WEBVTT

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The minute she said it,

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the temperature in my classroom dropped.

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My students are usually
laser-focused on me,

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but they shifted in their seats
and looked away.

NOTE Paragraph

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I'm a black woman

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who teaches the histories
of race and US slavery.

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I'm aware that my social identity
is always on display.

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And my students are vulnerable too,

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so I'm careful.

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I try to anticipate
what part of my lesson might go wrong.

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But honestly,

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I didn't even see this one coming.

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None of my years of graduate school
prepared me for what to do

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when the N-word entered my classroom.

NOTE Paragraph

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I was in my first year of teaching

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when the student said
the N-word in my class.

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She was not calling anyone a name.

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She was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

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She came to class with her readings done,

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she sat in the front row

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and she was always on my team.

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When she said it,

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she was actually making a point
about my lecture,

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by quoting a line from a 1970s
movie, a comedy,

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that had two racist slurs.

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One for people of Chinese descent

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and the other the N-word.

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As soon as she said it,
I held up my hands, said, "Whoa, whoa."

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But she assured me,

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"It's a joke from 'Blazing Saddles',"

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and then she repeated it.

NOTE Paragraph

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This all happened 10 years ago,

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and how I handled it
haunted me for a long time.

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It wasn't the first time
I thought about the word

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in an academic setting.

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I'm a professor of US history,

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it's in a lot
of the documents that I teach.

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So I had to make a choice.

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After consulting with someone I trusted,

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I decided to never say it.

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Not even to quote it.

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But instead to use
the euphemistic phrase, "the N-word."

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Even this decision was complicated.

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I didn't have tenure yet,

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and I worried that senior colleagues

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would think that by using the phrase
I wasn't a serious scholar.

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But saying the actual word
still felt worse.

NOTE Paragraph

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The incident in my classroom forced me
to publicly reckon with the word.

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The history, the violence,

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but also --

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The history, the violence,
but also any time it was hurled at me,

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spoken casually in front of me,

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any time it rested on the tip
of someone's tongue,

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it all came flooding up in that moment,

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right in front of my students.

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And I had no idea what to do.

NOTE Paragraph

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So I've come to call stories like mine
points of encounter.

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A point of encounter describes the moment
you came face-to-face with the N-word.

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If you've even been stumped
or provoked by the word,

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whether as the result
of an awkward social situation,

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an uncomfortable academic conversation,

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something you heard in pop culture,

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or if you've been called the slur,

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or witnessed someone
getting called the slur,

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you have experienced a point of encounter.

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And depending on who you are
and how that moment goes down,

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you might have a range of responses.

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Could throw you off a little bit,

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or it could be incredibly
painful and humiliating.

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I've had lots of these
points of encounter in my life,

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but one thing is true.

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There's not a lot of space
to talk about them.

NOTE Paragraph

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That day in my classroom
was pretty much like all of those times

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I had an uninvited run-in with the N-word.

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I froze.

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Because the N-word is hard to talk about.

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Part of the reason the N-word
is so hard to talk about,

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it's usually only discussed in one way,

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as a figure of speech,
we hear this all the time, right?

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It's just a word.

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The burning question that cycles
through social media

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is who can and cannot say it.

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Black intellectual Ta-Nehisi Coates
does a groundbreaking job

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of defending the African American
use of the word.

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On the other hand, Wendy Kaminer,

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a white freedom of speech advocate,

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argues that if we don't all
just come and say it,

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we give the word power.

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And a lot of people feel that way.

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The Pew Center recently
entered the debate.

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In a survey called "Race in America 2019,"

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researchers asked US adults
if they thought is was OK

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for a white person to say the N-word.

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Seventy percent of all
adults surveyed said "never."

NOTE Paragraph

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And these debates are important.

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But they really obscure something else.

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They keep us from getting underneath
to the real conversation.

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Which is that the N-word
is not just a word.

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It's not neatly contained
in a racist past,

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a relic of slavery.

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Fundamentally, the N-word
is an idea disguised as a word:

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that black people are intellectually,

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biologically

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and immutably inferior to white people.

