I remember very clearly the first time I heard the ‘n-word’ in person. It was in high school. Although I lived in a Hispanic-majority neighborhood, I went to a military-prep high school that was probably, broadly speaking, 75% white, 5-10% Hispanic, 5-10% Asian, a few percent Indian and a few percent Black. So I was pretty sheltered from race issues in my school and social circles, though my main friends were from a different high school and we did spend a lot of time in predominantly Hispanic areas.
I never fit in with any group—I’ve always been decent at just about everything but great at nothing. And I’ve always struggled with self-loathing. After trying unsuccessfully to mesh with various groups, I settled with the druggies, as they seemed like the only ones that would accept you no matter what (Note: I don’t endorse anyone else joining this group—it was not a good decision). That group was particularly accepting because some of them wanted others to share in their suffering, they wanted others to smoke and drink and do drugs so that they felt like they belonged and so that their own behavior didn’t seem as bad. And with the drugs, you had comfort, you had some relief from the pressures of teenage life and family, you had escape from it all. I still got near perfect grades through college despite being part of that group, so I wasn’t a dropout or anything, but it definitely limited my potential and hurt my ability to thrive for a long time.
My friends and I were hanging out in one of my friend’s basements during sophomore year. His neighborhood was especially Hispanic, including his cousins, who were also our drug dealers. That familial relationship was how we could all afford them. We all worked but none of us had any money or anything like that; in fact most of us had divorced/deceased parents so there really wasn’t much to be had at all. But we could score Mexican brick weed for about $20/quad—or even better, if we had the cash, for $60/ounce—which is about as cheap as you get without getting into much larger quantities. Wasn’t exactly quality, as you could imagine. We lived in a city called Aurora and we always jokingly referred to it as A-town brown.
I had occasionally heard my friend call his cousins ‘beaners’ in the past but because it was said in the company of those cousins, and because they would sometimes joke about themselves using that term, I guess I came to accept that it was ok (Note: it’s not), even though I never used it. One of my Hispanic friends that was part of the group would even use it to describe himself and his family. I didn’t understand at the time why it might be ok for one race to talk about itself in whatever way they wanted to, but not for another race.
In the context of a conversation about weed and my friend’s cousins, bam, it happened, nonchalant as all-get-out. A different friend just said the ‘n-word’ in a spiteful way in the context of a regular sentence, like it was no big deal. My friends were all from working class families and it was part of a discussion about a family member not being able to get a job. I remember jerking my head up in surprise—I may have been confused about a term like ‘beaner’ at the time, but I had no doubts in my mind that the ‘n-word’ was absolutely off-limits—looking around at all my other friends, expecting to see their surprise and disdain as well. But to MY surprise, no one in the group of five batted an eye. It just rolled off their back. It didn’t come up again that day, so I just chalked it up to a slip up of some kind.
But it wasn’t. I didn’t hear the word a lot in that group, but I probably heard it a total of 10-15 times over the course of the years we were a friend group. And every time I was shocked and saddened by it. But as I mentioned earlier, I never fit in with any groups, and even the druggies knew that I didn’t belong there, even if they’d let me stay (because misery loves company). So in my desire to fit in, I never directly rebuked them. My pathetic activism at the time—and I’m serious, this is what I did every time the word was mentioned after the first time—was to, every time that word was uttered, follow it up with a sentence of my own in which I said “yeah, well that Black guy was doing…” or whatever was relevant for that conversation. So I’d immediately follow-up them saying the ‘n-word’ with ‘Black person’ with the hopes that it would get them to gravitate toward them saying that in the future instead. Not great.
To be fair to myself, I guess I could have done worse. And to be clear, the majority of times they would use Black instead of that horrible, hateful word. But they’d slip up occasionally, and that’s when I’d try to steer them back. I think they came to know that it made me uncomfortable, but I don’t know that for sure. I am sure that I was seen as the softie in the group.
Through my early 20s, heck maybe even my late 20s (it’s hard to estimate), I had a pretty ignorant view of how to consider race in society. Yes, this pains me to admit, but I was one of those ignorant white boys who would just say “oh, I don’t see color.” And I thought it was that simple. Because, in a bubble, it makes sense that it would be that simple.
Of course, it’s not that simple at all. We need to see color, because society sees color. Because everything has been skewed toward white people, and if we don’t see color then we are not seeing how disadvantaged certain people are. White privilege is real, folks (Note: see these 50 quick examples). That doesn’t mean that if you’re white, your life was easy. But it means that, on the whole, almost every aspect of our society has been positioned to give advantages to white people. And if we don’t acknowledge that, then by “not seeing color” we are actively harming people of color. It took a long time for me to understand that. And to this day I’m continuing to improve my understanding.
On top of that, and because of it, we have kept Black people down, and other people of color down; we have not given them equal opportunity to achieve in society. Even if things were perfectly equal, today, that’s still not enough, because, yes, you absolutely cannot forget the history of oppression and enslavement that was so horrifyingly thrust on these innocent people for hundreds of years in America. When your ancestors have been enslaved their entire lives, denied any opportunity for advancement or education, it’s not enough to just say oh, ok, things are equal now, today. No. We absolutely need to see color. And we need to provide due consideration to Black people who have been so disadvantaged for so many years, if we ever hope to get to a state where actual simple equality is enough.
Think about our history as a country, and where Black people have fit into that history. 250 years of slavery, followed by an emancipation that resulted in a different type of segregation and discrimination (Note: Jim Crow laws), followed by a civil rights movement that finally started to move us toward equal treatment. But even that has been incredibly slow and woefully inadequate. We can’t truly move toward equality without acknowledging the *fact* that 90% of the time that Black people have been on this continent, we have been openly oppressing them. If we truly want to move forward, then we must consider the case for reparations, in order to truly begin on the path toward restoring the balance in the great miscarriage of racial justice that is American history.
And if you’re a white person who feels like you’ve caught a bad lot in life and that giving Black people that consideration isn’t fair, well then I feel for you but you need to stop making everything about you. This is bigger than one person, one family, one community. Recognize. As Ruth King says in Mindful of Race, “When white individuals are not aware of their membership in a white racial group, when they have not examined what it means to be white with other white people, they are able to maintain themselves as good individuals, therefore maintaining their dominant groups status without being aware of or responsible for [italics mine] its collective impact on other races. This is how racism is perpetuated—the privilege of not knowing or caring.” We must realize that it’s not enough to look at ourselves as one white individual in a vacuum; there is a bigger group and a bigger effect taking place and we are a part of that.
If you don’t see what I’m talking about, then seek out Black voices online and learn from the wisdom that they share. Don’t you dare expect an individual consultation for every one of your questions, though. Black people have had to explain themselves to death and they shouldn’t be expected to patiently sit there and answer the same damn questions over and over again ad nauseam. There are lots of great resources already online on google if you just look. That was my problem, and that was many people’s problems; we didn’t look. We didn’t see it right in front of our eyes so we were content to throw our hands up on the air and say we didn’t understand. You can understand. It will take some work. It is worth it.
Good god the Trump era has been horrible, but if nothing else it helped bring the reality of this continuing oppression into the minds of white folks like me who didn’t fully appreciate how bad things still are. I hope that my own continuing transition into a better, more understanding human will give hope and inspiration to those who read this. I harbored some very ignorant views in my life but am making active progress toward better understanding and appreciating other people’s diverse perspectives and experiences. I still have far to go. I’m sure I still hold many, many ignorant beliefs. But I agree with the great Dr. King’s statement that the arc bends toward justice, and I intend to continue my path to becoming better. If you’re not already on board, then please, join me. There’s always room for more.