I’ve never uttered the n-word outside of a discussion with friends about the use and misuse of the word with one exception which I regret. One of the jobs I had in graduate school was at a youth drop-in center in Lansing, Michigan where many of the Black kids used the word as a term of affection with each other. I talked about how neither myself nor the two other White staff would ever consider uttering that word and how weird it felt hearing it used all the time.
When I was moving driving from Massachusetts to Oregon I stopped and stayed with friends who lived along my route for a few days. I hadn’t seen them in a couple of decades. The wife had been a close friend and work colleague when we lived in Michigan. They also had another guest. She was a Black woman who for many years was the administrative assistant to one of the most well known Black vocalists of all time. The two of them not only traveled the country but all over the world together. We seemed to hit it off so when she was describing the racism she and her famous boss encountered I felt free to openly tell her about my very limited encounter with racists.
When my late wife and I rented a farmhouse in the Michigan countryside we had the downstairs apartment and at first a lovely couple rented the upstairs apartment and we became good friends with them. When they found a small house to rent just down the road they moved and another couple moved in. I told her about the new couple named their black lab with the n-word, only I actually used the word. I told her about how when the dog ran into the fields around the house they would call it by shouting the n-word and how upsetting my wife and I found their standing outside our door shouting “hey (n-word), hey (n-word)”.
They were nightmare neighbors in other ways too. They took over the yard and garage with their junked cars and made noise until the wee hours of the night but our complaints to the landlord were to no avail.
Eventually the landlord kicked them out after our neighbor who was influential in the community called him and complained that they were outside firing a shotgun in the direction of his house.
It didn’t hit me that I had been trusting that the woman I was talking with would have assumed that since I was friends with her friends therefore I wouldn’t be a racist. The conversation was, after all, about racism and I was sharing an experience where I was appalled by having to live in the same house with racists.
I realize now I was making assumptions about how this woman who I had only recently met would perceive me and I regret saying the n-word. I know I can’t simply assume people who I have barely gotten too know will assume I’m not a racist.
Unfortunately, before I left one of my hosts got so angry at me for reasons which gobsmacked me because we had been getting along wonderfully prior to this. Her reason was totally unrelated to any interaction with her friend. She cut off all relationship with me. The reason in part had to do with one of my dogs throwing up on an expensive quilt. She expressed this in way that I felt was a cruel and lacking in empathy for me, still intensely grieving over the death of my wife, in her email sent after I left telling me how ungrateful I was for their hospitality in having me stay in their house. Therefore I didn’t think I could ask her for a way to contact the woman I met at her house and thus I had no way to apologize to the woman about using the n-word that wouldn't have involved asking my angry host for a favor. I didn’t want to ask her for her friend’s email and I didn’t feel comfortable sending a message for her to forward to her friend.
I know that after seven years I still could reach out to my estranged friend, and some of you will probably think I should, but because of the way she ended our relationship I’m not doing this. The woman I used the n-word with has most likely long forgotten the conversation and I am the only one troubled by it.
Addendum:
There’s more to this story. It was something I was savvy and sensitive enough not to bring up. My father was an custom upholsterer in Westchester county and had a number of rich and famous customers. He was actually fired by this woman’s boss when he was hired to design and make furniture for her office. She accused him of taking advantage of her by charging too much even though if anything he was undercharging considering the time and effort that went into his craftsmanship as my mother always accused him of doing. The famous singer implied my father was a racist and I recall how offended he was by this because he didn’t have a racist bone in his body.
Related:
There is a school of thought which is expressed in the article It’s Time to Completely Ban the N-Word in Schools that the word should be eliminated from our lexicon. In 2019 a professor was suspended for using the word in a classroom lecture about James Baldwin. There has been much discussion about the teaching of Mark Twain and whether to censor Huckleberry Finn where the n-word is used over 200 times and change it to the word slave. The word is the actual title of Dick Gregory’s autobiography.
