Ironically, as a black man, I cannot say it and remain in the public forum. For years, white colleagues in academia and entertainment have pondered: why can you say it and I cannot? Before the great black migration to the North, the word was commonplace among Southern white Democrats. As a child, it was so embraced by my friends that it became a term of “endearment,” to the dismay of our parents and the adults around us. A rap song minus the word is considered selling out or inauthentic. When I hit my twenties, I questioned its use and why I was so accepting of it. The Republican party figured out strategies by the late 60s to disguise it with words and phrases like welfare queens and militants. Former President George H.W. Bush built an entire presidential campaign around the face of white fears—a photo of a darkly lit bearded black man named Willie Horton.
In 1971, former President Richard Nixon and then governor of California Ronald Reagan were making jokes about African leaders. “Last night, I tell you, to watch that thing on television, as I did, to see those, those monkeys from those African countries — damn them — they’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes!”Reagan said in a call to Nixon about the U.N. Tanzanian delegation. As recently as November of 2018, former Iowa Congressman, Republican Steve King, asserted that only the contributions of whites advanced the world:
“If we presume that every culture is equal and has an equal amount to contribute to our civilization, then we're devaluing the contributions of the people that laid the foundation for America, and that's our founding fathers,”King said in Fort Dodge. “It is not about race; it's never been about race. It is about culture.”
Of course, King’s words were dripping with racism and white nationalism. King had defended white nationalism as something good, saying, “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?”King said in an interview. King had long held these beliefs but was elected by the good citizens of Iowa’s 5th district for ten years and then the 4th district from 2013 to 2021. King’s problem was not being out of step with the party but saying it out loud. King had bemoaned why he went to school to ostensibly learn that white people were superior if he could not espouse his beliefs out loud, “Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization?”he said, adding, to his previous support of white nationalism.
Last year, Republicans trotted out the words Critical Race Theory(CRT) as another form of disguising the word they yearn to say. As with most racist tropes, once people learned more about CRT and what it means in academia, the exposure forced another search for a cultural definition between black and white. In this election cycle, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is the target. The Republicans may be running too hot on DEI because they are running out of time before the next election and are in overdrive. The effort to blame women and diversity in hiring for the bridge accident in Baltimore is a case in point.
Once the effort failed to blame immigration or terrorism, they moved to a tried and true strategy: the blacks did it. I have lived through words and expressions like agitators or only because of affirmative action, animals, and thugs as code for the word. The Mayor of Baltimore, Brandon Scott, may have said it succinctly, “We know what these folks really want to say when they say DEI mayor,”he told The Banner. “Whether it is DEI or clown. They really want to say the N-word. But there is nothing they can do and say to me that is worse than the treatment of my ancestors. I am proud of who I am and where I come from.”
To my white friends and colleagues who ask why can’t I say the word? I say you can to them, but why do you want to?
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