I didn’t really listen to what they were saying exactly, but my ears perked up when I heard one of the boys calling the other the N-word. To my knowledge, the context in which the often-offending word was said was not a negative one, but rather in reference to his friend. All the same however, I couldn’t help but take note of it and the black man standing by the education-prep books couldn’t help but glance either.

His cursory glance obviously made me think. Was he irritated by the boy’s obvious disregard for using such a contentious word, especially for someone who isn’t black, or did he merely peer at the relatively loud outburst amidst the quiet readers?

Despite my strong distaste for most politically correct terminology, I can’t help but find something wrong with the N-word. Maybe it’s because I’m a sensitive minority or I’ve been unconsciously brainwashed by society to feel that this word is an especially ugly one and should never be uttered by society (even though I have never been one to object to a substantial sprinkling of the word “fuck” in my daily vocabulary).

When I bring it up to my black friends, they generally respond with indifference when a black person chooses to include the term, but if a suburban, fourteen-year-old white kid utters it, then it’s clearly a problem. Or is it only a problem when a so-called dumb white kid samples it for their liking, but it’s tolerable if New York City “urban” Hispanic kids consider it worthy of their sentences? Frankly, I wouldn’t blame black people for being annoyed. I liken the N-word to the Fubu of the English language; you know, “For us by us.”  In a sense, I get it. Black people drummed up a unique word solely for their culture, and they certainly don’t want anyone stripping it from them.

In another sense, I’m just confused. How could a word have created such controversy? I, myself, have never said it and never plan on saying it; not because I think it’s taboo, but rather out of respect for black history. However, plenty of my non-black friends randomly pepper their daily conversation with it.

Honestly though, does it even matter? It’s just one word lost among the millions of other problematic phrases in our society. Or is this issue with the N-word actually a much larger problem we face in today’s environment because it further segregates what is supposedly black and what is supposedly part of the other? Isn’t the point of diversity and globalization and living in 2008 to view the inhabitants of this planet as people, not as parallels established via color?

Either way, every time I’m presented with this argument, I rarely find a reasonable explanation concerning this vocable perplexity. In a perfect world, we all would just ridicule those who quantify and categorize every example concerning color or ethnicity. But until then, we’ll just have to settle for semi-inane blogs posted by curious rabble-rousers. 

Fahima Haque