Is It Ever OK to Enunciate a Slur in the Classroom?

Is it acceptable for pedagogical purposes to enunciate the epithet “nigger”?

The question is topical because of a string of incidents in which professors have been condemned, disciplined, even fired for enunciating in full the notorious N-word. Controversies have stemmed from a professor airing the word while discussing language from which courts have withdrawn the protection that the First Amendment typically accords to speech; a teacher mentioning the word while discussing a hate-speech prosecution; a teacher quoting a passage in which the term appears in a Supreme Court opinion; a professor quoting a statement attributed to a founding father who reportedly referred to Blacks as “niggers” during debate over the ratification of the Constitution; a teacher reading aloud from James Baldwin.

In my teaching I have done on many occasions the thing that has brought trouble to those and other fellow educators. I do not “use” “nigger” in the sense in which “use” is rightly condemned. I do not bandy it about gratuitously, much less to taunt, threaten, demean, or insult anyone. I enunciate “nigger” in full, out loud with some purpose in mind. Usually the aim is to drive home to audiences the pervasiveness of anti-Black prejudice and, more specifically, the way in which this troublesome word has been an integral part of the soundtrack of American racism.

Some thoughtful teachers determinedly avoid vocalizing “nigger.” I think here of the distinguished University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey R. Stone, an eminent scholar of constitutional law and a stalwart champion of academic freedom. For years in one of his courses he vocalized “nigger” to dramatize the contentiousness surrounding the doctrine of “fighting words” — the notion that some words, in certain circumstances, should receive no First Amendment protection because, when spoken, they provoke immediate violence. In 2019 members of the Black Law Students Association at Chicago voiced detailed objections. The group’s president argued that Stone’s vocalization of the slur “damages and disrupts and distracts students. … Anyone can understand the impact of the N-word without explicitly saying it.” The appeal moved Stone. “I never appreciated, before,” he said, “the extent to which [hearing the slur] was disconcerting and painful.” He announced that he would no longer vocalize the slur because, in his view, it was inessential to do so. “It’s the distinction between useful or … essential. There are lots of things that you don’t do in a classroom as a teacher which might be useful, but you don’t do them for whatever reasons.”

Stone’s new stance deferred to the proposition that, in these circumstances, a feeling of hurt upon hearing “nigger” is a reaction warranting accommodation. I disagree. I am skeptical of some of the claims of hurt. I suspect that some of them are the product of learned strategic ripostes. It is now well known that in certain settings, particularly those that strive to be socially enlightened (like colleges and universities), you can effectively challenge speech to which you object by claiming not only that it is socially abhorrent (racist, sexist, transphobic, etc., etc., etc.) but that it makes you feel insulted, offended, or endangered.

Why the objection to circumstances in which it is clear that the instructor was deploying the term only for pedagogical purposes? Because vocalizing the term has become, in the eyes of many objectors, a symbol of either obtuseness or defiance: a sign that the (white — more about that later) instructor is unaware that he or she ought never, ever vocalize the term, or a sign that the instructor is disobeying that injunction. I am convinced that in a substantial number of instances these fights are not really over hurt feelings. They are struggles over status and power. Objectors have made avoidance of vocalizing “nigger,” even in the guarded circumstances of classroom instruction, a matter of taboo in which the failure to abide by the rule of avoidance is taken as a sign of disrespect. It is not the word or the circumstances of its deployment in the classroom that causes anger. What causes anger is the “failure” of the teacher to submit to the objectors’ demand, regardless of the circumstances.

But my position remains the same even in the case of the objector who genuinely experiences hurt feeling upon hearing the N-word. That is because of my view of “feelings.” Feelings are not unchangeable givens, untouched and untouchable by how their expression is received. Feelings are, at least in part, influenced by the responses of others. The more that schools validate the idea that hurt is justified in the circumstances pertinent here, the more that hurt will be expressed, and the more there will be calls to respect expressed feelings of hurt by avoiding, prohibiting, or punishing what is said to trigger them. I insist upon pushing in another direction, advancing the message that, in circumstances in which “nigger” is aired for pedagogical purposes, there is no good reason to feel hurt.