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And -- and I think
this is the most important part --

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that that inferiority means
that the injustice we suffer

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and inequality we endure

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is essentially our own fault.

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So, yes, it is ...

NOTE Paragraph

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Speaking of the word only as racist spew

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or as an obscenity in hip hop music

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makes it sound as if it's a disease

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located in the American vocal cords

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that can be snipped right out.

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It's not, and it can't.

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And I learned this
from talking to my students.

NOTE Paragraph

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So next time class met,

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I apologized,

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and I made an announcement.

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I would have a new policy.

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Students would see the word
in my PowerPoints,

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in film, in essays they read,

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but we would never ever
say the word out loud in class.

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Nobody ever said it again.

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But they didn't learn much either.

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Afterwards, what bothered me most

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was that I didn't even explain to students

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why, of all the vile, problematic words
in American English,

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why this particular word
had its own buffer,

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the surrogate phrase "the N-word."

NOTE Paragraph

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Most of my students,

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many of them born
in the late 1990s and afterwards,

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didn't even know
that the phrase "the N-word"

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is a relatively new invention
in American English.

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When I was growing up, it didn't exist.

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But in the late 1980s,

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black college students,
writers, intellectuals,

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more and more started to talk about
racist attacks against them.

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But increasingly,
when they told these stories,

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they stopped using the word.

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Instead, they reduced it to the initial N

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and called it "the N-word."

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They felt that every time
the word was uttered

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it opened up old wounds,
so they refused to say it.

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They knew their listeners would hear
the actual word in their heads.

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That wasn't the point.

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The point was they didn't want
to put the word in their own mouths

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or into the air.

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By doing this,

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they made an entire nation
start to second-guess themselves

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about saying it.

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This was such a radical move

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that people are still mad about it.

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Critics accuse those of us
who use the phrase "the N-word,"

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or people who become outraged,

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you know, just because the word is said,

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of being overprincipled,

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politically correct

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or, as I just read a couple of weeks ago
in The New York Times,

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"insufferably woke."

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Right?

NOTE Paragraph

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So I bought into this a little bit too,

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which is why the next time
I taught the course

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I proposed a freedom of speech debate.

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The N-word in academic spaces,
for or against?

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I was certain students would be eager

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to debate who gets to say it
and who doesn't.

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But they weren't.

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Instead ...

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my students started confessing.

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A white student from New Jersey
talked about standing by

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as a black kid at her school
got bullied by this word.

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She did nothing and years later
still carried the guilt.

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Another from Connecticut

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talked about the pain of severing

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a very close relationship
with a family member,

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because that family member
refused to stop saying the word.

NOTE Paragraph

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One of the most memorable stories
came from a very quiet black student

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from South Carolina.

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She didn't understand all the fuss.

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She said everyone
at her school said the word.

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She wasn't talking about kids
calling each other names in the hall.

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She explained that at her school

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when teachers and administrators

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became frustrated
with an African American student,

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they called that student
the actual N-word.

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She said it didn't bother her at all.

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But then a couple of days later,

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she came to visit me
in my office hours and wept.

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She thought she was immune.

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She realized that she wasn't.

NOTE Paragraph

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Over the last 10 years,

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I have literally heard hundreds
of these stories

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from all kinds of people from all ages.

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People in their 50s remembering stories
from the second grade

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and when they were six,

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either calling people the word
or being called the word,

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but carrying that all these years
around this word, you know.

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And as I listened to people
talk about their points of encounter,

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the pattern that emerged for me
as a teacher that I found most upsetting

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is the single most fraught site

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for these points of encounter

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is the classroom.

NOTE Paragraph

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Most US kids are going to meet
the N-word in class.

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One of the most assigned books
in US high schools

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is Mark Twain’s "The Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn"

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in which the word appears over 200 times.

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And this isn't an indictment
of "Huck Finn."

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The word is in lots
of US literature and history.

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It's all over African
American literature.

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Yet I hear from students

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that when the word is said during a lesson

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without discussion and context,

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it poisons the entire
classroom environment.

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The trust between student
and teacher is broken.

