Grant Magazine: Let's Talk About the N Word by Sarah Hamilton

Grant Magazine www.grantmagazine.com

March 2016

Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s talk about

The

n word a special report

In the issue... March 2016

Chapter I: The Spark

Recent incidents involving the N-word at Grant High School pushed administrators to take action. Will upcoming plans for a school-wide discussion help tackle issues around race?

By Lael Tate, Molly Metz and Sophie Hauth

Chapter II: Turning Back the Pages

To understand the meaning of the N-word, you have to know its history. Then you have to be ready to listen.

By Blu Midyett and Molly Metz

Time with: Cynthia MacLeod

The district’s assistant director of Equity Development graduated from Grant High in 1969. She talks about her experience with the word, how it’s used today and the future of race in the school.

By Sophie Hauth

When Legends Speak

Civil Rights activist and former U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young talks to Grant Magazine about his view on the N-word.

By Eliza Kamerling-Brown

An Enduring Impact

In a dark alley, walking in the school’s hallway or playing a video game, several Grant students and staff recount a time they heard the racist slur.

By Cassius Pettit, Eliza Kamerling-Brown and Finn Hawley-Blue

Chapter III: Then and Now?

Today, the N-word is commonplace in music, movies and pop culture. Some say the hateful power of the word has been defused. Others still feel the sting of its past.

By Lael Tate, Bella RIdeau and Eliza Kamerling-Brown

Never said the N-word? Experts say there are plenty of coded terms that hold the same meaning.

By Bella Rideau, Lael Tate and Eliza Kamerling-Brown

The author’s childhood and his experience with the word have shaped his outlook on what it Grant Magazine 28 means to him.

By Blu Midyett

IV: 28 Chapter Words In Disguise

Chapter V: Afterthoughts

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Editors-in-Chief

Eliza Kamerling-Brown Molly Metz Blu Midyett Bella Rideau Lael Tate

Online Editor

Sawyer Montgomery

Design Editor Sarah Hamilton

Photo Editor Cassius Pettit

Copy Editors: Sophie Hauth Tess Waxman

Photo by Cassius Pettit

Photo story: Rahsaan Islam recalls how a group of white people chased him and shouted the N-word at him and his friends. Others recount their experiences with the word.

A word from the adviser: Why we’re taking on this issue

My introduction to the word “nigger” was swift, painful and left an indelible imprint on my psyche. It happened more than 40 years ago on a walk home from elementary school with my older brother. He was ahead of me on the sidewalk and any attempt at getting him to ease his pace wasn’t working. “Slow down, nigger,” I said. He dropped his backpack, wheeled around and threw me to the ground. Then he was on me, his knees pinning my arms to the ground. He punched me hard in the face five times, drawing blood. With each strike he shouted, David Austin “Do you know what that word means?” When I got up, his eyes were red with rage, his fists still clenched. “Go ahead and tell mom what you called me,” he said, seething. I never said a word to my mother and I never said the word again. Ask an older black person to recall the first time they heard the N-word and, invariably, they’ll step back and tell a story that is equal parts anger and pain. Growing up during an era when African Americans were attacked by police dogs and beaten by Southern sheriff’s deputies, it’s hard for me to believe that the use of the word has changed so much. Today, that history has given way to a culture that embraces the use of the word through music, movies and social media. At Grant Magazine, we’ve spent nearly a year talking about how to tackle this incendiary word. It’s heard in the halls every day. Black and white kids say it with such regularity that you’d think its meaning has been neutralized over time. But it remains one of the most racist, harmful and disparaging words in the English language. In this special report, you’ll read about how a series of racist incidents pushed the school to face the issue of race head on. Change, the school’s administrators say, is necessary, and we’ll see if they can deliver on that promise. It’s a tough issue to cover, but we felt compelled to shed light on it for you, our readers. We simply ask that you read with an open mind and let us know what you think. Contact us at grantmagazine@gmail.com or write a letter to our editors and mail it to Grant High School c/o Grant Magazine. To see a video report on this issue, go to grantmagazine.com/thewordvideo

Adviser

David Austin

grantmagazine.com

grantmagazine@gmail.com

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@grant_magazine Editorial Policy We encourage the community to participate in our publication. Grant Magazine accepts guest editorials, letters to the editors and corrections. Please include your name and contact information with any submissions.

March 2016

In Perspective

What does the school community think about use of the N-word?

“I don’t use it myself. But I don’t think it’s my place to police how other black people use it. For some, it’s a term of recognition. I don’t think nonblack people should use the word, and I don’t think that should be at all conditional.” – Sidney Jones, 17, junior

“I’ve never had a lesson on that word but people need to know the history behind it. It’s the history behind slavery and systematic oppression. It’s not a word that I would ever let my children use…I do feel a certain amount of discomfort when I hear it.” – Don Gavitte, 47, social studies teacher

“I feel like it’s definitely fair to use in quotes. I definitely use it if I’m ever quoting something. I don’t really let it get in the way of me enjoying a song. So if I’m in the car singing to myself and it’s in the song, I’ll say it.” – Collin De Kalb, 18, senior

“A lot of people say it because music has been a big influence on like today’s views on things. So a lot of people use it because it’s in songs they like. I know how much it can offend people. I just choose not to use it.” – Kaia Robbins, 14,

“Everywhere I go I’m hearing this word from a lot of AfricanAmerican kids and it’s not right...I feel like it means ignorance. When someone is saying it, they are referring to a black person no matter what. No matter if it’s ending with an ‘a’ or ending with an ‘er.’” – Domo Branch, 15,

“People say it as a joke…but it has a lot more meaning behind it. I really don’t care what ethnicity or race you are. I just feel like it shouldn’t be used at all…I’ll catch somebody and I’ll just be like ‘slow down,’ like obviously there’s other words you could use.” – Marcus Johnson, 17, junior

“I feel like most people are uncomfortable like even talking about it, not even saying the word. But it’s a part of everyone’s history and I feel like we should talk about it. It’s kind of like this taboo word that isn’t talked about in general.” – Natalya Peterson, 15, freshman

“A lot of people have a lot of feelings about language and…I definitely am a part of a minority culture that has reclaimed hate words. I can definitely understand the power of that. I think it’s interesting and important to recognize and see where people feel discomfort and why.” – Mykhiel Deych, 37, English teacher

“I feel like the media really portrays like using the N-word as something that’s like OK, no matter what race you are. With a lot of internet stars kind of doing it, I think that makes people think it’s OK.” – Lucie Carman, 15,

“To have the N-word just be loosely thrown around by young people...I don’t think they fully understand what they’re saying. They don’t get it. They don’t get the people who lived through it.” – Richard Meadows, 52, Language Arts teacher

“It’s fine for people of color to use, but not white people. Like we created it and we created it with that like horrible meaning to it. I think that white people just don’t have that privilege because of its origins.” – Cora Rios, 18, senior

“It’s not a big deal. It’s in the past, I guess. Like a new generation, so (we’ve got to) set new rules. You don’t need to bring it forward.” – Asher Antoine, 16, sophomore

Grant Magazine

Editorial

Commit to an Ongoing Dialogue about Race The Grant High community must change its approach to addressing racism or progress will stall indefinitely.

By Bella Rideau, Dylan Palmer and Joshua Webb

ast year, when seven Grant High School freshman boys posted racist and misogynistic photos and comments to Instagram, amongst the degrading remarks were “nigger” and “nigga.” Fast forward to early November, when the Grant varsity boys soccer team came under fire for comments players made using the racial epithet. You’d be very wrong if you assumed these events were isolated and rare. They speak to a greater disconnect at the school that the administration has yet to confront, though they have plans to. Grant’s equity team is trying to figure out how to start a meaningful discussion on race. But the process has taken too long and is being far too drawn out. A number of things have come up as obstacles for the start of these discussions, mainly due to planning snags and the lack of a timeline. Right now, the talks are set for mid-March. And that contributes to Grant’s normalized culture of racial ignorance. It’s disturbing – the number of hurdles that continue to get in the way of understanding the role race plays in our everyday lives – namely, the fear that is associated with talking about it. Our school’s staff is not equipped to moderate conversations on race because in the past, they haven’t been held accountable. This prompted Grant’s equity team, in tandem with a select group of students who have been meeting weekly, to seek outside resources to help with the upcoming school-wide race talks. We respect that the administration is pulling in outside personnel because if the school is going to do this, they need to do it right. It’s heartening that thought and consideration are being put into the discussions, but the process sheds light on some of Grant’s lesser known issues that contribute to the social segregation – and inherent isolation – we’ve seen on campus. Among the chief issues as we see it is Grant’s staggering under-representation when it comes to the adults at our school. With 125 members on staff, nine are black, and only one of those is a teacher. And there are very few other teachers of color. This year’s freshman class has 36 black

students out of a total of 396. And the population of students of color has been dropping steadily over the years. Those figures make discussions difficult. But they also show the gaping hole we are dealing with at Grant when it comes to race. How can we have honest conversations when the numbers are so skewed? In the past when issues of race came up, the administration appeared to avoid the topic, citing confidentiality around student discipline. Yet, when kids rampantly use the N-word in the halls and in the classrooms, you can hear the crickets chirping when it comes to the collective school’s reaction. We’re not suggesting focusing all our attention on one word that has a history of racism buried within its core. What we are saying is that we need to talk more about everything associated with the word. This means starting those conversations early on and then providing resources and platforms for students of all backgrounds to recognize one another’s histories. A glaring example is that we have only two culturally specific classes, Living in the U.S. and African-American Literature, at Grant. That’s not nearly enough to shed light on the multicultural perspective. The demographics in those classes are considered anomalies when you look at the whole of Grant High School. In these courses, minority students make up the majority population. Part of this lies in the concept that these classes are really the only two that recognize black history and the multicultural narrative, rather than just an obligatory nod to the core curriculum.

