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1/Several years ago a big conflict opened up in a class I was teaching about the “N-word,” read aloud in class in passages excerpted from writers like Du Bois and Douglass, where the word itself illustrated the relationship between racist language and material violence. https://twitter.com/mattbruenig/status/1358756744403570688
I let the students debate it: Many objected to the word being uttered. One line of argument was no one who is not Black should ever utter the word. Another line was no one should utter it. A third insisted that the context in which the word was being used and discussed mattered.
There was no unanimity in the class about what to do. It was a multi-racial group and Black students were as divided on the question as everyone else. But a key claim that began to trump all others was that hearing the word said out loud was harmful.
As we progressed, it turned out that several students who experienced the word as harmful, had not been following along with the class, thus experiencing the uttered word, out of context as a shock, like a slap in the face. The point, in other words, is not that words don’t harm.
Spent a whole class on this - useful as a democratic exercise about language and violence - reading/listening for context as a key critical skill/practice. But I felt depressed no amount of critical armor would overcome their vague sense of a world filled with free-floating harm.
I made a choice then to no longer allow this word to be read aloud. This was partly self-protective and partly about time management. We still read the passages, sometimes silently, sometimes with trigger warnings (that of course paradoxically accentuate offending words).
Not a great story, and right now, not an easy problem to solve. Context, intent, usage have to matter or faithful communication is just not possible. And the way people weaponize these offending situations to trigger/take down/aggrandize themselves should be strictly scrutinzed.
There are two great moments that I remember. One was where one of the students looked out at the class and then pointed at me and said — “do really think Professor Singh wants to harm us? We know him.” That stays with me as one of the best compliments I ever got from a student.
The other was when my brilliant grad assistant held forth. She’d arrived in NY from Haiti after the earthquake. Each time she got on the subway and it rumbled, she told them, she panicked, until she rememberd where she was. In a subtle and gentle way she told them “grow up.”
I came away with respect for my students. Without agreement or unanimity, there was provisional resolution, respecting a balance of the sense of injury, open thought and disagreement. The process was important and took time. My concern is it wouldn’t go down like that today.
