It’s the Thought that Counts

I saw the below video today, thanks to the awesome and always fascinating blog Sociological Images. It’s a clip from the ABC’s The View, a coffee klatsch sort of show aimed generally towards women of whatever age range it is that doesn’t mind listening to Barbara Walters talk. You can read all the hosts’ bios here, but the two primarily involved in this conversation are Whoopi Goldberg and Elisabeth Hasselbeck.

There are a couple things in this clip that stuck out to me. The first is the general topic of the power of language. I understand why it’s considered more acceptable for black people to use “the n-word” than for white people to do so. I have no problem making self-deprecating jokes about any number of my personal qualities, but if a friend of mine laughed and chimed in with agreement, I’d be a bit offended. When I say it, it’s a funny joke; when you say it, it’s rude. The question is, is that rational? Does the meaning of what’s said really depend that much on who says it? I find that hard to believe. It’s not offensive for me to use a slur referring to a group I’m a part of, because of course I didn’t mean it “that way” — but surely you are capable of not meaning it that way either. It seems more than a little unfair that, simply by virtue of your existing and your being born with certain qualities, a layer of meaning has been added to all your statements which you can never really escape. Your words will always be white-person-words or black-person-words or [fill in an adjective]-person-words, never really just words.

The position that’s argued in the video by Goldberg, and to a lesser degree by Sherri Shepherd, is that the word “nigger” has history which ought to be remembered and which is an important part of black culture. It’s “taking back” a slur, making it your own. It’s similar — though obviously different in magnitude — to a woman calling herself and other women “chicks” with a sense of female empowerment, or to LGBT folks saying “fag” or “dyke” with pride in their sexual orientation. The idea is that by embracing the term, you can make a once-derogatory word into a simple descriptive adjective, or even a positive quality.

That brings me to the second issue: to what extent do we create the society we live in simply by acting and imagining? Hasselbeck says, “We don’t live in different worlds. We live in the same world,” and the other hosts disagree. They’re right, of course — issues of “race” (whatever that means) and ethnic differences are not yet non-issues. There’s still discrimination and prejudice. Hasselbeck’s response to this is to acknowledge that there’s nothing fundamentally different about people with different skin pigmentation, and to try to live her life as though no differences exist. On the other hand, Goldberg’s response is to try to use a racial slur as though it were a friendly, endearing word. Both seem to have the ultimate goal of creating a society without prejudice. Who’s using more pretending and wishful thinking to try to get there? Whose approach is more likely to be successful?

It seems to me that both of them could be right, but at different times. Reclaiming a slur can encourage pride in one’s identity, and it can turn something deeply offensive into something hardly worth remarking upon. That’s worthwhile progress — it means moving past the worst parts of prejudice. However, I don’t think it’s a permanent solution. I said hardly worth remarking upon, not totally unremarkable, because keeping special terms that only “our people” are allowed to say, that continually remind everyone of past persecution of “our people” by everyone else, isn’t really going to eliminate boundaries. To create a society where we really all “live in the same world,” we need to give up language that serves only to exaggerate differences.

Tags: culture, discrimination, race