Because of this, we want to see a commitment from the administration to unsubscribe from the majority culture that occupies the classrooms and the hallways. We want to see teachers facilitate effective conversations so it no longer takes five months to plan for just a 90-minute discussion. The N-word is used everyday by people of all different backgrounds with both friendly and hateful intentions. This issue of Grant Magazine extends beyond the discussion of the N-word, in all its uses. To us, it’s about so much more than the word. As students, we tend to take words lightly. We throw around curse words that, as children, we were shamed from saying by our parents. The N-word does not fall into this category. In fact, the N-word really doesn’t fall into any category. Collectively, as a staff, we don’t see a place for the word in society today. We’ve done our reporting for the issue, talking with students, staff and a host of experts. But before we got that far, we had to do our own research. How could we speak authoritatively on a subject so complicated without understanding its power? In our interviews, we’ve recognized certain trends. There are non-black people who avoid the word at all costs. In fact, most Grant teachers find themselves in this category. Then there are the non-black people who find it appropriate to use the word in both a derogatory way and what we consider to be superficial. Within the black community, it gets more complicated. Some make a case for reclamation of the word, an attempt at diluting the historic weight through its use. Others recognize that the word’s history is too vast and painful to divorce. There are arguments for each of these outlooks, less so for the non-black people who think it is OK to use the word regardless of intention, and not everyone falls into these groupings definitively. But our staff does: the history and the impact are too great to ignore. Beyond that, how can a word be reclaimed if its history is not understood? And how can a history be understood if there are no conversations?

March 2016

The Spark

A series of incidents involving students’ use of the N-word pushes Grant High School to a crossroads. By Lael Tate, Molly Metz and Sophie Hauth

efore and after school, and in between classes, Grant High School’s center hall has always been abuzz with students meeting up with friends before rushing off to beat the next bell. What stands out, though, isn’t the routine clustering of students but the casual use of the N-word. It’s thrown around as a greeting – synonymous to “bro” for many – as its relative power, meaning and history are seemingly ignored. Music containing the word blasts from car stereos and students’ headphones. And even more frequent than the word’s use at school is its use on social media. It hits all digital platforms, from photos and videos to the comment sections of Facebook. Teachers and administrators hear it all the time, but it doesn’t draw the attention that it did in the past. People seem unfazed by its prominence. But last year, when a group of white freshmen boys went on a social media tirade, using the N-word as their calling card, it began to create a stir. Grant administrators scrambled to deal with the issue, but the result was more of a stifling of discussions around the power of the word than a fostering of meaningful conversation. Things got worse in November when members of the Grant boys soccer team jokingly used the word at a group dinner before the state playoffs. Led by a senior, the team used a function on Snapchat that plays words in reverse. “Reggin,” they said into smartphones as the app replayed their words. “Nigger.” When a black player on the team complained, the slurs and other comments continued. The black player left the team and administrators hustled to get the coaches, the team and the parents to discuss what happened. School-wide discussions are set to happen in March. What’s happening in the Grant community is a reflection of a nation grappling with an ever-changing population and the fallout of a variety of issues around race. Add to that the historical power of the word, its frequent use among entertainers and a student body that doesn’t know the history. It’s no wonder that the word continues to spring up so frequently. And especially at Grant – a school where families say they appreciate the diversity – this word has become an enigma. Lukas Sherman, a white English teacher who tries to bring conversations about race into his classroom, says: “I think in Portland, there’s kind of a myth that we’re sort of this liberal utopia and we embrace

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everything. But I think there are a lot of tensions under the surface.” Many students say the word freely, excusing its use because of its representation in music and popular culture. Others say they’re taking back the word through an attempt at reclamation. Getting a grasp on the word’s acceptance in high school is tough. It depends on whom you talk to. Kinsley Daniels, a senior at Grant who is African American says: “I don’t think anyone who isn’t black should say it. Also, I feel like black people really shouldn’t, but it’s become kind of communal...there’s like a lot of meaning behind it, but it depends on how you say it.” Principal Carol Campbell says communication is the key. “The thing about the N-word, I think, is avoiding it is not the answer,” Campbell says. “I think we really need to talk about it. Part of this education and part of these conversations and being comfortable to talk about race is being able to talk about things like that. I’m excited that we are actually doing some things instead of just talking about it.” Despite the varying opinions on the usage and acceptance of the N-word, by looking at the history one thing is clear: it’s pejorative and an extremely insulting word created to force slaves into a position of inferiority. But despite this history, there is no shortage of inflammatory incidents surrounding the word taking place in school settings. In December of last year, the N-word was found written on the wall of a boy’s restroom at Beverly Cleary School, a predominantly white elementary and middle school that is a five-minute walk from Grant and feeds into the high school. For the principal Teri Geist, the staff and the students, it was a wake-up call. They were shocked. “When the teachers, especially the middle school teachers, brought that up to their students…just humongous disappointment among the kids,” she says. On top of that, they realized that many of the boys on the Grant soccer team had attended Beverly Cleary. “When the staff heard about the incident at Grant with the soccer players and realized that many of the children in that incident were Beverly Cleary kids, it was another hit,” Geist says. “We think when we train, when we have open discussion and we talk to kids about how you treat people and you talk about race…our kids weren’t allies? They participated? It was very disappointing.” But these events are not isolated to the Grant community. In

Photo by Cassius Pettit

mid-January, six white girls who are students at Desert Vista High School in Phoenix, Ariz., posted a photo to Snapchat of themselves spelling out the word on their T-shirts. The letters were originally a part of the class slogan for a senior class photo. There was some backlash from the local media, but the girls claimed they were not racist and walked away largely unscathed. Grant senior Alejandro Morales, who attended the same Arizona school for a little over a year, says: “I’m not very surprised, in all honesty. It’s a very prominently white school, and it’s a very affluent school, as well...(the N-word) was used a a lot; it was used, to be honest, more in the white community than it was in the black community, which probably isn’t a good thing.” As events such as these seem to only be increasing in the high school setting, Campbell and her staff had no choice but to act, deciding that school-wide discussions on race were necessary. “I think the incident with the boys soccer team was something that was probably needed,” says Marty Williams, Grant’s restorative justice coordinator. “It was something that was unfortunate, but I think that it was needed to help people understand that it is important. It’s not a negative thing to talk about race.” As the administrative team began planning the discussions, they spent time building a core group of leaders and centered meetings around self-reflection. Julie Palmer is a teacher of special assignment for the equity department with Portland Public Schools. She plays an integral part in the planning of the meetings. “Every individual needs to be reflective and be open to hearing from other people how their practices are working and how they are not working,” Palmer says.

“And how people in education need to be able to own imperfection and engage in making shifts in practice in order to intentionally meet the needs of students of color.” In recent weeks, the team has moved into planning the logistics of the event, taking the process one step at a time. They all acknowledge it is uncharted territory. Vice Principal Diallo Lewis says: “No one’s doing this and no one has done this, so there’s really no blueprint for it. That’s why I think we have got to be really thoughtful in what we do.” The event, which will consist of classroom discussions and culminates with a school-wide assembly, is scheduled for this coming March. Given the administration’s inconsistent history of handling incidents surrounding race, there’s a lot at stake. But they are confident these discussions are imperative and will have a positive impact. “My personal experiences as a student, as a mother and as an educator lead me to believe that we have gone way too long ignoring race as a factor in education,” Palmer says. “Until we are willing and able...to own that and engage in trying to rectify that and being open to hearing a new perspective and incorporating other perspectives into our practice, we are not going to impact the school experience for students of color.” Campbell remains upbeat about the prospect of holding the talks and thinks the school will be better off. “We still have a lot of work to do; I don’t think we’ll ever be done,” she says. “It’s something you constantly work on. I’ve been in education for 32 years and… this is by far the farthest along that we’ve ever been.”

March 2016

Spotlight: Paul Coakley

The retired Portland principal’s clashes in the segregated South shaped his stance against the N-word By Blu Midyett Photo by Finn Hawley-Blue

aul Coakley remembers stepping off the bus with 25 other black students in a tiny Tennessee town. “Go back to where you came from, nigger,” an angry mob of residents shouted as Coakley started the first day of his senior year at Gallatin High School. It was 1970, and most of the 30,000 residents of the town were opposed to integration. The black students had to be escorted by police, who feared that violence might erupt. “I wasn’t trying to hear who was saying it, you’re gonna hear that word,” Coakley recalls. “When you look at the history, it was a word that was designed to hurt people, a derogatory word and that’s why it’s not a word that’s endearing to me at all.” Growing up in rural Tennessee, Coakley knew what it was like to face discrimination. He was born in Detroit, the youngest of eight children. His parents split up when he was young and he stayed with his mom. She was unable to care for all of her children, so she sent him to Tennessee to live with his uncle. He remembers how different life in the South was, with

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separate but equal as the order of the day. Blacks and whites rarely mixed. When he was 12, Coakley recalls walking with a black friend to the theater. After waiting in line for all the white patrons to go in, the two approached the ticket counter. “It sounded like everyone had gotten their tickets,” he recalls. “The guy that was selling them turned to me and my friend...and he told us: ‘Niggers don’t come through the front door. You have to go through the back.’” They started to walk to the back but stopped short. If they couldn’t go in the front, Coakley decided, then they weren’t going to go in at all. “That was part of the protest; we were going to protest peacefully and we would stay away,” he says of his choice. “We went back six years later and walked through the front door...it felt good, real good. It felt like you were a part of the country and you had the same rights that anyone else had.” When he finished high school and went to college, he decided to become a teacher. In 1980, he was recruited to Portland by the school district and later served as a principal of Harriet Tubman Middle

School, and Roosevelt and Gresham high schools. Now retired, the barrel-chested Coakley – known for his trademark laugh and ability to encourage students – often substitutes as principal at Grant when needed. Every now and then Coakley is haunted by the word when he hears kids in the halls at Grant using it. Whenever it happens, he shakes his head. “I’ve heard it being used more and more,” he says. “One thing that hasn’t changed is I immediately address it. I’ll turn and say ‘excuse me’ and the kids say ‘I’m sorry’ because they know. “It’s almost like if no one is going to say anything about it then (they’ll) just go ahead and use it.” Coakley wants kids to understand the history of the word that has always made him cringe. “With things like the N-word, I’ve never used that because I know the deprivation and the putdowns, I know about all those things,” he says. “People have given their lives not to be called that word. You have to understand the history behind it before you just loosely use this word. You have to.”

