1
00:00:00,802 --> 00:00:03,166
The minute she said it,

2
00:00:03,190 --> 00:00:05,857
the temperature in my classroom dropped.

3
00:00:06,865 --> 00:00:10,696
My students are usually
laser-focused on me,

4
00:00:10,720 --> 00:00:13,987
but they shifted in their seats
and looked away.

5
00:00:15,347 --> 00:00:16,887
I'm a black woman

6
00:00:16,911 --> 00:00:21,013
who teaches the histories
of race and US slavery.

7
00:00:21,831 --> 00:00:25,664
I'm aware that my social identity
is always on display.

8
00:00:26,323 --> 00:00:28,029
And my students are vulnerable too,

9
00:00:28,053 --> 00:00:29,203
so I'm careful.

10
00:00:29,680 --> 00:00:33,412
I try to anticipate
what part of my lesson might go wrong.

11
00:00:34,179 --> 00:00:35,364
But honestly,

12
00:00:35,388 --> 00:00:37,577
I didn't even see this one coming.

13
00:00:37,601 --> 00:00:40,537
None of my years of graduate school
prepared me for what to do

14
00:00:40,561 --> 00:00:43,028
when the N-word entered my classroom.

15
00:00:44,025 --> 00:00:45,779
I was in my first year of teaching

16
00:00:45,803 --> 00:00:48,549
when the student said
the N-word in my class.

17
00:00:49,541 --> 00:00:51,741
She was not calling anyone a name.

18
00:00:52,530 --> 00:00:55,355
She was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

19
00:00:55,704 --> 00:00:58,037
She came to class with her readings done,

20
00:00:58,061 --> 00:00:59,831
she sat in the front row,

21
00:00:59,855 --> 00:01:02,283
and she was always on my team.

22
00:01:03,895 --> 00:01:05,101
When she said it,

23
00:01:05,125 --> 00:01:07,418
she was actually making a point
about my lecture,

24
00:01:07,442 --> 00:01:11,696
by quoting a line from a 1970s
movie, a comedy,

25
00:01:11,720 --> 00:01:13,453
that had two racist slurs.

26
00:01:14,016 --> 00:01:16,405
One for people of Chinese descent

27
00:01:16,429 --> 00:01:18,162
and the other, the N-word.

28
00:01:19,143 --> 00:01:23,135
As soon as she said it,
I held up my hands, said, "Whoa, whoa."

29
00:01:23,159 --> 00:01:24,410
But she assured me,

30
00:01:24,434 --> 00:01:27,156
"It's a joke from 'Blazing Saddles',"

31
00:01:27,180 --> 00:01:28,847
and then she repeated it.

32
00:01:30,434 --> 00:01:32,121
This all happened 10 years ago,

33
00:01:32,145 --> 00:01:35,411
and how I handled it
haunted me for a long time.

34
00:01:36,180 --> 00:01:38,506
It wasn't the first time
I thought about the word

35
00:01:38,530 --> 00:01:39,886
in an academic setting.

36
00:01:40,450 --> 00:01:42,688
I'm a professor of US history,

37
00:01:42,712 --> 00:01:45,609
it's in a lot
of the documents that I teach.

38
00:01:45,633 --> 00:01:47,366
So I had to make a choice.

39
00:01:48,561 --> 00:01:50,466
After consulting with someone I trusted,

40
00:01:50,490 --> 00:01:52,387
I decided to never say it.

41
00:01:52,411 --> 00:01:53,811
Not even to quote it.

42
00:01:54,220 --> 00:01:58,020
But instead to use
the euphemistic phrase, "the N-word."

43
00:01:59,292 --> 00:02:01,558
Even this decision was complicated.

44
00:02:02,366 --> 00:02:03,847
I didn't have tenure yet,

45
00:02:03,871 --> 00:02:05,744
and I worried that senior colleagues

46
00:02:05,768 --> 00:02:10,331
would think that by using the phrase
I wasn't a serious scholar.

47
00:02:10,776 --> 00:02:13,839
But saying the actual word
still felt worse.

48
00:02:14,793 --> 00:02:19,300
The incident in my classroom forced me
to publicly reckon with the word.

