preferred spelling of races both in the south and in the north quite some time. If you look at sheet music races sheet music in the 1920s and 30s it was called Mega songsters and I G G A. You went to a music shop that's what you asked for. That's how it was spelt was entirely races. The other problem with that is many of the proponents of using N I G G A as a value neutral term then go on to describe it as a negative term in their music. And I cite several examples in the book in which people make this argument then define the word. None of those examples can I say on the air of course.

But we remember how former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott got into trouble for his referral to the fact that that now deceased son of the Strom Thurmond of 1948 was what the Republican Party was should have been all about when in 1948 Strom Thurmond was a segregationist but not only was he a segregationist but in your book you pointed out in one thousand forty eight Strom Thurmond was using the N word in the Congress of the United States can you give us context. Right. And that really wasn't that unusual. Strom Thurmond is probably the most notable example of that but it was pretty common up until the point that Adam Clayton Powell arrived in the house but I was referring to Strom Thurmond's famous speech in which he left the Democratic Party because it was not racist enough to become a Dixiecrat. He gave this very famous speech in which he repeatedly talked about African-Americans as the N-word and how he would defend Jim Crow by keeping the N-word out of Sirte keeping African-Americans out of certain aspects of American society. And I might add that that

particular speech can be heard on the Internet on the NPR site and other sites because some revisionists now argue that he was saying and I G R A. You can hear it for yourself if you listen to it carefully you can hear. According to Daria seemed that it was what we now refer to as the N word and the reason we are now reporting to it as the N word is because this is probably the period in history where there has been the most protracted effort to bury the N-word. What successes have. Well you know I don't think I think add value the symbolism of it have value the symbolism of attempting to to bury a word also value these symbolic resolutions that have been passed by the New York City Council and other cities but I think we have to acknowledge that that's symbolism. That's not actual law. We don't want actual law because we can't legislate better behavior the best thing that we can do is exemplified by removing it from our own will.

To what extent does our attempt or the attempt of some people to use this as a term of endearment to what extent does the attempt of some people to defend this use of the term. To what extent do those things mean that we have incorporated the intellectual and physically physical inferiority the term originally meant into our own consciousness. I think that's exactly it. I mean I talk about that in the book when I talk about W.B. Dubois some of the terrible tunes the the double consciousness that African-Americans often have. We view ourselves through the lens of those who despise us historically we often do. And I argue that our language of course reflects that as well. And most notably in our use of the in I'll tell you one of the reasons I raise that issue is because it has always struck me that African American comedians and I've never discussed this publicly with anyone before that African-American comedians going back to Red Fox who I love often focus on

ugly people. If you look at white comedians they don't talk about a lot African-American comedians doing a great deal and a lot of African-Americans prided ourselves in not being PC enough to not observe when somebody is. Could that possibly because we have incorporated incorporated the notion that we are ugly. I think there is no question that that is something that we have to resist. And sometimes it gets through. I mean when just listening to you I thought about D.L. Hughley the African-American comedian who recently was talking about the women on the Rutgers basketball team. And he said you know they may not have been holes but they were essentially And they're they're African-American women who are now protesting D.L. Hughley performances picketing outside the venues where he performs. And I think that touches very much on what you have invoked there this idea that we cannot embrace ourselves in our fullness and in the fullness of our power in the fullness of our beauty.

And there's no question that our language and what often passes for art reflects that. I remember Red Fox used to say they say that one out of every four people. And if you were riding on the bus. Look around and if it ain't the other three people sitting next to you it's you right. And so I said to myself why why do we tend to be so fixated on other fixation we seem to have is on beauty but not on the beauty that springs from within. It seems to be the European concept of beauty which we have to say is that in a way another way in which we have incorporated our own sense that we are ourselves not externally beautiful. Yeah I think so. I mean Louise Agassi's who is one of the original nigger ology is one of his most famous passages is about seeing African-Americans in person for the first time and how utterly monstrous that he found us. And he described as very much in African terms in

terms of the brownness of our skin with of our noses the fullness of our lips. You know things that ironically members of the mainstream culture and now undergoing plastic surgery to duplicate. But we guess we absolutely have a short sighted view of ourselves. But getting back to Red Fox doing my research one of the interesting things I found about red is this this ugliness that he often joked about did not stir up the ire of viewers when he did the show Sam Prince until he made this joke at one point he says to his son. There's nothing in the world uglier than a 90 year old white woman. He turned he turned it and immediately phone lines lit up and critics wrote about it in the paper. I find that him ironic because at a certain point in his career he makes so much from the Shirley Chisholm they have really upset me a black woman who had run for president a dignified black woman and Red used to go after her all the time talking about how ugly she was and nobody seemed to object to find that absolutely