II.

Turning Back the Pages To understand the power and magnitude of the N-word, you canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t ignore the history By Blu Midyett and Molly Metz

March 2016

Renee Anderson spent 11 years teaching math at Grant High School and fought hard to help thousands of students navigate the world of mathematics. As one of the few black classroom teachers at Grant, she clearly understood the achievement gap students of color face every year and has her share of stories around race in the classroom. Her view on the N-word was shaped from a young age and is absolute: It’s a word best left in the past. It was 1963 when then-Renee Wilkerson hopped on a bus in Menlo Park, Calif., to her first day of fifth grade at an allwhite elementary school. Like many other school districts across the nation at the time, black students were bused into white neighborhoods to integrate schools as part of federal law. Anderson remembers entering a class full of white faces and a teacher who refused to speak to her. The teacher boldly announced to the class that she wasn’t going to teach the “nigger girls,” pointing to her and another black student. They were forced to sit at the back of the room and didn’t receive any of the books that the white kids read. Nigger girls. The words stung. “I don’t even remember the word before fifth grade,” Anderson recalls. “I knew it wasn’t

nice the way she said it. She wouldn’t give us any books. She wouldn’t look at us.” At that moment, a little girl’s perspective on a loaded word was seared into her mind, and it stuck. To Anderson, there’s no escaping the long and painful history that the N-word has in this country. “When that teacher used that word for me, she wasn’t being nice,” says Anderson, who retired from Grant in June 2011. “She was trying to put us down. When the word is used for when masters were talking to slaves, they weren’t being nice. They weren’t saying, ‘Oh you’re just my favorite worker.’ It wasn’t a nice word.” In American culture, the N-word is rooted in a racist past, a past that many know little about. Its origins are generally left alone in school classrooms, and dialogue around how it’s used

1700s: The N-word is firmly established as a derogatory word toward African-American people.

1619: First written account of the N-word used towards African slaves in America.

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1837: Abolitionist activist Hosea Easton writes A Treatise on the Intellectual Character and Civil and Political Condition of the Colored People of the United States: and the Prejudice Exercised Towards Them. He describes the N-word as an “opprobrious term, employed to impose contempt upon [blacks] as an inferior race.”

today is rare. One thing remains certain: the word has been used openly to oppress black people for centuries. But today, there is no clear consensus on what the word really means. “Every time that word is said, it does have a reverberation and a very painful one,” says Roberta Hunte, assistant professor of Black Studies at Portland State University. The N-word’s roots are tied to the beginning of slavery and while it’s long been considered a hateful word, it’s lasted over time. Today, many of its references come in songs, movies and other entertainment venues, and its power has been diminished in the minds of some, especially young people. That, many adults say, comes from a lack of understanding about the history. “This word is used, but only talked about when something bad happens,” says Grant’s restorative justice coordinator Marty Williams, who is black. “They aren’t really talking about why they need to be educated about this, why it means what it means, and why you should or shouldn’t use it.” Neal Lester, professor of English at Arizona State University who is African-American, teaches an entire course devoted to the N-word. For him, the importance is not in the definition of the word, but in looking at how it has been used in the past. “My approach to history is not, ‘In 1892, this happened; in 1913, this happened,’ because it’s all history,” he says. “It was all contributing to the discourse on American race relations, not just

the word itself but the context it exists in. It’s not the six letters that make up the word. It’s what the letters together have come to signify. There is not a quick definition.” What’s certain is that looking back to the beginnings of the word and understanding what fueled its evolution might bring us closer to understanding the role it plays in society today. “I don’t think it’s something to shy away from,” says Hunte. “It’s a part of our history and, in many ways, it’s a part of our present.” ••• In 1619, the first slave ships arrived in Jamestown, Virginia. The English settlers who manned the ships brought with them dozens of slaves. Written accounts show that settlers called slaves “negar” and intended for it be derogatory. Jabari Asim is editor-in-chief of Crisis Magazine, the official publication of the NAACP. He’s also the author of the book, The N-word. He says he found in his research for the book that it was used in a way to hold powerful sway over slaves. “There is no evidence to suggest that it was ever a race neutral term,” he says. “Black people or white people, it was meant to convey a certain degree of sub-humanity from the very beginning.” The etymology of the word is where it starts. In Latin, negro means black. Asim and others say many derivatives developed from the original spelling as it spread across other languages. The word we now know as “nigger” came from one of those derivatives.

“Black people or white people, it was meant to convey a certain degree of subhumanity from the very beginning.” - Jabari Asim, Author of The N-word

1874: The McLoughlin Brothers of New York produce a game called “Chopped Up Niggers.”

1916: A magazine prints an advertisement called “Nigger Milk” that depicts an AfricanAmerican baby drinking milk.

1884: Mark Twain releases the book The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The novel uses the word 219 times and continues to be examined as a racist text today.

1939: Writer Agatha Christie publishes Ten Little Niggers. The novel was later renamed And Then There Were None.

March 2016

1950s and 1960s: The line “catch a nigger by its toe” is gradually replaced with “catch a tiger by its toe” in the nursery rhyme, “Eeny Meeny Miny Moe.” Ilustration by Catherine Hunter

August 8, 1988: NWA a.k.a “Niggas With Attitude” release the pivotal album Straight Outta Compton featuring songs like Fuck Tha Police which use the word profusely. Some site songs like these as productive uses of the word in music.

September 10, 1976: Richard Pryor releases “Bicentennial Nigger,” a comedy album that later goes on to win the Grammy for best comedy album.

“What tends to happen is over the years and with differing geographical locations, people may start to change the way that they say a certain word,” says Shirley Jackson, chair of the Black Studies department at PSU. “Over time, it evolved into a more phonetic spelling.” This phonetic spelling is often traced backed to the South, where heavy accents created a new pronunciation. That pronunciation was routinely used to describe African slaves during a time when plantation owners and others began to procure millions of Africans, beginning in the 1600s. Slave narratives, dating back to that era, have been found to use the word to describe other African slaves. “They weren’t saying it as brother or friend, ever,” says Asim. “The earliest black people writing about the use of the word very early on have already condemned it as a pejorative that didn’t in any way reflect black identity or the black experience.” By the 1700s, use of the word had spread, mainly to push the belief that blacks were a subspecies of human. Many scientists and philosophers argued that Africans were biologically different and intellectually inferior to whites, citing scientific evidence

2001: Former member of the Klu Klux Klan, Senator Robert Byrd uses the term “white nigger,” a common derivative of the n-word used against white people in an interview with Fox News.

that wasn’t real. “It was used synonymously with slaves because slaves became a representation of inferiority,” says Lester. “It was a naming, but it wasn’t a naming that allowed for any personal identity.” As white Americans encountered different ethnic groups, the word was applied to other cultures that were also viewed as inferior to whites. The phrase “‘white nigger” was used to describe Jewish people, for example. “It’s not about a specific identity, a racial identity or racial profiling. It’s about anybody that can be insulted by connecting them with anyone that is African American or black,” says Lester. “Jews have been called the N-Word, so this is something that is beyond a kind of rational explanation as for why it causes a response from people.” Advertisers, playwrights and authors began to capitalize on the negative racial connotations of the word in the mid-1800s, using it extensively in minstrel performances where actors used blackface makeup. The N-word appeared on hundreds of food and cleaning products. It began to fill American households as popular culture began to expand. “You have things like ‘Nigger Hair’ tobacco, ‘Gally Nigger’

“It’s not about a specific identity... It’s about anybody that can be insulted by connecting them with anyone that is African American.” -Neal Lester, Professor of English at Arizona State University

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2016: A photo of Arizona teens spelling out the N-word on T-shirts circulates the internet, prompting protests and a request that the teens are expelled.

