How the N-Word Became Unsayable
nytimes.com
How the N-Word Became Unsayable
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Re: How the N-Word Became Unsayable
#2The N-Word: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqwj--wGEgY
Re: How the N-Word Became Unsayable
#3Used to have friends who regularly used words like "nigger" and "faggot", the latter was heavily part of 90s 2000s culture. South Park didn't help. Most people didn't care. It's very clear when it's used against someone to be nasty as opposed to being a joke or simply being mentioned in an article. We can't make jokes anymore because of the sheer amounts of trolls on the Internet.
Re: How the N-Word Became Unsayable
#4That's a curious, almost etymological story of the world. But unfortunately the sociological and political consequences of this erasure are not really explored.
Personally, saying "n-word" instead of "nigger", makes resonate the slur louder in my brain, am I they only one? Isn't creating a taboo getting the opposite effect of what it meant to?
To me, this is follows some trend in North American political thinking that mixes language with reality. Like new Harry Potters*, some people think that language build and modify reality, but it is not like this. Modifying the language, doesn't even start to scratch the underlying problems. It just makes people to "feel" better, as if they are doing something, but they are just playing with language, in quite a hypocritical way. This feeling of relief may in fact hinder dealing with the structural problems underlying racism, that they mostly consist of redistribution of money and opportunities for a better and more inclusive welfare, education, healthcare and jobs.
* https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/01/harry-potter-magic-libera... "Liberals love Harry Potter because it presents a world they desperately wish was a reality — one where the magic of facts and reason and elite education were enough to vanquish the ills of society."
Re: How the N-Word Became Unsayable
#5N
Re: How the N-Word Became Unsayable
#6Has it become unsayable on 4chan?
Re: How the N-Word Became Unsayable
#7In the Netherlands in the past two decades the word 'neger' (which corresponds roughly, but not exactly, to the American use of 'negro') has become a taboo word too, although it was already something you wouldn't use on its own for most of the twentieth century. The popular sweet known as chocolate-coated marshmallow treats was called 'negerzoen' in Dutch (negro's kiss) in the recent past, and it was boldly emblazoned on its packaging.
An increase in awareness of racism and the impact of such names has led to it being abolished completely (the sickly sweet product is now known simply as 'kisses'). Nowadays that word is something you would only use to refer to the historic product name, or to explicitly show how you are 'resisting the woke trend'. It is now a word that that one older uncle might use at a family gathering, but otherwise it's pretty much gone and younger generations will marvel at it ever being used. Such is linguistic change.
An aside: oddly enough Dutch language Wikipedia insists on using this outdated racist word for the lemma on this treat, because (in my experience with on a variety of topics) Dutch language Wikipedia editors are rather conservative in such issues and seem to hate certain linguistic shifts. To this Dutchman it comes across as thinly veiled racism under the guise of encyclopaedic integrity.
This change happened alongside awareness of the change surrounding the 'N-word' in America, so recently in opinion pieces and public debate in Dutch people are using 'N-woord' in Dutch as well. But here something odd happened. The N-word refers specifically to 'nigger' in American use, which in Dutch has a rough approximation in the quite rude and outdated 'nikker', but nowadays here the 'N-word' seems to refer almost exclusively to 'neger' (or 'nigger' when used in English lyrics in a Dutch context, for example by Dutch rappers). Is this broadening of the scope something that happens just here, or is 'negro' also slowly falling under the definition of the N-word in the US?
The taboo surrounding the spelling out of that word leads to 'N-word' leading its own semantic life, which is sometimes a bit confusing. It doesn't matter much in the grand scope of things (both words are frankly unnecessary for the most part outside of historic contexts, and are broadly seen as racist), but I find it interesting nonetheless.
Re: How the N-Word Became Unsayable
#8There is a certain sort of person who will be looking into the meaning of the word to find out what is offensive about it. And then getting confused because the etymology is "black" which is descriptive rather than prejudiced.
The actual point, and the reason for the strange tip-toeing, is to do with some very rational effects around how groups signal. Any minority is always at risk from a majority. It helps to have a signal that can only be explained as a gesture of respect and which can therefore be interpreted as a sign that the majority isn't going to go genocidal (or even just dangerously exclusionary) at the drop of a hat.
In the grand scheme of things, it is pretty reasonable to ban almost exactly one word as a gesture of respect, simply to show that an important part social contract is still holding. In amongst all the PC silliness of the world I'm glad there is a part that I can rationalise and support. It makes a lot of sense from a lot of angles.
I'm not so convinced of this professor's article though, it reads a bit like someone who enjoys writing and likes words but hasn't thought enough about how social groups work to pull out the pattern.
Re: How the N-Word Became Unsayable
#9The article has some interesting data points, where the author reports his own experience, but it doesn't really answer the question in the title, and where the author goes beyond his own experience he makes some claims that need further exploration, I think.
1. The etymology of “aethiops” is uncertain. It was believed in ancient times that the word meant “burnt-face” but that may be just folk etymology. See the Oxford English Dictionary or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopia#Etymology
2. The connection he makes with Robert Burns and Winnie-the-Pooh seems like a wild bit of unsubstantiated speculation. OED confirms that Robert Burns wrote: "How graceless Ham leugh at his Dad, Which made Canaan a niger [rhyme vigour, rigour, tiger]." But what's the connection between an 18th-century Scottish poet, A. A. Milne, and an American children's rhyme?
Re: How the N-Word Became Unsayable
#10Not American but recently listened to the Audible edition of John Grisham's 'A Time to Kill' and the word is used dozens if not hundreds of times. Grating to hear but added to the story about race in a way that an alternative could not.