The 'n.....' word...

I think 'liberal' white people feel more comfortable saying the 'n.....' word than the word 'Black' or even 'white' - especially when they can couch the taste and feel of that word coming off their tongues as regurgitated from something a Black person said or sang.

My heart was ripped open today when the white lesbian womon who befriended me on a lesbian list serve, invited me to stay at her home, and even set up a reading for me in her conservative republican mostly white town began a conversation about a billboard and used that word.

I immediately interrupted her with my hurt and horror, sitting in her pleasant homey kitchen on an equally pleasant warm Indiana spring day, shocked that she could so easily push those heinous, abhorrent, detestable sounds out of her mouth.

I told her so. She did not accept what I had to say but argued with me.

My white host felt that the fact it was on a billboard, that she was just saying what was written for all to see, and that she was repeating the story that a womon told her, a Black womon, it was okay for her to use that word.

Then she claimed that because Black people use the word - she's heard the music, she's witnessed guys and girls calling each other that, she has friends who easily say the word - that if 'they' can use it, why can't she?

Yes, why can't she? 

She asked me if I felt the same horror earlier that day when we were at a gathering of mostly white folks where a Black womon shared a story of being in Kindergarten and two white girls not allowing her to play on the swings, calling her the 'n' word.

I told her I felt a deeper horror: the fact that this womon had to experience that hatred and violence at only 5 years old; and deeper horror that two little white girls, also 5 years old, already knew that word and how to use it and against whom.

She insists, asking me again, but didn't I feel anger towards the womon telling the story for her use of that word. I repeat, no, and reiterate my horror at the white girls and the violence itself.
I talk with her about her desire to be an ally, let alone an accomplice, of Black people. She claims she is and yet when I ask her how does she think she can disconnect her whiteness, her racism, her white power from the history of that word?

I suggest she can instead say "the 'n' word" to communicate she recognizes the horrific history - past and present - of that word and all it implies. She insists it is the same thing, saying 'the 'n' word, and/or saying the entire word itself.

Really? I tell her when she as a white womon saying "the 'n' word" she is sending the message to Black people she has an understanding of racism, and to white people that whites should not use that word.

It's very hard to reason with white people who feel they are 'entitled' to repeat what Black people say.

I end up telling her that I can only ask that she take into consideration the years I've spent studying racism and, whether she believes me or not, I beg her to not ever use that word again. I also suggest to speak with other white people and find out what they think.

She falls back into a white response typical of too many white people. She wants to ask her Black friends if it's okay for her to use the word.

"But why would you want to put your friends in that position? Don't you think it's time white womyn take responsibility for figuring out what racism is and for protecting Black womyn from their own racism?"

She insists it would not hurt her Black friends for her to use that word. I groan and think how best to address this. The only thing I can say is that I hope she asks white allies first and to really listen to what white people have to say.