2007: The NAACP holds a symbolic funeral for the N-word in Detroit. They bury a coffin adorned with black flowers that represents the word. Photo Courtesy Getty Images

2007: Jabari Asim publishes The N-Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn’t, and Why.

banks, and popular in white middle class houses was a collection of sheet music called ‘Nigga Songsters,’ which are full of racist songs that people could gather around a piano and sing in the parlor,” says Asim, the author. “By the 1920s, the word was everywhere.” ••• During the Civil Rights era, the N-word was a regular weapon used by law enforcement and racists in the South. In everything from the death of 14-year-old Emmett Till to the assaults of the Freedom Riders, the word was like venom. Lynchings and other violence claimed the lives of thousands of black men and women, who were also victims of the word. The African-American community began to organize and speak out. Paul Coakley, a retired Portland Public Schools principal who often substitutes for administrators at Grant, says he began following the Civil Rights movement like a fan follows a sports team. He aspired to be like his older cousins who were a part of one of the first peaceful sit-ins in Tennessee. “They were attacked, hit, beaten, spit up on, all kinds of things,” says Coakley, who was raised by an uncle in Tennessee. “But all of that...people were willing to take just to show that they were equal in the eyes of the law, in the eyes of man and in the eyes of our country.” For Coakley, the demeaning qualities of the word stood for something much greater than just an epithet. It represented the inequality that the black community faced. “That word was used as a word to say that African-American people were less than and were not as good,” says Coakley. “If you forget your history, then you’re doomed to repeat it, so it’s very important that we teach young people and all people about their history.” But for some, the word has negligible meaning in a conversation

Advertising companies frequently used the word to promote their products. Photo Courtesy Antique Tobacco

March 2016

“If you forget your history, then you’re doomed to repeat it.” - Paul Coakley, former Portland Public Schools Principal

Photo Courtesy Michael Ochs Archives

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about race. With a disproportionate number of blacks in prison, a huge achievement gap between minority and white students and with the high number of police shootings of unarmed black people, some say there’s more to worry about than the use of a word. Karl Acker is a resource specialist at Grant, who is black. He grew up in New Orleans in the 1970s and used the word openly. “It was a term of endearment,” he recalls. “We used it as code to get over on the teachers, to say some stuff to each other in a tone using different words...In the neighborhood that I grew up in, eating and surviving were high priorities; words being used were very, very low priority.” It was a time that saw Americans of all races open their eyes to what was happening to black America. And the negative connotations associated with blackness in the early 1970s began to take a radical shift nationwide. “Black is beautiful” became a heralded mantra. Movies and television shows depicting black characters were developed. One movie, Three the Hard Way, depicted three black characters who saved the black race from a group of white supremacists. Many of the films and shows used the N-word. For some, this gave the word a new meaning and handed the power of it to the black community. But since the entertainment was aimed at a black audience, it rarely reached the white mainstream. Using the word “was often done in those films with

a bit of self-awareness, occasionally a wink to the camera almost, a heavy dose of irony,” says Asim. “They were saying, ‘We’re going to challenge the status quo. We’re going to challenge whatever the prevailing message is,’ and some of it was done through language.” It wasn’t until a young black comedian named Richard Pryor began to crack jokes that white audiences began to laugh along. With the release of comedy albums like “Bicentennial Nigger,” which won a Grammy, Pryor’s profuse use of the N-word was something all of America was listening to. At Grant, the culture was no different. Cynthia MacLeod today serves as assistant director of equity for Portland Public Schools. She remembers moving from Texas to Portland in the 1960s and hearing the word in the halls of Grant. “I had been taught that that word was derogatory and hurtful, and that it was something that white people said to black people,” says MacLeod. “I was not accustomed to people of color, African Americans, using it with each other in a casual manner. First time I heard it...I held my breath because I thought, ‘Oh my gosh something terrible is about to happen.’” But nothing did, and the word became normal to MacLeod as her years at Grant continued. She graduated in 1969. Although the different meanings behind the word and a segregated culture within the school created a racial divide, MacLeod remembers rising pressure between the small black population and the majority white school. That pressure continued in later years. Dylan Leeman, who is white, now teaches English at Grant. He remembers attending the school in the late 1980’s and early 1990s. “There was a lot of racial tension at Grant when I went there...integration was pretty new,” he recalls. “I think the white kids...were still really resistant to black kids at Grant when I was here.” Leeman remembers hearing the word frequently in the halls and recalls the emergence of rival gangs – both black gangs and Skinheads – fueling the tension. When he heard two female friends use the word openly with their Skinhead boyfriends, Leeman made it his mission to spread it around the entire school what they had said. The two girls ended up transferring out of Grant. Leeman says the word never came up again as far as he recalls. •••

When he returned to Grant as a teacher in 2001, he taught African-American Literature and chose to use the word. “I just said it because I believed that I was trying to sort of create a post racial world,” he says. “I made my classes use the word. I said, ‘We’re just gonna use the word. It’s a lit class. We’re just gonna. Get over it.’ And I regret that.” Today, he allows students in class to simply say “N” when it comes up in a book or writing. For Renee Anderson, the memories of Grant are filled with students who used the N-word in the halls and around school. But in her classroom, the word was strictly forbidden. Anderson still actively participates in race conversations at Grant. Her motivation, she says, comes from her faith in the future. “When I’m old and gray, those are the folks that are going to be voting on what’s going on at Grant,” Anderson says of today’s students. “I want to graduate people who are concerned citizens. Concerned not about just the Grant Community, but concerned about what happens in the Portland metro area.” Today, Anderson worries the dwindling number of black staff at Grant will have an impact on discussions about race, and that directly affects any conversation around the N-word. “It’s very important to have a diverse staff because people will know different things, depending on where they come from,” says Anderson. “Some things people will look at very differently [if] they are looking through a different lens and may not think that an issue is important because of their background.” Williams, the restorative justice coordinator, wants people to simply understand and have empathy for differing points of view. But the key, he says, is knowing your subject matter and fully grasping its impact. “Before you teach something,” Williams says, “get education around it because the word holds a certain sensitivity to it to some groups. It can be either traumatic, it could be anger, or it could be where it’s just a conflict of the word, period. I think it’s more about the education of the word… ‘This is what this word is and this it where it came from. What is your opinion on it?’” Asim says he doesn’t think banning the word is a likely option. Doing so, he says, would further stifle conversation at a time when racism needs to be put under the spotlight. “It’s really naïve and sort of ahistorical” to think the N-word will just go away, he says. “It’s an unwillingness to confront the reality of racism. I think the only way the word could exist, as a race-neutral term, is dependent on the elimination of racism, which I don’t see ever occurring.” Grant Magazine staffers Sophie Hauth and Joshua Webb contributed to this story.

“First time I heard it...I held my breath because I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, something terrible is about to happen.’” - Cynthia MacLeod, Assistant Director of Equity, Portland Public Schools

Left: After a trip to Kenya, Richard Pryor announced that he would stop using the N-word in his comedy performance, despite having used the word on the cover of his Grammy-winning comedy album.

March 2016

Time with...Cynthia MacLeod

Looking Back Cynthia MacLeod, a 1969 Grant alum, reflects on how the school’s racial dynamic has evolved.

“Adults must realize that kids are having conversations about race.”

Interview by Sophie Hauth, photo by Molly Metz

What’s your role in the Portland Public Schools equity department? I focus on providing professional development around racial equity for school administrators. You grew up in Texas and then moved to Oregon during your sophomore year of high school. What was your experience with the N-word in both places? I grew up in a family that was very protective and…kept me isolated from overt racial language. The word was seen as very derogatory. Once I came to Oregon, I had to become accustomed to the word being used in a familial way, and I’m still uncomfortable, honestly, personally uncomfortable. So what are the rules around using it? Are there any? What I find important…is that as people of color, as African Americans, I think it’s important that we determine the narrative around the use of that word, and that that narrative not be determined by white people or any other race of people. It should be up to us as people of color to decide the narrative for that word. What’s your narrative or stance on the word? Personally, I don’t think it should be used. I think when it is used, it is a negative word. However, I understand that that’s just my perspective on it. Whether the intent is to be

Age: 64 Job: Assistant Director of Equity Development for Portland Public Schools Family: two grown sons, Joseph and Colin Thomas Last book read: All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr Current work project: Preparing a presentation on the impact of microaggressions on school climate for an administrative leadership academy in March

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harmful or not, that can always be debated. But the impact of the use of the word is much clearer and much less open to discussion. Did it harm or didn’t it harm? I think that that...would be most important for adults to consider. I think students should be engaged in a dialogue, but I do think there should be real close attention paid to the impact it’s having on African-American or black students. You went to Grant during the height of the civil rights movement. What was that like? There was talk about black power. The Black Panthers were definitely in the news and very much a part of the political scene then, as was Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. So there were discussions about how the Civil Rights movement should progress and what should happen and who should be in charge. I never witnessed any physical confrontations or verbal confrontations, but I heard about it. I would hear a group of white kids and, you know, there was a going to be a big rumble… in the park, or somebody called somebody the N-word and they were going to get together and have a fight. What’s the difference between then and now at Grant when it comes to racial dynamics? I think about some of the incidents that I hear about in my office... a couple situations with the sports teams, and that is very much the kind of thing when I was there in the 60s and early 70s. The reaction to it now is somewhat different, because when I was in high school that would’ve just been ‘hush, hush.’ It would’ve been whispered and gossiped, but there would’ve been no direct and intentional way of dealing with it. What’s the first step to dealing with these racerelated incidents in an effective way? I think that adults must realize that kids are having conversations about race, that kids notice race, that kids talk about race. That’s the adult’s responsibility, for us to get ourselves in a place so that we can create a space so the children can do what they’re going to do anyway. They’re going to talk. They want to know, and they need to grow and learn about race and themselves as racial beings as well as other people’s race and the impact that race is having on all of our lives.