49
00:02:19,674 --> 00:02:22,555
The history, the violence,

50
00:02:22,579 --> 00:02:24,029
but also --

51
00:02:25,141 --> 00:02:29,688
The history, the violence,
but also any time it was hurled at me,

52
00:02:29,712 --> 00:02:31,641
spoken casually in front of me,

53
00:02:31,665 --> 00:02:35,112
any time it rested on the tip
of someone's tongue,

54
00:02:35,136 --> 00:02:37,954
it all came flooding up in that moment,

55
00:02:37,978 --> 00:02:40,223
right in front of my students.

56
00:02:40,247 --> 00:02:42,181
And I had no idea what to do.

57
00:02:44,284 --> 00:02:48,545
So I've come to call stories like mine
points of encounter.

58
00:02:50,037 --> 00:02:55,084
A point of encounter describes the moment
you came face-to-face with the N-word.

59
00:02:55,712 --> 00:02:59,505
If you've even been stumped
or provoked by the word,

60
00:02:59,529 --> 00:03:03,315
whether as the result
of an awkward social situation,

61
00:03:03,339 --> 00:03:06,466
an uncomfortable academic conversation,

62
00:03:06,490 --> 00:03:08,434
something you heard in pop culture,

63
00:03:08,458 --> 00:03:10,737
or if you've been called the slur,

64
00:03:10,761 --> 00:03:13,170
or witnessed someone
getting called the slur,

65
00:03:13,194 --> 00:03:15,752
you have experienced a point of encounter.

66
00:03:16,189 --> 00:03:18,959
And depending on who you are
and how that moment goes down,

67
00:03:18,983 --> 00:03:21,863
you might have a range of responses.

68
00:03:21,887 --> 00:03:23,537
Could throw you off a little bit,

69
00:03:23,561 --> 00:03:26,961
or it could be incredibly
painful and humiliating.

70
00:03:28,490 --> 00:03:31,656
I've had lots of these
points of encounter in my life,

71
00:03:31,680 --> 00:03:34,196
but one thing is true.

72
00:03:34,220 --> 00:03:37,004
There's not a lot of space
to talk about them.

73
00:03:40,424 --> 00:03:43,933
That day in my classroom
was pretty much like all of those times

74
00:03:43,957 --> 00:03:46,574
I had an uninvited run-in with the N-word.

75
00:03:46,598 --> 00:03:47,748
I froze.

76
00:03:48,547 --> 00:03:51,280
Because the N-word is hard to talk about.

77
00:03:52,809 --> 00:03:55,936
Part of the reason the N-word
is so hard to talk about,

78
00:03:55,960 --> 00:03:59,133
it's usually only discussed in one way,

79
00:03:59,157 --> 00:04:01,783
as a figure of speech,
we hear this all the time, right?

80
00:04:01,807 --> 00:04:03,704
It's just a word.

81
00:04:03,728 --> 00:04:07,262
The burning question that cycles
through social media

82
00:04:07,286 --> 00:04:09,326
is who can and cannot say it.

83
00:04:10,563 --> 00:04:14,556
Black intellectual Ta-Nahisi Coates
does a groundbreaking job

84
00:04:14,580 --> 00:04:17,379
of defending the African American
use of the word.

85
00:04:17,403 --> 00:04:19,593
On the other hand, Wendy Kaminer,

86
00:04:19,617 --> 00:04:21,553
a white freedom of speech advocate,

87
00:04:21,577 --> 00:04:24,157
argues that if we don't all
just come and say it,

88
00:04:24,181 --> 00:04:25,802
we give the word power.

89
00:04:25,826 --> 00:04:27,674
And a lot of people feel that way.

90
00:04:28,580 --> 00:04:31,397
The Pew Center recently
entered the debate.

91
00:04:31,738 --> 00:04:36,513
In a survey called "Race in America 2019,"

92
00:04:36,537 --> 00:04:40,012
researchers asked US adults
if they thought is was OK

93
00:04:40,036 --> 00:04:42,545
for a white person to say the N-word.

94
00:04:43,188 --> 00:04:46,902
Seventy percent of all
adults surveyed said "never."

95
00:04:48,236 --> 00:04:50,369
And these debates are important.

96
00:04:50,712 --> 00:04:52,742
But they really obscure something else.

97
00:04:52,766 --> 00:04:56,823
They keep us from getting underneath
to the real conversation.

98
00:04:57,601 --> 00:05:00,363
Which is that the N-word
is not just a word.