amazing in terms of the kind of movement that's now being that's now taking place to ban the N-word from public usage. You find it particularly significant that one of Richard Pryor's writers a comedian decided to sign on to talk about. Right. Paul Mooney who worked with bridge of prayer a lot is has up until very recently been a proponent of the N-word so I discussed in some detail in the book because you co-wrote one of Richard Pryor's most famous routines on Saturday Night Live. And he goes for the job interview in Chevy Chase calls him a series of racial epithets and finally gets to the N-word and moony and chase both have said that when they sat down to write the episode the skit they said let's come up with all the racial produce or tips for white people that we can think of and let's come up with all the racial pejorative black people we can. And they quickly ran out of pejoratives for why there were so many more. There were so many LOT of radical Americans and Paul Mooney has sensory announced the word after being a long time defender of it. He renounced it so recently that we had literally had to

stop the presses on the book and I'm in my section on Paul Mooney. So I would never have predicted that Paul Mooney would have renounced the word I didn't think that was coming. So I'm hesitant to make too many predictions in the future in terms of where the word is going. The fact that the word exists so strongly in popular culture meant that it has crossed over. And so increasing numbers of white people tend to use the words we saw the reaction and of course Paul Mooney's rejection of the word had to do with the Michael Richards of Seinfeld fame using it as as Chris Rock said when he was asked if he thought Michael Richards was a race he said well you yelled the N-word in a crowded theater. What do you expect do you fear that because it became so rooted in popular culture that we have come to a time when people of other races feel. Well it's got to be appropriate to use this word ourselves even though African-Americans still object to it when other people use it.

Right I think. We kind of placed ourselves in that previous What would we place ourselves in that position but at the same time I think it's disingenuous particularly of whites and people whose cultural traditions are as old as the country itself to say if African-Americans uses where it's OK for us to use it too. We're confused. We thought it was now a term of endearment. I don't think there's any way you can honestly argue it's part of the mainstream culture that you had no idea that there were racist connotations attached to this were at the same time yet we have we have placed ourselves in that position. But it is not a position from which we cannot extricate ourselves. You know one of the things that one has to remember is that America is still a very young country and it seems that because it's a young country it tends to be in a historical kind of you go to virtually any virtually any other culture in the world and people can tell you the history of their cultures and often their families going back hundreds of thousands of years. Are we so historic that young African-Americans are not exposed either in family relationships or in

school to the history of this world. Yeah I think that's absolutely right and that's one of the reasons why I wrote the book I kept hearing from African-American elders that young people wouldn't use the word if only they know history only they knew the history. So I wanted to share the history making of them. So this has to be available in public schools all across the world. I think so. The black white Asian anybody who study I don't see one. Tell us a little bit about your history. We only know you as a writer and columnist for The Washington Post and now the editor in chief of Crisis magazine. I'm originally from St. Louis Missouri and I came to the Washington area about 11 years ago and I live in Baltimore now with my wife and five kids. Both Moore of course is the headquarters of the city and the end of the city is Crisis magazine. Very many ways but in between being born in St. Louis and coming coming to Washington D.C. You had apparently no idea that you would become a

professional writer at some point you were doing all kinds of other jobs where you all of writing of the same but I guess so I mean I didn't really commit to writing until I was almost done with college I was pretty loud to that point and really lacked the courage to tell my parents really what what I wanted to do was right. So it took me a while to come around to that because your parents want you to be a lawyer. Yes. Yes I called my mother long distance and confessed to her that I didn't want but didn't want to be a lawyer. I mean I couldn't say to her I was about to. Let me try to identify what you call the long dead but could you couldn't say it right. When you start getting your forst writings accepted. Let's see I started off focusing on poetry and my first piece was published in a journal called Black American literature form which is now called African American Review and after that I began to publish poetry here and there so my poetry is included in a number of anthologies of African American poetry. But you do undergraduate college at Northwestern. Did you do any writing while you were in college. I did I wrote for the campus black publication and I also wrote for the campus

literary magazine as editor in chief of Crisis magazine and you are now involved in what some people might call advocacy journalism. You're writing for the magazine that was started by the late WB Dubois correct in your magazine that has been associated with advocacy How is that different than what you've been doing for the past couple of days. Well you know in many respects it's not that different because I've always worked in opinion journalism. I started off in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on the editorial page. And I became the book review editor. And at the Washington Post I'd been an editor in the book review section since I was there and I also wrote a syndicated column on on politics and popular culture. So I've always done journalism that expressed a specific point of view. And if you could express up a specific point of view of what you think needs to happen ultimately to the board what would that be. Well. I think it has no place in polite conversation in the public square. I don't believe in banning it and I don't believe that you should tell artists what they can or cannot use. But it's far as you and I on the street greeting each other.

I don't see a place for them. This is a topic that will continue to draw controversy let's head to the Edwards bar you'll see in the book it's called the N-word who can say it who shouldn't. And why that's it for this edition of the evening and stay and stay well. Good night.