Born: March 12, 1932, in New Orleans College: Howard University; Connecticut’s Hartford Theological Seminary Notable facts: helped draw up the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act; was standing nearby when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968 Recipient: Presidential Medal of Freedom Photo courtesy Associated Press

When Andrew Young speaks…

The Civil Rights legend adds to the conversation on the rules of race

By Eliza Kamerling-Brown

hen it comes to history, Andrew Young has seen it all. Head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the 1960s. Chief strategist and negotiator for blacks during the height of the Civil Rights Movement. Close friend and confidant of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He’s also been a U.S. congressman, an ambassador for the U.S. to the United Nations during President Jimmy Carter’s time in office, and was the celebrated mayor of Atlanta in the 1980s. Young, 83, came to Portland in December to speak at a conference. He sat down with Grant Magazine for a discussion on race and leadership. The following is an edited excerpt from the interview about the N-word. “It’s like any word. It depends on its context. Now in college, we used it as a term of affection. See, it was an all-black college, and I was always very comfortable with this word as a term of affection. But if somebody’s angry with you and of a different race that uses it, it’s completely different. “The other thing I tend to do is to say that the word really does not just indicate race. It indicates a quality of capital. There are white niggas…black niggas…brown niggas…red niggas…rich niggas… poor niggas. But it doesn’t constitute race. But at the same time, when I was growing up in a predominantly white neighborhood, my grandmama said, ‘If somebody calls you nigga and you don’t hit ‘em, and if you don’t fight about it, when you come home you will get a whupping.’ So it was not used in my house, but we used it in the street. “It’s...a term that I have trouble with, which white people use all the time in the South. Jeff (Foxworthy), he’s got this book of ‘Redneck

Philosophy…’ And so white people call each other ‘Redneck’ all the time. But I don’t feel comfortable using (that word). In Congress, it was interesting because every time congressmen go home to their constituencies, they hear the latest jokes. The Irish congressman from Boston would come back and he’d tell Irish jokes. The Italian congressman would come back and he’d have some Italian ones. It’s all right for Jews to tell Jewish jokes. It’s all right for me to tell black jokes. But it’s not all right for somebody else to do it. “When I grew up, we were ‘colored.’ And then all of a sudden we became ‘black.’ And then we became ‘African American.’ And we were ‘Negroes’ in between. So, I just don’t use racial designations about people even when I know them extremely well. It’s hard for me to tell a Jewish joke to somebody Jewish, even though somebody Jewish told it to me. It’s not right for me to do it. And it’s just a matter of us learning to live together in a respectable diverse way. “There are all of these diversity sensitivities that we have to live with in a diverse society. But the best way to do it is a ‘no fouls and accept apologies’ (approach). If somebody uses a word toward me in a way that I don’t like, I say ‘You know, that’s not good. If you say that to somebody else black, they’re liable to knock your lights out.’ So it’s best not to do that.” Last December, former UN Ambassador and confidant of Dr. Martin Luther King came to to Portland to speak at a Business Conference. Afterwards, Grant Magazine was given the opportunity to speak with him about his views on the N-Word. Photo by Joshua Webb

March 2016

The Moment You Hear It Members of the Grant community recall how the N-word affected their lives

Tearale Triplett, 46, counselor (Below) “I grew up with a lot of social consciousness, as well as pride for who I was as a black person. The first time I experienced...the personal attack with the word was when I was about 15. I saw it all over my locker and upon seeing it I felt pretty violated, honestly, that that person or group of people would target my locker...and not have the guts to say it to my face…I was in high school, so a group of friends and I settled matters, if you know what I mean...I’m in no way, shape or form endorsing any kind of physical reaction. But that’s kind of just where we were as kids, and it was quite shocking to the group, as well.” – Interview by Blu Midyett, Photo by Eliza Kamerling-Brown

Rahsaan Islam, 18, senior (Above) “This was about two years ago. It was three of us. I was messing around a bit, and then I like tipped something over in front of (someone’s) house. We didn’t think they’d think nothing of it, so we were walking down Alberta Street, and that’s when they pulled up in a car and started chasing us. They were grown men, like 20s or 30s, all white. We just broke down this alleyway, and they were calling us the N-word and stuff. Like,‘Get that N-word’ or whatever and then they got one of my friends; they beat him up. I ran through the alley, and they didn’t catch the rest of us. I called the police myself, and that didn’t help at all because they shifted the blame on us. Like they tried to turn the whole story around, and we were like,‘This is a problem,’ and they didn’t care about it. There was no type of justice. They got away with it.” – Interview and Photo by Cassius Pettit

March 2016

Andrea Alvarado, 18, senior (Left) Alejandra Alvarado, 17, junior (Center) Sophia Ferere, 20, Portland State University junior (Far right) Andrea: “I use the N-word, but it’s not often…and when I do it’s...in a context where people know that I’m...not using it as a way to insult someone…but there are some people who do feel insulted.” Alejandra: “I think though we’re not black, we also have gone through the same struggles and have our own…names that we’re called and that some people use. With the N-word, you can change it from something completely negative to something completely positive...I think...it’s owned by...the whole minority group together.” Sophia: “They know I don’t like the N-word...Ever since they met me, they’re very open about it and I’m OK with that, but it makes me uncomfortable...I don’t say it, and I don’t want other people to say it around me.” – Interview and Photo by Eliza Kamerling-Brown Calvin Scott, 18, senior (Left) “So, there’s Xbox, and then there’s Xbox Live where you can talk to other people online and like play your games. And it’s the Internet, so people just are reckless and they say whatever they please because they have more power to say what they want without getting in trouble. I was laying in my room with a headset on, playing Xbox. I got a good kill or something, and then someone just called me the N-word. I was a little upset because you can’t really do anything about it except for just either respond with an insult or just sit there with the mic on. They could’ve easily used another word, but that’s the word they chose. I’m not sure if they knew that I was black or not. It’s a problem that people are just using that as a normal insult.” – Interview and Photo by Cassius Pettit

Téa Johnson, 17, junior (Below) “I had gotten to school early and a bunch of my friends were hanging out in the hall, so I joined them. There was a group of black males on the stairs. I don’t remember what they were doing, but they said something that’s technically grammatically incorrect. One of the boys in my group that I didn’t really know that well called them all, not to their faces but to us, the N-word. He turned to us and was making fun of their grammar. I was really shocked. I was like ‘You can’t really say that,’ and he said ‘Why, if they can say it I can say it.’ I’m like,‘No, you’re white, so you can’t, that’s not how it works.’ And he said that I was being racist toward white people. It struck me as so odd, and it still strikes me as odd that someone could use a word that has been used to like systematically degrade black people, directly towards black people, and not see that they are being racist.” – Interview and Photo by Finn Hawley-Blue

Spotlight: Kyra Orr

The Grant High School senior believes that both recognition of history and reclamation of the N-word are necessary for society to move forward

yra Orr was sitting in a semicircle of chairs in Jefferson High School’s band room the first time she encountered the N-word. It was January and she was preparing to perform in a local play as part of a Black History Month celebration. Orr was 12 at the time and reading along in her script of “Who I am; Celebrating Me” with the other members of the cast. In a scene about racism in the South, Orr was reading one of her lines and stumbled to get the words out. “Thou cuts not a figger, you are a nigger… nigger, and that is the law of Jim Crow.” She remembers hesitating and looking at her director, unsure if it was OK for her young self to speak aloud a version of a word she had always been taught not to mess with. “I heard it a lot but I never heard that version,” says Orr now, reflecting on the experience. “A lot of stuff was going through my head. ‘Can I say that? Will I get in trouble?...I can’t say it. Please don’t make me say this.’” Orr’s director eventually allowed her to swap lines with another cast member, but her experience with the word didn’t end there. As she’s grown older, the N-word has remained a consistent piece of Kyra Orr’s vocabulary. It’s been used by members of

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Story and Photo by Eliza Kamerling-Brown

her dad’s side of the family for as long as she can remember, thrown around at parties and family get-togethers as a term of endearment or a greeting. Now 18, Orr uses the word colloquially to embrace a friend or make a joking statement. She says she understands the history behind it isn’t simple to pull apart from the word. But she’s adamant about the importance of reclaiming it. “Every time I think about reclaiming the word, I think about like, ‘If you can reclaim queer, why can’t we reclaim the N-word?’” she says of the LGBTQ community’s attempts to mollify a once-damaging slur used against gays. “Yes, it’s a word that definitely took us down...but let’s flip the script,” Orr says. “Let’s use it to our advantage. It comes from a place (of) vulnerability, weakness, like being stepped over...Reclaiming it is us thinking like, ‘You know what? We went through this. We struggled. We’re gonna take upon it ourselves, because...we’re not the images we’re shown everyday on TV or in music lyrics or whatever.’ “We each want to strive to be something, and I think it’s honestly about time that we have something that...makes people forced to see us and know that we’re not going anywhere.”

Orr recognizes her opinion is unpopular with some. “You can’t just ignore history,” she admits. “I mean that was a word that was being thrown around to just tear us down, make us feel weak, less than human, since we were apparently three-fifths of a human being. “So, no, you can’t get rid of that history... It’s there. Etched in stone. Don’t even try to like sugar coat it. Don’t walk around it. You can’t. It happened.” Orr doesn’t think doing away with the word altogether would solve anything, and in some ways she feels there are more important conversations that people in the Grant community and across the country should be having about race. “Honestly, what they tell you on TV or in the history books,” Orr says, “That we come from slavery and we come from broken homes and broken families and all that other stuff? We honestly didn’t. We didn’t start from slavery...Slavery is not the only thing behind that word...We come from royalty. We are kings, queens, princesses, princes...we got taken and we couldn’t change that. “I think we really can reclaim the word and turn it into something positive,” she says, “because we did not go through all that just to be here and not like gain something. I feel like it can make us stronger if we...reclaimed the word. In my opinion.”

III.

