Nothing in the language has the power to inflame and offend like the N-word.
Steeped as it is in history and horror, it hits many of us like a body blow. Our popular culture has increasingly embraced the word, but no amount of repetition in slang, song or film can make me feel comfortable saying it, and I’m not going to type it here. Of course, I don’t have to — you know what it is.
My colleague Sam Fulwood argues that this aversion is what gives the word its power. Routine and casual use would defang its capacity to injure, he says. I think his argument has merit, but I can’t fully embrace it.
The word has been used in The Plain Dealer — not routinely but probably more times than you would guess — but never without a full vetting and a discussion about why we’re using it and whether it’s necessary.
One of those discussions occurred last week.
Metro columnist Phillip Morris, who is not shy about using personal vignettes to confront thorny issues, had written a piece about the racial tension that permeates Greater Cleveland, illustrating his point with something that had happened when he was in a city tavern recently.
The bartender, a man Morris likes, had joined some banter about favorite quotes from the movie “Pulp Fiction” and delivered a quote that contained the N-word. The bartender is white. Morris and most of the other patrons are black, and he wrote of the visceral negative reaction he experienced upon hearing the word in that setting, from that person, even though it was clear to all that no offense had been intended.
In thinking about it later, Morris said that he was struck by the odd mix of emotions that the same words in different settings had produced.
“Here was a line spoken in a movie by a black man, that had been written for the movie by a white man, and when it came out of the black man’s mouth in the movie, I applauded it,” he said. “But when it was recited in the bar out of a white man’s mouth, I questioned whether I should take offense. I thought it showed a needless double standard — even hypocrisy — for me to decide who is permitted to utter that expression and who is not.”
That was the central theme of the wise and insightful column Morris wrote for the Tuesday paper. Naturally, he used the quote, N-word and all.
And naturally, that led to a wider discussion as the column went through the editing process.
The debate was passionate, and opinions varied.
Morris wanted to keep the word in his column. “I don’t think we should do so much self-censorship,” he said. “I’m not saying that I find gratuitous use acceptable, but if I’m going to use that line as the crux of the point I’m trying to make, I’ve got to use the word.”
Metro Editor Chris Quinn, who edits Morris’ column, also wanted to leave the word in: “They’re in the bar, the word is used, it shocks them, so Phillip wanted to use the word to achieve the same effect,” he said. “By taking the word out, you lose the shock value.” Deputy Managing Editor Elizabeth McIntyre and several other Metro assistant editors, both black and white, agreed.
However, Daryl Kannberg, the deputy managing editor whose duties include overseeing the copy editors, disagreed. “I got the point, without having to see the word,” he said. “I didn’t think it was worth offending the readers I knew we would offend by using it.”
Profanity and racial epithets do not get published without approval from the top, which at The Plain Dealer means Editor Susan Goldberg and Managing Editor Debra Adams Simmons. Neither liked the idea of using the word.
“For many readers, it’s never OK to use that word, given its history,” said Simmons. “Particularly for people who are older, it takes them back to a place they don’t want to think about.”
Simmons said that she doesn’t believe in a blanket prohibition but that the bar for using it should be high.
“I think it’s important for the paper to look for opportunities to not offend people if it’s not a key part of a news story,” she said. “In this case, it would be hard to argue that [using the word] was necessary.”
Goldberg says there must be an overwhelming news reason to use the word. Otherwise, we should find a different way of getting our message across.
“Every time we use it, we do so knowing that we are deeply upsetting and offending a large number of our readers,” she said. “So if we can avoid doing it, we should.”
This was a classic newsroom debate: On one side, aggressive reporters and editors wanting to push the envelope. On the other, senior editors who must consider the readership as a whole and are responsible for all the likely ramifications. Having been in both those positions over a long career, I could relate to both arguments.
So we wound up running the full quote in Morris’ column, but substituted “n – - – - – s” for the real word.
I know some people chuckled over the hyphens. How is that different from using the real word? Is there anyone who didn’t know what word we meant?
Of course not.
The hyphens were there as a gesture of respect, an acknowledgment that we know many of our readers, black and white, just don’t want to see that word in their newspaper.
I don’t think doing it that way robbed the column of its power, but it did diminish its capacity to offend.