99
00:05:01,133 --> 00:05:05,523
It's not neatly contained
in a racist past,

100
00:05:05,547 --> 00:05:07,624
a relic of slavery.

101
00:05:09,236 --> 00:05:15,513
Fundamentally, the N-word
is an idea disguised as a word,

102
00:05:15,537 --> 00:05:18,751
that black people are intellectually,

103
00:05:18,775 --> 00:05:20,331
biologically,

104
00:05:20,355 --> 00:05:24,375
and immutably inferior to white people.

105
00:05:24,860 --> 00:05:28,978
And -- and I think
this is the most important part --

106
00:05:29,002 --> 00:05:32,685
that that inferiority means
that the injustice we suffer

107
00:05:32,709 --> 00:05:34,109
and inequality we endure,

108
00:05:34,133 --> 00:05:36,066
is essentially our own fault.

109
00:05:39,053 --> 00:05:43,144
So, yes, it is ...

110
00:05:48,710 --> 00:05:52,133
Speaking of the word only as racist spew

111
00:05:52,157 --> 00:05:55,585
or as an obscenity in hip hop music

112
00:05:55,609 --> 00:05:58,696
makes it sounds as if it's a disease,

113
00:05:58,720 --> 00:06:00,729
located in the American vocal cords

114
00:06:00,753 --> 00:06:02,753
that can be snipped right out.

115
00:06:03,355 --> 00:06:06,188
It's not and it can't.

116
00:06:06,728 --> 00:06:09,028
And I learned this
from talking to my students.

117
00:06:09,560 --> 00:06:12,552
So next time class met,

118
00:06:12,576 --> 00:06:14,123
I apologized,

119
00:06:14,147 --> 00:06:16,940
and I made an announcement.

120
00:06:16,964 --> 00:06:18,698
I would have a new policy.

121
00:06:19,800 --> 00:06:23,903
Students would see the word
in my Power Points,

122
00:06:23,927 --> 00:06:26,934
in film, in essays they read,

123
00:06:26,958 --> 00:06:31,767
but we would never ever
say the word out loud in class.

124
00:06:32,871 --> 00:06:34,604
Nobody ever said it again.

125
00:06:34,966 --> 00:06:37,232
But they didn't learn much either.

126
00:06:38,427 --> 00:06:40,260
Afterwards, what bothered me most

127
00:06:40,284 --> 00:06:42,458
was that I didn't even explain to students

128
00:06:42,482 --> 00:06:47,141
why, of all the vile, problematic words
in American English,

129
00:06:47,165 --> 00:06:51,236
why this particular word
had its own buffer,

130
00:06:51,260 --> 00:06:53,527
the surrogate phrase "the N-word."

131
00:06:54,149 --> 00:06:56,262
Most of my students,

132
00:06:56,286 --> 00:07:00,390
many of them born
in the late 1990s and afterwards,

133
00:07:00,414 --> 00:07:03,318
didn't even know
that the phrase "the N-word"

134
00:07:03,342 --> 00:07:06,315
is a relatively new invention
in American English.

135
00:07:06,339 --> 00:07:08,939
When I was growing up, it didn't exist.

136
00:07:10,339 --> 00:07:14,172
But in the late 1980s,

137
00:07:14,196 --> 00:07:18,069
black college students,
writers, intellectuals,

138
00:07:18,093 --> 00:07:23,458
more and more started to talk about
racist attacks against them.

139
00:07:25,070 --> 00:07:28,212
But increasingly,
when they told these stories,

140
00:07:28,236 --> 00:07:30,721
they stopped using the word.

141
00:07:31,784 --> 00:07:33,982
Instead, they reduced it to the initial N

142
00:07:34,006 --> 00:07:36,097
and called it "the N-word."

143
00:07:37,093 --> 00:07:39,426
They felt that every time
the word was uttered

144
00:07:39,450 --> 00:07:42,561
it opened up old wounds,
so they refused to say it.

145
00:07:43,101 --> 00:07:46,894
They knew their listeners would hear
the actual word in their heads.

146
00:07:47,228 --> 00:07:48,695
That wasn't the point.

147
00:07:49,394 --> 00:07:52,505
The point was they didn't want
to put the word in their own mouths

148
00:07:52,529 --> 00:07:53,679
or into the air.

