1. There's a gap in the generation gap.
I empathized with Neil Anderson, a 22-year-old full-time CCSN student and the lone panelist of the six who doesn't see anything wrong with the N-word, for which he caught flack for the better half of 90 minutes. Black Student Association President Victoria Pate argued that the N-word devalues blacks. "I mean it endearingly when I say it," Anderson said, "and it doesn't bother me if someone from another race calls me a nigga or a nigger because I won't let people degrade me." Would you call your mom a bitch or a ho, asked insurance agent Eric James, even though some women use those as terms of affection?
I blame the generational riff on Tupac. In Tupac: Resurrection, the deceased rapper ensured dissension saying that "Niggers was the ones on the rope, hanging off trees. Niggas is the ones with gold ropes, hanging out at clubs."
2. Legislating speech can help.
Five of the six panelists agreed that the New York City Council's recent symbolic ban on the word nigger (no penalties for scofflaws) was well-meaning but unenforceable. Guess who wholeheartedly supported the ordinance? Anderson? Nope.
Toothless as they may be, CCSN communications professor Arnold Bell said these symbolic ordinances change the tone of the discourse, creating a climate where the words nigger or nigga aren't tolerated. Similar bans seem to be catching on. Irving, New Jersey, Nyack and Westchester Counties in New York and cities in Massachusetts and Texas have passed nonbinding resolutions prohibiting use of the N-word.
3. Read Nigger. It's a book. Really.
Actually, it's called Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word. Written by Harvard law school professor Randall Kennedy, the tome might be the deepest probe yet of the N-word. Among its questions: How should the N-word be defined? Who should define it? Should it be a preserved as an inextricable part of the African-American story or jettisoned as a remnant of slavery's inglorious past? Why does it evoke such powerful emotions? Is there a difference between nigger and nigga? Who can use the word? (An Hispanic audience member admitted to calling his friends niggas, "but I'd never use it on a black person.") When? Should books with the word be banned? Should people lose their jobs for saying it?
4. Other races can offer insight.
"I'm not a white man. I'm pinkish, and if I stay in the sun too long, I look like a cherry."
The lone, ahem, white guy on the panel, Karl "Gus" Gustafson, dutifully promoted his Irish heritage. The culinary arts major hears black students use the N-word all the time. He understands using epithets among friends—he's done it himself—but still thinks it's ultimately unhealthy.
"I wouldn't call my friends a mick, which is a derogatory term for Irish people. [When the Irish came to America] we weren't even treated well enough to be owned. We were used to build railroads and after they were built, we were killed. Using derogatory names negatively reflects on a person's heritage."
5. It's still a source of real pain.
Poor Neil. He endured all the criticism fairly well, until a woman in the back of the auditorium got the microphone and laid into him. She's a mother of two. The N-word is a no-no in her house. Her sons cringe at hearing the N-word. She was born in a part of rural Alabama where blacks were routinely called niggers. She said her grandfather was murdered after defending her grandmother from white men; she said she spent seven years in juvenile detention for retaliating against a white man who touched her inappropriately. The N-word, she said, has no place in any language. "That word is offensive and hurtful to me, and I can't stand for anyone to use it."