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Even so, many teachers,

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often with the very best of intentions,

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still say the N-word in class.

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They want to show and emphasize
the horrors of US racism,

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so they rely on it for shock value.

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Invoking it brings into stark relief

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the ugliness of our nation's past.

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But they forget

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the ideas are alive and well
in our cultural fabric.

NOTE Paragraph

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The six-letter word is like a capsule
of accumulated hurt.

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Every time it is said, every time,

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it releases into the atmosphere
the hateful notion

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that black people are less.

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My black students tell me

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that when the word is quoted
or spoken in class,

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they feel like a giant spotlight
is shining on them.

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One of my students told me

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that his classmates
were like bobbleheads,

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turning to gauge his reaction.

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A white student told me
that in the eighth grade,

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when they were learning
"To Kill a Mockingbird"

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and reading it out loud in class,

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the student was stressed out

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at the idea of having to read the word,

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which the teacher insisted
all students do,

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that the student ended up
spending most of the unit

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hiding out in the bathroom.

NOTE Paragraph

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This is serious.

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Students across the country

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talk about switching majors
and dropping classes

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because of poor teaching
around the N-word.

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The issue of faculty
carelessly speaking the word

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has reached such a fevered pitch,

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it's led to protests at Princeton, Emory,

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The New School,

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Smith College, where I teach,

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and Williams College,

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where just recently students have
boycotted the entire English Department

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over it and other issues.

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And these were just the cases
that make the news.

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This is a crisis.

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And while student reaction

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looks like an attack on freedom of speech,

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I promise this is an issue of teaching.

NOTE Paragraph

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My students are not afraid
of materials that have the N-word in it.

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They want to learn about James Baldwin

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and William Faulkner

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and about the civil rights movement.

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In fact, their stories show

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that this word is a central feature
of their lives as young people

00:14:38.053 --> 00:14:39.453
in the United States.

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It's in the music they love.

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And in the popular culture they emulate,

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the comedy they watch,

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it's in TV and movies

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and memorialized in museums.

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They hear it in locker rooms,

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on Instagram,

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in the hallways at school,

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in the chat rooms
of the video games they play.

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It is all over the world they navigate.

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But they don't know how to think about it

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or even really what the word means.

NOTE Paragraph

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I didn't even really understand
what the word meant

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until I did some research.

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I was astonished to learn

00:15:17.288 --> 00:15:21.163
that black people first incorporated
the N-word into the vocabulary

00:15:21.187 --> 00:15:23.171
as political protest,

00:15:23.195 --> 00:15:26.203
not in the 1970s or 1980s

00:15:26.227 --> 00:15:29.075
but as far back as the 1770s.

00:15:29.591 --> 00:15:31.396
And I wish I had more time to talk

00:15:31.420 --> 00:15:36.174
about the long, subversive history
of the black use of the N-word.

00:15:36.625 --> 00:15:38.720
But I will say this:

00:15:38.744 --> 00:15:42.044
Many times, my students
will come up to me and say,

00:15:42.068 --> 00:15:45.476
"I understand the virulent roots
of this word, it's slavery."

00:15:46.767 --> 00:15:48.700
They are only partially right.

00:15:50.101 --> 00:15:54.434
This word, which existed
before it became a slur,

00:15:54.458 --> 00:15:59.927
but it becomes a slur at a very
distinct moment in US history,

00:15:59.951 --> 00:16:05.118
and that's as large numbers
of black people begin to become free,

00:16:05.142 --> 00:16:07.801
starting in the North in the 1820s.

00:16:08.246 --> 00:16:09.982
In other words,

00:16:10.006 --> 00:16:15.037
this word is fundamentally
an assault on black freedom,

00:16:15.061 --> 00:16:16.553
black mobility

00:16:16.577 --> 00:16:18.674
and black aspiration.

NOTE Paragraph

00:16:19.691 --> 00:16:20.842
Even now,

00:16:20.866 --> 00:16:25.143
nothing so swiftly unleashes
an N-word tirade

00:16:25.167 --> 00:16:27.857
as a black person asserting their rights

00:16:27.881 --> 00:16:31.275
or going where they please or prospering.