149
00:07:55,045 --> 00:07:56,862
By doing this,

150
00:07:56,886 --> 00:08:00,019
they made an entire nation
start to second-guess themselves

151
00:08:00,043 --> 00:08:01,193
about saying it.

152
00:08:02,980 --> 00:08:06,824
This was such a radical move,

153
00:08:06,848 --> 00:08:09,015
that people are still mad about it.

154
00:08:10,617 --> 00:08:15,499
Critics accuse those of us
who use the phrase "the N-word,"

155
00:08:15,523 --> 00:08:17,674
or people who become outraged,

156
00:08:17,698 --> 00:08:19,864
you know, just because the word is said,

157
00:08:19,888 --> 00:08:21,967
of being over principled,

158
00:08:21,991 --> 00:08:23,633
politically correct,

159
00:08:23,657 --> 00:08:26,752
or as I just read a couple of weeks ago
in The New York Times,

160
00:08:26,776 --> 00:08:28,109
"insufferably woke."

161
00:08:28,657 --> 00:08:30,013
Right?

162
00:08:30,037 --> 00:08:32,728
So I bought into this a little bit too,

163
00:08:32,752 --> 00:08:36,649
which is why the next time
I taught the course

164
00:08:36,673 --> 00:08:40,055
I proposed a freedom of speech debate.

165
00:08:41,410 --> 00:08:46,108
The N-word in academic spaces,
for or against?

166
00:08:47,473 --> 00:08:49,657
I was certain students would be eager

167
00:08:49,681 --> 00:08:52,569
to debate who gets to say it
and who doesn't.

168
00:08:53,744 --> 00:08:54,894
But they weren't.

169
00:08:56,871 --> 00:08:58,021
Instead ...

170
00:09:00,038 --> 00:09:02,656
my students started confessing.

171
00:09:04,910 --> 00:09:09,037
A white student from New Jersey
talked about standing by

172
00:09:09,061 --> 00:09:11,728
as a black kid at her school
got bullied by this word.

173
00:09:11,752 --> 00:09:15,259
She did nothing and years later
still carried the guilt.

174
00:09:16,665 --> 00:09:18,656
Another from Connecticut

175
00:09:19,807 --> 00:09:22,418
talked about the pain of severing

176
00:09:22,442 --> 00:09:25,175
a very close relationship
with a family member

177
00:09:25,199 --> 00:09:28,542
because that family member
refused to stop saying the word.

178
00:09:31,075 --> 00:09:35,514
One of the most memorable stories
came from a very quiet black student

179
00:09:35,538 --> 00:09:36,871
from South Carolina.

180
00:09:37,290 --> 00:09:39,323
She didn't understand all the fuss.

181
00:09:39,755 --> 00:09:42,888
She said everyone
at her school said the word.

182
00:09:43,969 --> 00:09:48,159
She wasn't talking about kids
calling each other name in the hall.

183
00:09:48,945 --> 00:09:52,887
She explained that at her school

184
00:09:52,911 --> 00:09:55,117
when teachers and administrators

185
00:09:55,141 --> 00:09:58,863
became frustrated
with an African American student,

186
00:09:58,887 --> 00:10:02,125
they called that student
the actual N-word.

187
00:10:03,344 --> 00:10:05,811
She said it didn't bother her at all.

188
00:10:06,264 --> 00:10:07,868
But then a couple of days later,

189
00:10:07,892 --> 00:10:12,376
she came to visit me
in my office hours and wept.

190
00:10:13,667 --> 00:10:15,467
She thought she was immune.

191
00:10:16,238 --> 00:10:18,172
She realized that she wasn't.

192
00:10:19,508 --> 00:10:22,246
Over the last 10 years,

193
00:10:22,270 --> 00:10:25,707
I have literally heard hundreds
of these stories

194
00:10:25,731 --> 00:10:28,928
from all kinds of people from all ages.

195
00:10:29,391 --> 00:10:33,024
People in their 50s remembering stories
from the second grade

196
00:10:33,048 --> 00:10:34,405
and when they were six,

197
00:10:34,429 --> 00:10:37,700
either calling people the word
or being called the word,

198
00:10:37,724 --> 00:10:42,819
but carrying that all these years
around this word, you know.