Then and now? For some, the N-word is an opportunity to take back a term that was once used aginst them. For others, the history is too painful to ignore. By Lael Tate, Bella Rideau and Eliza Kamerling-Brown

March 2016

Can a bad tree eve Sophomore D’Allah Dent learned what the word “nigger” meant in first grade. Her class was learning the history of the Civil Rights Movement, and the teacher talked about the legacy of Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The unit was surface level at best, at worst, incomplete. But when Dent got home, her mother, Edwina, and father, David, talked with their young daughter about the impact of the time period. There was no getting past the N-word. “They went way back (in history) and then they brought it up to today,” Dent recalls. “This is what we have to deal with. Slavery is over and now we have Black History Month where we can celebrate, but we still have to deal with racism.” That conversation, over a decade ago, still sticks with her. And David Dent doesn’t mince words about why the conversations are so important. “Here we have, in our home, we have a racial dialogue. We teach them,” he says. “They come home...and they recognize what’s what. It’s a shame, we wish they didn’t and they were just them, but with people, it’s a reality. They see it, from the youngest to the oldest, they see it; they see what’s going on.” For Dent and many Grant High students, every day is a reminder. Walk through the hallways and there’s a good chance you’ll hear the word – or its euphemism, “nigga.” Sometimes from white students, other times from black students. It’s a sign that squares with what’s happening in popular culture. Consider famous musician Kanye West’s song, “All Day,” which uses the word a total of 42 times in five minutes. J. Cole’s “Fire Squad” says it 25 times. Today, it’s everywhere. For young people, it’s part of a movement to reclaim the word. Giving positive power to a word birthed by hate, they say, is what stands behind the idea. Grant junior Eric McGee, who is black, embraces the attempt at reclamation. “Back in like slave times, they used the word ‘nigga’ as a derogatory term toward blacks,” McGee says. “Right now, if like somebody’s saying it, I just wouldn’t care because it wouldn’t mean anything to me.” But the movement to redefine the N-word is stunted by the very idea of ownership. D’Allah Dent’s mother, Edwina, says: “I don’t think it’s a word that can be reclaimed. Reclaiming means that you owned it in the first place. It’s a part of our vocabulary, but for you to say ‘OK, this is a term of endearment for something that actually was used to oppress us and was used for many generations,’ there’s a sick mentality to it. They don’t have to call you guys ‘niggers.’ Now, you call each other that.”

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Darrell Millner, emeritus professor of Black Studies at Portland State University, doesn’t think such a movement is sustainable and considers its attempts in present day as “self-delusional.” “In my estimation,” he says, “that term carries such a load of historical animosity that I really doubt that that will ever be possible...There’s too much history attached to it.” Millner says the word hasn’t strayed far from its degrading nature of putting slaves in an almost subhuman role. “I think to understand the power of the N-word, you have to follow the history for about 200 years as it comes down to us from the period of legal slavery,” Millner says. “When you do that, what you see is that the N-word is a part of a hierarchy of racial terms, that in addition to whatever literal meaning it may have had, had a coded meaning that was understood both by the party who used it and the party who it was directed at.” Millner notes that because of its divisive nature, the N-word remains at the top of the hierarchy of racially charged terms that have

er bear good fruit?

survived throughout history. Simply put, there is no other word in the English language that parallels its weight and thus can never be divorced from its derogatory meaning. Over time, Millner asserts that in attempts to create distance from the hatred behind the N-word, each new generation of black people over the years has “self-selected” a more desirable term to be referred to. “For my grandparents, the term was ‘colored,’” says Millner. “My parent’s preferred to be ‘Negroes;’ I preferred to be identified as a black person; my children were African Americans. And this latest generation has decided that they want to try to reclaim the N-word.” Portland rapper Michael Caples, known by his stage name Mic Capes, recognizes the seemingly changing dynamic of the word. “I feel like it has been reclaimed, but I feel like it’s also like a generational thing,” he says. “You know, our parents and up...they come from a different time in America.” Many students recognize this generational gap when it comes to the word. Deaijainae Tolbert, who is African

American and used to consider the N-word a part of her everyday vocabulary, admits that “sometimes when (my parents) do catch me saying it, I do get a long lecture about it, so it’s not that they don’t like it. They just don’t feel like that word is respected no more.” Diallo Lewis, one of Grant’s vice principals and one of a few black staff members, affirms this. “When I was younger...the word was used within circles of friends,” he says. “But I think once you become educated about the history of the word and where it comes from, you begin to look at things differently.” For those attempting to reclaim the word, there’s an important distinction between “nigga” and “nigger,” Senior Calvin Scott recognizes the difference. “E-R is more of an insult where A is like my brother, my friend,” Scott says. “We go through the same struggle every day. We’re both black, we both get the same hate...it’s something we have in common that we can use together.” Brianna Henderson, a junior at Grant who is African American, has had a complex experience with the word. “I used to be ashamed to be black,” she says. “I thought it was a compliment when people told me: ‘You talk like a white girl. You act like a white girl.’ I let the white kids use the N-word around me because, ‘Hey, I’m cool and stuff’ and they think I’m cool.” But things changed in high school and she took offense at such talk. Henderson credits the shift to several factors, including her social studies teacher, Marta Repollet. She teaches “Living in the U.S.,” a history class that focuses on minority experiences throughout the narrative of the country. “I remember coming to her class. It was right after Mike Brown got killed on the street like a dog,” Henderson recalls. “That was one of the first things we talked about and she did address that…she enlightened me of all my heritage. And learning about minorities in that class it…was like a door. Like all this good stuff happened. We weren’t just slaves? That’s what we did?” From there, Henderson threw herself into learning about her cultural history and the struggles of other minorities. She has become a leading voice in class discussions, especially in her AP English class that has few students of color in it. “I make it my duty to always stand up for every minority,” she says. “I’m always the one to bring up race, like that’s my main question. And I feel like I get really killed about it because everyone’s always like: ‘Ah, here she goes again talking about race. Why do you always have to bring race into it, Brianna?’”

March 2016

And while she is firm in her beliefs that race is an important point of discussion and largely avoided by her peers and teachers, Henderson’s stance on the reclamation of the N-word is evolving. “I’m guilty of saying it, especially in rap songs,” she says. “Like I’ll just be like, ‘N-word, N-word,’ just throwing it around. But like, I don’t like addressing people by this.” But, she says, that’s changing. “I’ve become more pro-black and so I’m just trying to, I’m done with that word, even in music...I don’t want white people to look at me and be like, ‘Oh, she’s using the N-word,’” she says. “I don’t know how to argue against that when white people say, ‘Oh, well you said the N-word, why can’t I?’” A question that Henderson’s experience brings up is whether or not the fight to reclaim the N-word within the African-American community encourages its use among non-black students. “I think all kids…begin to think it’s very casual, a casual response to things, and I think that becomes very dangerous,” Lewis says. “When you’re the black kid and you’re using that word and you have a white friend and you’re using the word, all of a sudden your white friend turns and says it, you become angry and upset. It’s not a word that you should be throwing around lightly.” Aujai Webster, an African-American junior, acknowledges there’s a fine line when it comes to the N-word being used by different races. But she doesn’t think that it should be strictly limited to a certain community. “If you heard a white person singing ‘Niggas in Paris,’ would you be offended? And then not offended if you hear a black person saying it?” Webster asks. “If you are getting offended because one person is singing that same song, I don’t think that’s fair.” The N-word, in all its usages, is a difficult topic to maneuver around, a stance that many members of the Grant community can agree on; and for teachers who attempt to spark discussions on the topic of race, generating conversations has proven difficult. “I think teachers do try to facilitate those conversations, but the

other hand students often are either uncomfortable with it or I think more often than not, kind of dismissive,” says Lukas Sherman, a white English teacher at Grant. “If you’re a white student, to acknowledge that there’s systemic racism or white privilege like that, you know that makes you somewhat complicit in something larger and that means you’re probably responsible for doing something.” With this perceived evolving definition of the N-word, many see shifting power dynamics that reflect rising tensions. Russ Peterson is a white social studies teacher at Grant and last year taught African-American Literature. “I think it was a little weird for my students walking in to see a white guy teaching the class,” he says. “But you know, I don’t think it really matters. I teach women’s history; I’m not a woman. I bring up GLBTQ issues in my classroom; I’m straight.” Each year, he used to spend several weeks teaching the history behind the N-word and leading class discussions. For Peterson, the conversations were productive and he felt students benefited from the material and context provided. A question that often came up in class is, he says, “Is it possible to say that it is being reclaimed only for a certain group of people or does it have to be a universal thing?” His response, Peterson says, is the product of talking with students and exploring the history of the word. “If we’re going to talk about words having power, the ability to not only define a word but say who can and cannot use a word is how someone exercises power,” he says. “And so by the same token, African Americans, who as a group have been marginalized and not had power over language, to have this group say, ‘It is acceptable for we African Americans to use it and nobody else, and all white folks can’t use it,’ I’m totally at ease with...having African Americans be empowered in that way.” Still, the reality of a white teacher responsible for teaching black history left the class disconnected, especially when Peterson himself said the words before a Socratic seminar. Senior Clayton Harley acknowledged that his white teacher had crossed the line. “We were talking about the difference between nigger and nigga,” Harley remembers. “I was trying to explain my point basically, but Mr. Peterson was kinda cutting me off. ‘What’s the difference between nigger and nigga?’ and he kept saying that over and over and so I got frustrated

“If you’re a white student and to acknowledge that there’s systemic racism or white privilege like that, you know that makes you somewhat complicit in something larger and that means you’re probably responsible for doing something.” - Lukas Sherman, Grant English Teacher 26

