Why Black People Still Use the N-word
By: Carl L Lane
Tags: Slavery, Life, Social Justice, Race Relations, America

Why Black People Still Use the N-word

And other answers to big questions about race

Image by @Alieza-Rizvie via Unsplash

The N-word:

We often hear the defenders of the history of American slavery point out the fact that many nations through the ages have had slavery. This is absolutely true, but perhaps the primary factor that distinguishes the enslavement of Africans by Europeans and their western colonies, is that generation after generation of black families were enslaved from birth until death. For hundreds of years black people were born, lived their entire lives and died, having never known a single day of freedom.

Where this applies to the use of the N-word is that for generation after generation black people were called by the N-word from birth until death, knowing that to even have dared ask a slave owner to please not call them by that word would have likely been punished with severe beatings or even death.

After a while, in the minds of these enslaved black people, the word becomes synonymous with who and what they were. If you were a kid born and raised in slavery, you would have literally never known a day in your life where someone didn’t refer to you by that word.

Even after slavery ended blacks were routinely called the N-word by whites, and violent consequences for objections to the label were still in place.

Through the subsequent years, blacks held onto the use of the racial slur partially because it represented something of their past, and partially because objections to its use had always been met with violence. Today, to many blacks it is symbolic of the authentic black American experience, an acknowledgement that they haven’t forgotten where they came from.

Some believe that to completely reject the word is to reject some essential part of what it means to be African American. And so they hold onto this racial slur, thinking it’s become a part of them.

What do African Americans mean when they say, “Black Power?”

Throughout the history of America, black people have been oppressed and belittled, rendered powerless. Having to raise children without the freedom to dream, to have to tell your children, “No, you can’t grow up to be a doctor or an accomplished business executive, or an architect, but if you work hard, you can be the guy who opens the door for him, or mows his lawn,” is deadly to the spirit of both child and parent.

So when we use the phrase, Black Power, there is something of a communal pep talk going on. We say to each other that no, you’re not a lesser human being than whites are, you’re not less intelligent or less worthy; you are strong, powerful, capable of dreaming the biggest dreams and making them your reality.

There is no hatred spread in an exclamation of Black Power, no violence threatened, just a reminder to each of us, that we are worthy.

Why do African Americans sometimes call each other “Brother” or “Sister?”

The experience of the African American’s struggle has been multi generational, violent and obviously racist. Such times have broken the spirits of many. When I, as a black person, call another black person “brother” or “sister,” it’s a way of telling them that they’re not alone, that they are not the only ones having to make it through life dealing with this particular set of hardships.

I’m with you. I am also the descendent of the lynched and the raped, the beaten and the maimed and the murdered. I know what you’re going through, I’m going through it too.

Image by Noah Buscher via Unsplash

Why do black people still talk about slavery after all these years?

This is always the way this particular question is asked, but I think a more relevant question is: “Why isn’t everyone still talking about slavery?”

People still talk about the unfair taxation levied on colonists by the English, everyone still talks about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor during WWII, everyone still talks about the Jewish people who were murdered by the Third Reich, but somehow a discussion of slavery is seen as dwelling on the past, focusing on the negative, even race baiting.

Perhaps the reason people don’t have more empathy for what it means to be black in America, is that we haven’t prioritized teaching American children what it meant to be a slave.

To most, being a slave was having to work for free and sometimes being beaten. If people talked about slavery in America, if children were taught about slavery like they are taught about other major events in American history, maybe we’d see each other through different eyes.

If people knew about all the black women who were routinely raped by slave owners and other white men, or given to a friend or a relative for the night, as a gift, if people knew that black men could be beaten for looking a white person in the eyes when talking to them, if people knew that black women who were new mothers were often forced to give their breast milk to a white baby of the slave owners and give their own child sugared water to keep them quiet, maybe we would understand more.

If we knew that just as the slave woman was routinely raped by her enslavers, her husband would be ordered to claim any child that these rapes produced as his own. All of America should just close its collective eyes and imagine what it would feel like to be a parent, to feel the weight and responsibility of parenthood, just like any other parent, and then to be powerless when the slave owner ripped those children from your arms and sold them off like farm animals.

Perhaps if we knew there was an entirely separate market for slave women who were bought and sold for the sole purpose of rape, and that big strong black men were often ordered to father children with women other than their wives because the slave owners thought the resulting children would be better workers, shame, anger and disgust could give birth to remorse and kinder hearts.

If everyone knew that a young girl, a pre or barely pubescent daughter could be taken from her helpless parents in the middle of the night and raped, and that father and that mother would each have to clean up her injuries, wipe away her endless tears, then get up in the morning and look those same men in the eyes who had just raped their daughter mere hours before, and work all day long to enrich those same men, hoping they didn’t return for the daughter or the wife or another daughter, maybe then some of the people who think we complain too much or that we won’t let go of the past, would think more kindly of us. Maybe then they’d think we’ve been through enough, too much to still have to beg for our lives during a simple traffic stop.