199
00:10:42,843 --> 00:10:47,649
And as I listened to people
talk about their points of encounter,

200
00:10:47,673 --> 00:10:52,323
the pattern that emerged for me
as a teacher that I found most upsetting

201
00:10:52,347 --> 00:10:54,998
is the single most fraught site

202
00:10:55,022 --> 00:10:57,299
for these points of encounter

203
00:10:57,323 --> 00:10:58,791
is the classroom.

204
00:11:00,307 --> 00:11:04,855
Most US kids are going to meet
the N-word in class.

205
00:11:05,927 --> 00:11:09,728
One of the most assigned books
in US high schools

206
00:11:09,752 --> 00:11:12,347
is Mark Twain’s "The Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn"

207
00:11:12,371 --> 00:11:15,665
in which the word appears over 200 times.

208
00:11:16,023 --> 00:11:19,015
And this isn't an indictment
of "Huck Finn."

209
00:11:19,039 --> 00:11:22,641
The word is in lots
of US literature and history.

210
00:11:22,665 --> 00:11:25,990
It's all of our African
American literature.

211
00:11:26,498 --> 00:11:28,593
Yet I hear from students

212
00:11:28,617 --> 00:11:33,038
that when the word is said during a lesson

213
00:11:33,062 --> 00:11:36,411
without discussion and context,

214
00:11:36,435 --> 00:11:40,364
it poisons the entire
classroom environment.

215
00:11:41,006 --> 00:11:44,926
The trust between student
and teacher is broken.

216
00:11:46,927 --> 00:11:50,489
Even so, many teachers,

217
00:11:50,513 --> 00:11:53,098
often with the very best of intentions,

218
00:11:53,122 --> 00:11:55,122
still say the N-word in class.

219
00:11:57,244 --> 00:12:02,379
They want to show and emphasize
the horrors of US racism,

220
00:12:02,403 --> 00:12:05,156
so they rely on it for shock value.

221
00:12:05,994 --> 00:12:08,875
Invoking it brings into stark relief

222
00:12:08,899 --> 00:12:11,867
the ugliness of our nation's past.

223
00:12:12,391 --> 00:12:13,883
But they forget

224
00:12:13,907 --> 00:12:18,366
the ideas are alive and well
in our cultural fabric.

225
00:12:25,152 --> 00:12:30,586
The six-letter word is like a capsule
of accumulated hurt.

226
00:12:32,712 --> 00:12:35,374
Every time it is said, every time,

227
00:12:35,398 --> 00:12:38,934
it releases into the atmosphere
the hateful notion

228
00:12:38,958 --> 00:12:41,736
that black people are less.

229
00:12:43,942 --> 00:12:45,148
My black students tell me

230
00:12:45,172 --> 00:12:47,672
that when the word is quoted
or spoken in class,

231
00:12:47,696 --> 00:12:51,688
they feel like a giant spotlight
is shining on them.

232
00:12:53,037 --> 00:12:54,359
One of my students told me

233
00:12:54,359 --> 00:12:56,878
that his classmates
were like bobble heads,

234
00:12:56,902 --> 00:12:58,902
turning to gauge his reaction.

235
00:13:00,874 --> 00:13:04,096
A white student told me
that in the eight grade,

236
00:13:04,120 --> 00:13:07,985
when they were learning
"To Kill a Mockingbird"

237
00:13:08,668 --> 00:13:10,268
and reading it out loud in class,

238
00:13:10,292 --> 00:13:12,696
the student was stressed out

239
00:13:12,720 --> 00:13:15,681
at the idea of having to read the word,

240
00:13:15,705 --> 00:13:19,304
which the teacher insisted
all students do,

241
00:13:19,328 --> 00:13:23,115
that the student ended up
spending most of the unit

242
00:13:23,139 --> 00:13:24,939
hiding out in the bathroom.

243
00:13:25,868 --> 00:13:27,455
This is serious.

244
00:13:27,479 --> 00:13:29,865
Students across the country

245
00:13:29,889 --> 00:13:33,196
talk about switching majors
and dropping classes

246
00:13:33,220 --> 00:13:36,166
because of poor teaching
around the N-word.

