The N-word Must Be Odious for Everyone

In the summer of 1987, two events, one in a California courtroom and one in the social sciences, called attention to the effects of cultural racism on the psychological well-being of Black Americans.

At the Glendale municipal court, a White court commissioner’s career was shaken by the injudicious use of the N-word, a long-standing racial epithet directed against Africans and African Americans.  While it is appropriate to censure the use of the N-word, particularly by those who operate within the public trust; it is even more important to examine the frequency of its use within the broader social culture.

Name-calling is a tactic for maintaining intergroup schisms.  It simultaneously simplifies the world, elevates one’s own group and dehumanizes others.  The N-word was invented to stereotype its targets and to justify slavery and racial discrimination.  It was intended to connote lazy, shiftless, ignorant, animalistic, trifling and other negative attributes.

Most would agree that the N-word is an ugly and offensive racial slur.  Nevertheless, it is part of the American vernacular.  Most significant is its use among Blacks.  As African Americans, we cannot tolerate racial epithets from Whites or others, but even more intolerable should be the use of the same epithet by ourselves.  Sadly, the N-word remains one of the most frequently used words in the Black community.

Some claim that the use of the N-word among Blacks is due to its “endearing” qualities.  But terms of endearment should not carry such negative cultural baggage.  The truth is that this word is most often used to disparage its targets, regardless of the ethnicity of the speaker.  The persistent viability of the N-word in the Black community is a scar from centuries of cultural racism.

The second significant event in this context occurred at the 1987 meeting of the American Psychological Association in New York, during which papers by Darlene Powell-Hopson and Sharon McNichol revealed that samples of Black children in the United States and Trinidad generally preferred White dolls over Black dolls (see Powell-Hobson, 1985).  These findings replicated the influential research by Kenneth Clark and Mamie Clark more than 40 years earlier (Goleman, 1987).

Clark and Clark’s classic study (1950) was instrumental in the 1954 Supreme Court decision calling for the desegregation of American schools.  They concluded from their studies of doll preferences that segregation produced harmful psychological effects in Black children. It is disturbing to witness these effects endure 40 years after the original finding.

Although social-science evidence on doll preferences has shifted over the years – Blacks were more likely to select the Black doll during the “Black-is-beautiful” late 1960s – findings from recent studies are not surprising (see Cross, 1991).  Other cultural indicators in the Black community suggest an increased adoption of non-Black cultural values (Fairchild, 1988).

Important Black role models are “de-Africanizing” their personal appearances through cosmetic surgery, colored contact lenses and modifications in their hair style, texture and color.  Among Black men and women, we see far more imitations of European or White American styles than traditional African or African American ones.

This rejection of Africanness is not surprising, given the poor quality of African American images in mass media.  Blacks are severely underrepresented in mass media; and are too frequently portrayed in derogatory or stereotypical ways.  Blacks’ self-rejection, therefore, mirrors their rejection by the broader society.

It is in this way that these two events—the frequent use of the N-word and Black children’s preferences for White dolls over Black ones—are connected.  They are reminders of the psychological damage caused by racist cultural practices.  The costs associated with this damage are considerable, and may be reflected in drug abuse, suicide, homicide or Black-on-Black crime and violence.

Reversing centuries of racism is a centuries long process. A need exists to re-awaken Black pride and Black consciousness in the Black population.  Positive African images must be propagated in media so that Black children will once again select dolls that look like themselves.

The use of the N-word must be made at least as odious as bad breath or body odor.  Everyone should refrain from its use and impose sanctions on its use by others.  This banning of the N-word, and all other epithets like it, would directly address personal and cultural racism.

Our consciousness will be raised by placing this almost unconscious cultural practice at the front of our attention.

In the 2017 re-publishing of this essay in in the text, Black Lives Matter: Lifespan Perspectives (Fairchild, 2017), I added two discussion questions: 

1. What is your experience with the N-word? (Please refrain from using the word in the discussion.)  How often do you hear it?  In what contexts?  How does it make you feel?
2. Is it feasible to ban the use of the N-word? Why or why not?

2025 Update

            In writing the first iteration of this article, in 1987, it was my hope that it would contribute to a voluntary banning of the N-word   

            I was wrong.  Or, at least, those changes haven’t happened yet.  In fact, the N-word seems more popular today than ever before.  I’m thinking of two very popular media productions, Tyler Perry’s Black Beauty and Kevin Hart’s Fight Night, where the N-word (and B-word and MF-words) predominated.  Those streaming series offered excellent production values, directing and acting; but they also offered a plethora of the most odious words in the human language.  And the usages of those words were anything but endearing.

            Many years ago, I lamented the fact that Black people were not free, Lincoln’s Emancipation Procrastination notwithstanding.  We are not free because we remain “conceptually incarcerated” to White racism, and the manifestation of that internalized racism is the embrace of the N-word and the rejection of our natural African beingness. 

            When will African people – stolen and enslaved in the Americas, or suffering neo-colonialism  – be free?  When we stop calling ourselves the N-word and other terms that deny our humanity.

Author Notes:  This article is adapted from Chapter 39 in Black Lives Matter: Lifespan Perspectives, edited by H. Fairchild and published by Indo American Books in New Delhi in 2017 (“The N Word Should be Odious to Anyone”).  That chapter was revised from an article published in the Los Angeles Times (September 16, 1987, Part V, entitled, “N Word Should be Odious From Anyone”).

References

Clark, K. B., & Clark, M. P. (1950). Emotional factors in racial identification and preference in Negro children. Journal of Negro Education, 19(3), 341-350. Doi:10.2307/2966491

Cross, W. J. (1991). Shades of Black: Diversity in African-American identity. Philadelphia, PA, US: Temple University Press.

Fairchild, H.H. (1988).  Glorification of things white. The Journal of Black Psychology, 14(2), 73-74.

Fairchild, H.H. (2017).  The N-Word should be odious to anyone.  Chapter 39 (pp.  ) in H. H. Fairchild (Ed.), Black Lives Matter: Lifespan Perspectives.  New Delhi: IndoAmerican Books. 

Goleman, D. (1987, August 31).  Feeling of inferiority reportedly common in Black children.  The New York Times, August 31, 1987.

Powell-Hopson, D. (1985). The effects of modeling, reinforcement, and color meaning word associations on doll color preferences of Black preschool children and White preschool children.  Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Hofstra University.

Halford Fairchild, Ph.D. ABPsi Past President (1986-87)