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“You got white kids that feel like they’re a part of it. Them being in the culture, they feel like they can say it. And I’m conflicted at shows, you know, there’s white kids who know my words, and they rapping it.” - Michael Caples, Local Rapper

and I was like ‘OK, you’re being an asshole,’ and he sent me out of class.” After class, the two were able to have a conversation and found some common ground. But for Harley and others, white people using the word is still a complicated subject. For Mathias Thelus, a senior of Haitian descent, the lines are blurred. Earlier this year, his English class read August Wilson’s Fences, which uses the N-word 28 times. Prior to starting the play, there was no discussion on the topic of the N-word and how the class would address it. When the word came up, the atmosphere was charged. A fellow student who is not black played Troy Maxson, the main character who says the word throughout the play. Thelus recalls: “The word came up and he is my good friend and I was like, ‘You can say it, man. I don’t care. It is a part of the story.’” But the student chose not to and Thelus said the word for him every time it came up. Courtney Palmer, who is white, is in her first year of teaching African-American Literature. The numbers this year dropped significantly, limiting the class to just one period. Of the 26 students enrolled in the class, a small number are white. Palmer admits the demographics were more evenly split in the beginning of the year, but many of the white students chose to drop the class. As for how Palmer tackles the subject of the N-word, she doesn’t shy away from confronting it. In fact, early in the year, Palmer listed words offensive to the black community that the class would encounter throughout the year in certain texts. Among the words are nigger and nigga, which Palmer chose not to code with the moniker, the “N-word.” “It has a historical value,” she notes. This approach is controversial, but Palmer says it enables honest and open conversations about the nature of the word. “I have a lot of students who use it amongst themselves, and I’m not going to crack down on that,” she says. “That particular word doesn’t have a derogatory sense to it between students of color. I think there is a reclaiming of the N-word going on socially.” For many, the answer to understanding the connotations of the N-word lies with the education around it, and at Grant, that discourse is limited. Would students be attempting redefinition and using the word if there was recognition of its history in the classroom? “I don’t know,” Lewis admits. “I mean what does that mean, to reclaim the word? Whose word was it in the first place? So what are you claiming? Why would you want to claim it? “That becomes the question. And then you look at our society

and our culture and you look at even pop culture in music media; there are so many things out there and so many images out there where the word is being thrown around so casually.” Caples, who uses the word in some of his rap songs, recognizes the complexity of the situation. “Hip-hop, even though it’s black-rooted and it is black culture, it’s become more commercialized and then it’s included every race,” he says. “You got white kids that feel like they’re a part of it. Them being in the culture, they feel like they can say it. And I’m conflicted at shows, you know, there’s white kids who know my words, and they are rapping it.” For some people, songs that use the N-word offer a license to say it. Thelus says if others – black and white – are comfortable using the word in music, he’s fine with it. “If I am in my car and I’m playing some dirty language music, and there are some other people that aren’t black in the car, with my other black friends, and the N-word comes up...if you’re like comfortable saying the word and like you know the meaning of the word, then it’s OK to say it,” he says. Others are steadfast that non-black people need to refrain from saying the word, regardless of context. Senior Kinsley Daniels agrees with this sentiment. “Since it’s in so many songs and like Vines and YouTube, I feel like it’s easy to misinterpret it as something like you can...say,” she says. “So, I’ve definitely like stopped my friends multiple times from like saying it...I’ll just be like, ‘Yeah, you’re kinda not able to say that.’” So, can the N-word ever be truly reclaimed? The jury is still out on a case that may never reach a conclusion. Noah Evans-Kluthe, who is mixed race, says, “I have a feeling that this word...it will always have a double meaning, like the A and the E-R, it will always have those two sides to it, two sides to the same coin.” “You don’t have much chance of changing the voice of the direction of the next generation; they select their own path,” Millner says.

March 2016

IV.

Words in Disguise To understand the power and magnitude of it, you can’t ignore the history By Lael Tate, Bella Rideau and Eliza Kamerling-Brown

fter the Carolina Panthers dismantled the Arizona Cardinals in the NFL playoffs in January, a young black quarterback by the name of Cam Newton reached one of the top pinnacles of professional sports: a trip to the Super Bowl. As the Panthers’ signal caller, Newton led the team to a nearly unblemished record during the season. Known for his size, strength and quirky end-zone celebrations, Newton also created a stir this season and developed his share of critics. Some called him a showboat. Others complained that his antics after touchdowns were bringing the league down. When he suggested his critics were calling him out because he was a black quarterback, many responded by calling him a thug. Newton shot back via Instagram, quoting boxer Muhammad Ali: “I know where I’m going and I know the truth and I don’t have to be what you want me to be. I’m free to be what I want.” The implication in the use of the word “thug” was clear: It refers to malintent or criminal behavior. But Newton made it clear that he wasn’t going to let the media take shots with such coded language. Many words – among them “ratchet,” “ghetto” or “sketchy” – are widely used by mainstream media. And their use implicitly degrades people and communities of color. The language, in essence, becomes code for something negative. Nike Arnold, an associate professor of applied linguistics at Portland State University, says the notion of coded language is rooted in the power dynamics of race. “Humans have always used language to position themselves and position others,” Arnold says. “It can happen implicitly and very explicitly. In the case of these derogatory terms, that’s a very explicit positioning of somebody.” Like the N-word, these coded terms carry weight. Their connotations extend into perpetuating offensive stereotypes and adding to the superiority complex of white dominance in American culture. Still, discussion around coded language is a relatively new concept. The N-word’s use began dwindling from the political and public arenas in the 1960s. Since then, the word has mainly been used by people who express overtly racist beliefs or by young people who

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seek to reclaim it. But it’s becoming increasingly apparent that although the word is no longer socially acceptable in a formal sense, it is still communicated in other ways. “In the context of American racial history, there have always been many terms that have been used to identify a black person, a person of color,” says Darrell Millner, an emeritus professor of Black Studies at Portland State University. “Those terms have always coexisted. And each of the various terms had a particular connotation when used in that exchange between the user and the target.” These coded terms have acquired their negative implications through both systemic and de facto racism and harmful stereotypes. They have become common because they don’t solicit the same social backlash that the N-word does. Still, they are abundant in the media, in politics and among groups of friends. “What that let’s you do is talk about something without explicitly racializing it, though you have implicitly racialized it,” Portland State University Socio-linguist Keith Walters says. Sophomore Deaijainae Tolbert, who is African American, says her experience with the use of coded terms at Grant is frustrating and unfair. “I get called for being ghetto, but for some reason in order for me to express myself, I (have to) be loud,” she says. The term “ghetto” denotatively means an area of a city with a large concentration of ethnic or racial minorities. Ghettos often form because of social, economic or governmental restrictions and today are commonly used to describe something as cheap and substandard. More specifically, the word is used to target and degrade the black community. But Aujai Webster, a junior who is African American, notes: “Not just one race can be ghetto. Ghetto is a word, that is, anyone can be ghetto. It’s not just one race…It is an offensive word for some but then you hear some people calling themselves ghetto.” The use of this word can be traced back to the 16th century when European countries segregated the Jewish population to specific parts of their cities. By the end of the 19th century, Jewish

ghettos around Europe were thought to have disappeared, but that changed with the rise to power of Nazi Germany. In the United States, the word has morphed into both an intra and interracial put-down. Junior Brianna Henderson admits “even black people now think like, thug and ghetto are ways to...classify black people in... their class and stuff and like...‘Oh you act like or look like a thug. Because you act classless, you must live in the ghetto.’” “Thug” has also become a popular word that, unlike ghetto, hasn’t strayed far from its meaning. The etymology of the word traces back to India in the 19th century where the Hindi word “thag” was used to refer to criminals and swindlers. It eventually made its way to the United States as “thug.” It still retains the original meaning but the targets of the word are more often than not black men. “A black protester is far more likely to be called a thug than like a white protester,” says Grant English teacher Lukas Sherman, who is white. That’s “without people really understanding the implications of that word.” In 2013, Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman was fresh off a win that would take his team to the Super Bowl. The Stanford graduate drew plenty of media attention when he exclaimed over and over, “I’m the best corner in the game.” The sound bite was broadcasted over sports networks and primetime news shows for months. Critics didn’t shy away from calling him a thug. But Sherman shot back.

“The reason it bothers me is because it seems like it’s an accepted way of calling somebody the N-word now,” he said at a press conference. “It’s like everybody else said the N-word and then they say ‘thug’ and that’s fine. It kind of takes me aback and it’s kind of disappointing because they know.” Sherman continued. “What’s the definition of a thug? Really? What’s going on here?” His questions were met with laughter from the correspondents in the room, but it’s no laughing matter to black students like Brianna Henderson, a senior at Grant. “Thug shouldn’t be a term used to label minorities and you see that in the news a lot,” Henderson says. “Like, ‘He was a thug, a gang member...He lived in the ghetto and stuff.’” Walters, the socio-linguist, says these words are used to skirt around the issue of race. “When you take terms like ghetto, thug...those are clear, very, very negative terms to start with,” he says. “But they’re also being used in a sense as stand-ins so that someone may not have to say something that they don’t want.” That happens in the entertainment industry a lot. In 1999, rapper Anthony Mandigo introduced a new word that would soon enter the multitude of other coded terms when he released his single, “Do tha Ratchet.” In the song, the word ratchet finds its roots in his hometown of Shreveport, La., where he describes the hard working pride of the community. Five years later, he collaborated with Lil’ Boosie to revamp the song. The accompanying music video highlighted the signature Illustration by Sarah Hamilton

CONVENIENCE STORE ROBBERY

A GROUP OF THUGS* ROBBED A LOCAL CONVENIENCE STORE LAST NIGHT...