247
00:13:36,190 --> 00:13:40,451
The issue of faculty
carelessly speaking the word

248
00:13:40,475 --> 00:13:42,855
has reached such a fevered pitch,

249
00:13:42,879 --> 00:13:46,680
it's led to protests at Princeton, Emory,

250
00:13:46,704 --> 00:13:48,141
The New School,

251
00:13:48,165 --> 00:13:50,672
Smith College, where I teach,

252
00:13:50,696 --> 00:13:52,467
and Williams College,

253
00:13:52,491 --> 00:13:58,474
where just recently students have
boycotted the entire English department

254
00:13:58,498 --> 00:14:00,841
over it and other issues.

255
00:14:01,520 --> 00:14:04,306
And these were just the cases
that make the news.

256
00:14:04,948 --> 00:14:06,567
This is a crisis.

257
00:14:07,298 --> 00:14:09,186
And while student reaction

258
00:14:09,210 --> 00:14:11,625
looks like an attack on freedom of speech,

259
00:14:11,649 --> 00:14:15,212
I promise this is an issue of teaching.

260
00:14:15,982 --> 00:14:20,507
My students are not afraid
of materials that have the N-word in it.

261
00:14:21,284 --> 00:14:23,490
They want to learn about James Baldwin,

262
00:14:23,514 --> 00:14:25,244
and William Faulkner

263
00:14:25,268 --> 00:14:27,228
and about the civil rights movement.

264
00:14:29,204 --> 00:14:33,260
In fact, their stories show

265
00:14:33,284 --> 00:14:38,029
that this word is a central feature
of their lives as young people

266
00:14:38,053 --> 00:14:39,453
in the United States.

267
00:14:40,627 --> 00:14:42,484
It's in the music they love.

268
00:14:42,508 --> 00:14:45,019
And in the popular culture they emulate,

269
00:14:45,043 --> 00:14:47,087
the comedy they watch,

270
00:14:47,111 --> 00:14:49,500
it's in TV and movies

271
00:14:49,524 --> 00:14:51,738
and memorialized in museums.

272
00:14:52,516 --> 00:14:54,485
They hear it in locker rooms,

273
00:14:54,509 --> 00:14:56,301
on Instagram,

274
00:14:56,325 --> 00:14:58,349
in the hallways at school,

275
00:14:58,373 --> 00:15:01,283
in the chat rooms
of the video games they play.

276
00:15:01,307 --> 00:15:03,990
It is all over the world they navigate.

277
00:15:04,300 --> 00:15:06,268
But they don't know how to think about it

278
00:15:06,292 --> 00:15:09,085
or even really what the word means.

279
00:15:10,351 --> 00:15:12,740
I didn't even really understand
what the word meant

280
00:15:12,764 --> 00:15:14,497
until I did some research.

281
00:15:14,803 --> 00:15:17,264
I was astonished to learn

282
00:15:17,288 --> 00:15:21,163
that black people first incorporated
the N-word into the vocabulary

283
00:15:21,187 --> 00:15:23,171
as political protest,

284
00:15:23,195 --> 00:15:26,203
not in the 1970s or 1980s,

285
00:15:26,227 --> 00:15:29,075
but as far back as the 1770s.

286
00:15:29,591 --> 00:15:31,396
And I wish I had more time to talk

287
00:15:31,420 --> 00:15:36,174
about the long, subversive history
of the black use of the N-word.

288
00:15:36,625 --> 00:15:38,720
But I will say this:

289
00:15:38,744 --> 00:15:42,044
Many times, my students
will come up to me and say,

290
00:15:42,068 --> 00:15:45,476
"I understand the virulent roots
of this word, it's slavery."

291
00:15:46,767 --> 00:15:48,700
They are only partially right.

292
00:15:50,101 --> 00:15:54,434
This word, which existed
before it became a slur,

293
00:15:54,458 --> 00:15:59,927
but it becomes a slur at a very
distinct moment in US history,

294
00:15:59,951 --> 00:16:05,118
and that's as large numbers
of black people begin to become free,

295
00:16:05,142 --> 00:16:07,801
starting in the North in the 1820s.

296
00:16:08,246 --> 00:16:09,982
In other words,

297
00:16:10,006 --> 00:16:15,037
this word is fundamentally
an assault on black freedom,

298
00:16:15,061 --> 00:16:16,553
black mobility,

299
00:16:16,577 --> 00:16:18,674
and black aspiration.

300
00:16:19,691 --> 00:16:20,842
Even now

301
00:16:20,866 --> 00:16:25,143
nothing so swiftly unleashes
an N-word tirade

302
00:16:25,167 --> 00:16:27,857
as a black person asserting their rights,

303
00:16:27,881 --> 00:16:31,275
or going where they please or prospering.