It does no favor to students to spare their feelings if doing so comes at the expense of valuable education. Professor Stone concluded that vocalizing the N-word was “useful” but inessential. In my view, “useful” instruction should be pursued. Lawyers and judges frequently encounter distressing sights and sounds as part of their professional responsibilities. Every year, in hundreds of cases, “nigger” is heard in courts. It figured prominently in one of the most infamous murder trials of the 20th century — the O.J. Simpson case. A lawyer who becomes distracted or depressed upon hearing “nigger” or any other slur is a lawyer with a glaring vulnerability. I would hope that part of what a law school would impart to students are techniques of self-mastery that will enable them to manage their feelings in order to assist optimally the people and institutions that will rely upon them for guidance.

I have yet to encounter any difficulties because of my own deployment of “nigger” in the classroom. I hope that my good fortune continues. If a conflict does arise, my position will be that conscientiously vocalizing “nigger” or any other epithet for legitimate pedagogical purposes ought not give rise to any belief or insinuation that the statement displays racism or racial insensitivity. I will offer no deference to demands for silence, avoidance, or bowdlerization. And I will certainly offer no apology. A pathetic aspect of the fight over the N-word is the now-familiar spectacle in which a teacher wrongly under fire issues a false, debasing apology, hoping that it will appease protesters.

My remarks are not the result of a transient, ethereal concern. They stem in part from a deep well of study nourished by experience. I am an African American, born in 1954 in the Deep South (Columbia, S.C.). My parents of blessed memory were refugees who fled Jim Crow oppression. They were branded as “niggers.” And I have been called “nigger” too.

Dave Plunkert for The Chronicle

Should my race make a difference, cloaking me with more leeway in my pedagogical options than white colleagues? I abjure such a “privilege.” In the domain of culture there ought be no boundaries that fence out people based on racial identification or ascription. There ought be no words that Blacks are permitted to say but that whites or others are prohibited from saying. While racist use of “nigger” should be condemned no matter the racial identity of the speaker, nonracist deployment of “nigger” should be accepted no matter the racial identity of the speaker.

It is not accidental that, in all of the controversies noted at the outset of this essay, the embattled speaker was a white instructor. The racially discriminatory assessment of white speakers is often openly proclaimed: Black instructors (singers, comedians, directors, authors) can enunciate the N-word absent condemnation in circumstances in which white instructors (singers, comedians, directors, authors) cannot — no matter what! Employment decisions undertaken pursuant to racial double standards of this sort offend antidiscrimination law. They are also antithetical to the aspirations for openness, freedom, and creativity that should animate our campuses.

The upshot involves more than encroaching upon the prerogatives of a few white instructors. It also involves reinforcing baleful tendencies that harm all participants in the creation of culture. Nothing better illustrates this point than the bowdlerization of James Baldwin. He insisted that “nigger” was the creation of white racism and that the term said more about those who wielded it malevolently than those who were its targets. He declared that he was not your “nigger.” But an acclaimed documentary film transformed his statement into “I am not your Negro.” A white teacher at the New School, Laurie Sheck, pointed this out, quoting Baldwin directly. She referred her students to one of his essays in which he complained about the lies that had covered up “the darker forces in our history” and in which he urged “an unflinching assessment of the record.” Months later Sheck was called to the office of an administrator because of a student’s complaint that her remarks concerning Baldwin may have violated the university’s discrimination policy. The university belatedly “cleared” Sheck after intervention on her behalf by various organizations, including the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. That there was thought to be a substantial matter to “clear,” however, is indicative of antiracism gone awry.

Racism, alas, remains a powerful presence that displays itself ubiquitously, as in the deeply disturbing campaign to intimidate dissident instruction about the history of American racial wrongs. Racism is a looming, destructive force that we must vigorously resist. Vigilance is essential. But so, too, is a capacity and willingness to draw crucial distinctions. There is a world of difference that separates the racist use of “nigger” from the vocalizing of “nigger” for pedagogical reasons aimed at enabling students to attain important knowledge.

This essay is adapted from Say It Loud: On Race, Law, History, and Culture, just out from Penguin Random House.