00:16:31.299 --> 00:16:34.406
Think of the attacks
on Colin Kaepernick when he kneeled.

00:16:34.784 --> 00:16:37.584
Or Barack Obama when he became president.

00:16:38.601 --> 00:16:41.529
My students want to know this history.

00:16:42.958 --> 00:16:46.569
But when they ask questions,
they're shushed and shamed.

NOTE Paragraph

00:16:48.148 --> 00:16:51.498
By shying away from talking
about the N-word,

00:16:51.522 --> 00:16:56.331
we have turned this word
into the ultimate taboo,

00:16:56.355 --> 00:16:59.331
crafting it into something so tantalizing

00:16:59.355 --> 00:17:01.434
that for all US kids,

00:17:01.458 --> 00:17:04.506
no matter their racial background,

00:17:04.530 --> 00:17:06.553
part of their coming of age
is figuring out

00:17:06.577 --> 00:17:08.648
how to negotiate this word.

00:17:08.672 --> 00:17:12.375
We treat conversations about it
like sex before sex education.

00:17:13.375 --> 00:17:15.508
We're squeamish, we silence them.

00:17:16.224 --> 00:17:20.454
So they learn about it
from misinformed friends and in whispers.

NOTE Paragraph

00:17:21.664 --> 00:17:24.268
I wish I could go back
to the classroom that day

00:17:24.292 --> 00:17:26.120
and push through my fear

00:17:26.144 --> 00:17:29.569
to talk about the fact
that something actually happened.

00:17:29.593 --> 00:17:32.449
Not just to me or to my black students.

00:17:32.473 --> 00:17:33.902
But to all of us.

00:17:34.665 --> 00:17:37.371
You know, I think

00:17:37.395 --> 00:17:41.410
we're all connected by our inability
to talk about this word.

00:17:42.276 --> 00:17:45.189
But what if we explored
our points of encounter

00:17:45.213 --> 00:17:47.280
and did start to talk about it?

NOTE Paragraph

00:17:48.641 --> 00:17:51.991
Today, I try to create
the conditions in my classroom

00:17:52.015 --> 00:17:54.944
to have open and honest
conversations about it.

00:17:55.315 --> 00:17:58.355
One of those conditions --
not saying the word.

00:17:58.942 --> 00:18:00.268
We're able to talk about it

00:18:00.292 --> 00:18:02.482
because it doesn't come
into the classroom.

00:18:02.855 --> 00:18:04.361
Another important condition

00:18:04.385 --> 00:18:06.887
is I don't make
my black students responsible

00:18:06.911 --> 00:18:09.688
for teaching their classmates about this.

00:18:09.712 --> 00:18:11.021
That is my job.

00:18:11.323 --> 00:18:12.720
So I come prepared.

00:18:13.188 --> 00:18:16.770
I hold the conversation with a tight rein,

00:18:16.794 --> 00:18:19.998
and I'm armed with
knowledge of the history.

00:18:20.022 --> 00:18:24.228
I always ask students the same question:

00:18:24.252 --> 00:18:27.529
Why is talking about the N-word hard?

00:18:28.165 --> 00:18:30.609
Their answers are amazing.

00:18:31.387 --> 00:18:32.537
They're amazing.

00:18:34.075 --> 00:18:36.336
More than anything though,

00:18:36.360 --> 00:18:41.789
I have become deeply acquainted
with my own points of encounter,

00:18:41.813 --> 00:18:44.315
my personal history around this word.

00:18:45.419 --> 00:18:48.442
Because when the N-word comes to school,

00:18:48.466 --> 00:18:50.522
or really anywhere,

00:18:50.546 --> 00:18:55.884
it brings with it all
of the complicated history of US racism.

00:18:56.639 --> 00:18:58.853
The nation's history

00:18:58.877 --> 00:19:00.369
and my own,

00:19:00.393 --> 00:19:03.317
right here, right now.

00:19:03.730 --> 00:19:05.263
There's no avoiding it.

NOTE Paragraph

00:19:05.889 --> 00:19:08.317
(Applause)