6:27 6:27

69° 62°

*Black people March 2016

dance style that came to be known as “The Ratchet.” This version of the song gained much more popularity and the phrase was thrown into the center stage of pop culture. But as it was introduced to a larger audience, the meaning began to change. Marked by the release of “Ratchet Girl Anthem” by Emmanuel and Phillip Hudson in 2012, it became a term to degrade African-American women by stereotyping them as wild and unrefined. And its use has carried over into television to further enforce stereotypes. Brianna Henderson says: “I was actually watching a show not that long ago like, Real Housewives of Potomac, I guess. And like these are black women and like that’s the only time, like shows about black women are always about drama.” Today among students, ratchet can be heard in almost any conversation with implications meant to degrade. Perhaps the most common and overlooked of the coded terms is the word “sketchy,” which means incomplete. But informally among young people and in pop culture, it’s taken on the meaning of threatening, dishonest and disreputable, and tends to describe areas or neighborhoods with greater minority populations. Walters points out that coded language doesn’t always come out in obvious ways. He asserts that terms like “urban,” “inner-city” and “at-risk” have become increasingly racialized and are commonly used in conversation to allow members of the dominant culture to speak without any repercussions. “For example,” recounts Walters, “Portland State advertises itself as an urban university, and it has every right to do that because it’s located smack dab in the middle of downtown Portland. But I have certainly been places and people have said to me, ‘Oh, Portland State’s an urban university – how many black students do you have?’...In that case, (urban) is a kind of euphemism.” The danger of coded language extends beyond school hallways and Twitter; it’s found a place in politics, as well. Dog-whistle politics is a concept that utilizes coded language to implicitly demean certain people without being outwardly discriminatory. Today’s politicians often choose their words wisely and, with the help of racially-coded terms, can send charged messages through their rhetoric. “The issue is if you understand the code, then you get the meaning,” Walters says. “But this means you don’t really have to say the potentially offensive thing, at least not initially.” In 2014, now Speaker of the House Paul Ryan went on the record during a morning talk show to say there was a “real culture problem” in the country’s “inner cities.” He went on to directly criticize men in these communities for not stepping up to the plate. Ryan’s pitch was meant to gain support for his upcoming

legislative proposals, among them work requirements for “inner city” men. “You can’t publicly say black people don’t like to work, but you can say there’s an inner-city culture in which generations of people don’t value work,” Ian Haney López, author of Dog Whistle Politics and law professor at University of California-Berkeley, said in The Root article following Ryan’s interview. Ryan’s word choice and message as a whole was offensive. Some understood the true meaning of his commentary while others didn’t recognize the problem, an element to the Dog-Whistle tactic. “All that a political candidate has to do is use the word thug, and many listeners will immediately picture someone who is African American,” Walters says. The reality of Dog-Whistle politics is that there’s a thin line between strategic, implicit messages and outwardly racist remarks. These implicit messages are especially abundant in the media, whose unique ability to shape the public agenda has enforced the use of coded language. Last April, CNN news anchor Erin Burnett referred to black protesters in Baltimore as “thugs.” City Councilman Carl Stokes, who is black, responded sharply saying facetiously, “Come on. Stop calling them thugs — just call them niggers.” Although the use of these words in the media is disputed, it continues to happen. And this carries over into the school setting. These words are not new to the lexicon of Grant students or staff, and teachers can be heard lightly saying many of these coded terms during class. This offhand use is especially problematic because people throw them around as if they don’t mean anything, refusing to acknowledge the role that race plays in a number of dynamics. Millner says: “There’s a scale between using the term that an individual prefers to use as self-identification, all the way down to the N-word. And every term that would be a part of that hierarchy would be a coded reference to how you felt about that person. So instead of calling that person in the early 20th century a colored person, if I called them a darkie that was an indication that I had no respect for them. But not to the degree of calling them the N-word.” The concept of coded language doesn’t extend as far back as the N-word, but it has certainly found a place today in American culture. And it speaks to a bigger issue. Until race is acknowledged as a prominent intersection in the public arena, the undertones of the N-word will continue to penetrate all facets of our culture. Nike Arnold says that it’s part of a cycle. “These conscious efforts to find a new term that is not as loaded,” she says. “Over time, these terms have gained the same negative connotations and then we’ve looked for other ones. This is an endless process.”

“All that a political candidate has to do is use the word thug, and many listeners will immediately picture someone who is African American.” - Keith Walters, Portland State University Professor

Grant Magazine

Afterthoughts

A Choice of Words, A Matter of Conscience To understand the meaning of the word “nigger,” I had to face my family, my friends and myself. By Blu Midyett

remember when I first said the word nigger. It wasn’t out of hate. It wasn’t a joke. It came out of curiosity. At the time, I was seven and living in a small apartment in Lawrence, Kansas, with my mother. As a child, I was goofy and loved to joke with my mom, often calling her silly names and laughing along with her. “Nigger,” I said to her, giggling along as I continued to laugh about whatever else I was saying. I watched as my mother’s alwaysoptimistic face turned to a cold, stern gaze. “Do you know what that word means?” she asked, incredulously. I had no idea. I had heard it in movies and on television, but had no idea of the weight that it held. My mom gathered herself, spoke softly and made her point. “You can’t say that,” she said. She explained where the word came from, how white men had taken Western

Africans from their homes and made them their slaves, using this word like the sting of a whip. The word was how white plantation owners and their employees degraded the people they owned, using the word to put an entire race beneath them. My mother – even today – believes the word has no place in our society. I was devastated at the time. It shocked me that one word could carry so much weight. This, coming from my white mother, has stuck with me. I’ve held onto what she said back then. But my surroundings and experiences have changed along the way. Today, I hear the word in music and coming out of the mouths of my friends, white and black. Whether it’s used as a term of friendship, as an added emphasis to a joke or as a hateful comment, I continue to struggle on where to draw the line between casual use and ignorance. Living as a racially mixed child, I’ve had some confusion about my identity. I’ve been surrounded by white faces my whole life. I have pale skin,

Photo by Molly Metz

March 2016

but my hair is kinky. I’ve grown up wanting to understand and embrace a bigger piece of black culture in my life than I have had. When someone black recognizes that I’m mixed, I feel a sense of pride that I haven’t found anywhere else. It helps me to know that my black side has meaning and is still there, that it hasn’t been drowned out. Unfortunately, there’s another form I’ve found that goes with that confirmation. It would come out when I found myself in the pit of jokes from my white friends. In the past, I wasn’t particularly hurt by them and never equated them to being hateful, racist slurs. But the demeaning and isolating qualities of the jokes eventually made me question their credibility as humor. It was sixth grade when my friends began making references to African-American stereotypes and laughing about them. I laughed with them for a while. They told me I should be good at basketball because my dad was black. Once, we played a game called “Run from the Black Man,” where I chased my friends around the woods. I played into these gags without knowing or understanding that I was perpetuating stereotypes with my friends. By participating and not questioning things, I was aiding in the creation of racial insensitivity. This behavior was not new and it didn’t come out of nowhere. Through the media, music and the entertainment industry that we all watched together, I have no confusion as to where these ideas came from. And without a reasonable voice opposing my friends, “nigger” quickly came into frequent use. First, it was singing along to a song, a greeting from time to time or hearing it in a joke. Throughout middle school, my non-black friends began to question why I rarely ever said the word along with them. The few times that I did say it, it never felt right. By the time high school rolled around, the word was commonplace. Many of the black students I met at Grant don’t mind the casual use of the word; some even use it openly with white friends. The concept of it as a negative expression continued to confuse me. I wasn’t sure how to treat it and grew increasingly OK with its use. That didn’t last. As I watched and read about the injustices done to black people in our country over time, I had to take a step back. I began to realize the negative legacy that the word still holds. And so I was shocked, but not completely surprised, when some long-time friends of mine began making racist jokes over a group text. I called a particular friend out and he told me that he “doesn’t hate niggers.” My other friends responded with laughs at first, but I was furious. I told him I wouldn’t speak with him if he continued to act like that, so I cut him off for weeks. At this particular point, I had to decide if I was ready to fully take on my newfound beliefs. Could I do more than simply say “shut up” or give a blank stare? I haven’t entirely overcome the fear of confrontation when someone uses the word. It’s still nerve-racking to hear it in the hall or out of the mouths of white peers. Through writing, though, I’ve been able to reflect on what this word means to me and fully express my conflict with it. I’ve taken proactive steps to leave the cowardice of remaining silent behind. My hope is that my friends, my school and my community will join me in speaking out.

To hear a podcast on the issue, go to grantmagazine.com/thewordpodcast

Grant Magazine

Finding the Right Resources By Bella Rideau and Blu Midyett

It’s important to recognize that discussions around race and the N-word need to continue beyond this issue of the magazine. Our intent is not to dictate answers but to spark discussions between students, staff and the community at large. To get a handle on such an explosive subject is going to take everyone making an effort to listen and understand. To that end, we’ve compiled a list of readings that will help make those conversations more successful. Among them are books and articles that focus directly on the N-word and aim to help people start a dialogue on race relations. As a staff, we hope you’ll take advantage of this and find some answers for yourself. Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word by Randall Kennedy Randall Kennedy, an author and law professor at Harvard University, details the history of the N-word, identifying key points that make the word what it is today. From court cases to popular culture to power dynamics, Kennedy explores the nuances of a word that’s become one of the most complex in our lexicon. “Mommy, What Does ‘Nigger’ Mean?” by Gloria Naylor Renowned author Gloria Naylor tells the story of the first time she heard the word, recognizing its bizarre sound and painful implications. She outlines an argument for reclaiming the word in the black community to mean “varied and complex human beings.” The N Word by Jabari Asim Jabari Asim walks the reader through the birth of the N-word and the impact it’s dealt on American culture. Following its use from the mouths of former presidents to the music of modern day rap, Asim makes clear his opposition to the casual use of the N-word. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates In an open letter to his 15-year-old son, Ta-Nehisi Coates holds nothing back in describing the racial injustice that black people face in America. He makes it clear to his son that the system is not meant to benefit him as a young black man. In this, Coates makes it clear that he speaks to the black youth of this country. But anyone willing to listen will greatly benefit from this read. “The N-word” by The Washington Post Using filmed conversations and interactive media, The Washington Post creates a powerful platform for discussion. The Post tackles the confusion around the word by sharing anecdotes and opinions from people of all different ethnicities and backgrounds through video and in a printed story. Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine Published shortly after the demonstrations that ignited over the police shooting of Michael Brown and the police strangulation of Eric Garner, Claudia Rankine’s Citizen takes a poetic approach to deconstructing issues of race in present day America. Through a mixture of hard-hitting poems and creative essays, Rankine challenges readers to look in the mirror and confront the ways in which racism infiltrates daily thought.