304
00:16:31,299 --> 00:16:34,406
Think of the attacks
on Colin Kaepernick, when he kneeled.

305
00:16:34,784 --> 00:16:37,584
Or Barack Obama when he became president.

306
00:16:38,601 --> 00:16:41,529
My students want to know this history.

307
00:16:42,958 --> 00:16:46,569
But when they ask questions,
they're shushed and shamed.

308
00:16:48,148 --> 00:16:51,498
By shying away from talking
about the N-word,

309
00:16:51,522 --> 00:16:56,331
we have turned this word
into the ultimate taboo,

310
00:16:56,355 --> 00:16:59,331
crafting it into something to tantalizing,

311
00:16:59,355 --> 00:17:01,434
that for all US kids,

312
00:17:01,458 --> 00:17:04,506
no matter their racial background,

313
00:17:04,530 --> 00:17:06,553
part of their coming of age
is figuring out

314
00:17:06,577 --> 00:17:08,648
how to negotiate this word.

315
00:17:08,672 --> 00:17:12,375
We treat conversations about it
like sex before sex education.

316
00:17:13,375 --> 00:17:15,508
We're squeamish, we silence them.

317
00:17:16,224 --> 00:17:20,454
So they learn about it
from misinformed friends and in whispers.

318
00:17:21,664 --> 00:17:24,268
I wish I could go back
to the classroom that day

319
00:17:24,292 --> 00:17:26,120
and push through my fear

320
00:17:26,144 --> 00:17:29,569
to talk about the fact
that something actually happened.

321
00:17:29,593 --> 00:17:32,449
Not just to me or to my black students.

322
00:17:32,473 --> 00:17:33,902
But to all of us.

323
00:17:34,665 --> 00:17:37,371
You know, I think

324
00:17:37,395 --> 00:17:41,410
we're all connected by our inability
to talk about this word.

325
00:17:42,276 --> 00:17:45,189
But what if we explored
our points of encounter

326
00:17:45,213 --> 00:17:47,280
and did start to talk about it?

327
00:17:48,641 --> 00:17:51,991
Today, I try to create
the conditions in my classroom

328
00:17:52,015 --> 00:17:54,944
to have open and honest
conversations about it.

329
00:17:55,315 --> 00:17:58,355
One of those conditions --
not saying the word.

330
00:17:58,942 --> 00:18:00,268
We're able to talk about it

331
00:18:00,292 --> 00:18:02,482
because it doesn't come
into the classroom.

332
00:18:02,855 --> 00:18:04,361
Another important condition

333
00:18:04,385 --> 00:18:06,887
is I don't make
my black students responsible

334
00:18:06,911 --> 00:18:09,688
for teaching their classmates about this.

335
00:18:09,712 --> 00:18:11,021
That is my job.

336
00:18:11,323 --> 00:18:12,720
So I come prepared.

337
00:18:13,188 --> 00:18:16,770
I hold the conversation with a tight rein,

338
00:18:16,794 --> 00:18:19,998
and I'm armed with
knowledge of the history.

339
00:18:20,022 --> 00:18:24,228
I always ask students the same question:

340
00:18:24,252 --> 00:18:27,529
Why is talking about the N-word hard?

341
00:18:28,165 --> 00:18:30,609
Their answers are amazing.

342
00:18:31,387 --> 00:18:32,537
They're amazing.

343
00:18:34,075 --> 00:18:36,336
More than anything though,

344
00:18:36,360 --> 00:18:41,789
I have become deeply acquainted
with my own points of encounter,

345
00:18:41,813 --> 00:18:44,315
my personal history around this word.

346
00:18:45,419 --> 00:18:48,442
Because when the N-word comes to school,

347
00:18:48,466 --> 00:18:50,522
or really anywhere,

348
00:18:50,546 --> 00:18:55,884
it brings with it all
of the complicated history of US racism.

349
00:18:56,639 --> 00:18:58,853
The nation's history,

350
00:18:58,877 --> 00:19:00,369
and my own,

351
00:19:00,393 --> 00:19:03,317
right here, right now.

352
00:19:03,730 --> 00:19:05,263
There's no avoiding it.

353
00:19:05,889 --> 00:19:08,317
(Applause)