[Politics] Symbolic Politics Targets Urban Language

The City Council of New York is poised today to pass a measure symbolically banning the “N-word.” To reiterate, the ban has no teeth or weight of law behind it; it is merely a symbolic measure aimed at reversing the casual use of the word in music, movies and among urban youths.

The problem is that symbolism of this kind has no place in politics, particularly due to the fact that it is a symbolic measure about a symbol itself. Such politics is, first and foremost, a waste of taxpayer dollars. But secondly, it often has the opposite effect that it intends to. As is often the case when you involve yourself with symbols, irony ends up rearing its head, and, in politics, that is a pretty ugly head. In the case of this measure, the symbolic banning of the “N-word” is said to target casual use of the word, which lawmakers say soften its meaning. So, in other words, the lawmakers wish to put all of the racist and derogatory meaning back into the word; they wish to define the connotation of the word as being worse than what it is currently used as.

The “N-word,” by the way, is nigger. There I said it. I hope no one was hurt, because the only meaning I put behind it was to refer to the word itself, as to make my discussion of the issue straight-forward. And that too is what is at the heart of this issue. The concern and political correctness surrounding use of the word, even when simply referring to it or another’s use of it, only lends more weight to its derogatory meaning (and it is the only racial slur that gets such treatment). I understand the history behind the word, and I understand the many generations of pain it caused, and, to some extent, that it still does. But a previous generation’s pain is not necessarily a current generation’s pain, and in linguistics, I don’t think it should be. And banning the word can only delay any dwindling of its casual use; any dancing around the issue, by not saying the word when we are referring to it for example, will only further put off a resolution of the issue.

Many of the lawmakers behind the bill probably remember a time when our nation was run by segregation and Jim Crow, but the generation growing up, my generation, we have not had blatantly racist politics ruling us. And our language reflects this.

The problem with the symbolic banning of the word nigger (or nigga, I’m not sure how specific the bill gets with the colloquialism) is that the lawmakers wish to make word meaning stagnant and unchanging. They seek to preserve racism within the word, and thus set a dangerous precedent about whether or not word meaning and connotation can be fluid.

I can understand the concern over “I’m-not-a-racist” white youths using the word casually to refer to blacks or even each other, and this problem should be addressed, but only by the cultural dialogue between youths of different races, which propagates popular culture in the first place. To target elements of black culture, such as hip-hop, for its use of the word is downright absurd, and, in my opinion, detrimental to its purpose. The black youth culture uses the word casually to reclaim it, to make it their word, to say, “you cannot hurt me with this word; this is my word.” What the lawmakers are looking to do is say, “No, you must be hurt by this word; this word is hateful; it cannot be our word.” Again, adults should not expect that the pain they feel behind the word should be the same for their children. It may be an unfortunate fact that older generations could be dealing with for the rest of their lives, but, for future generations, the casual use of the word can only have the effect of continuously lessening the harm in its meaning. A measure symbolically banning the word can only have the effect of forcing future generations to be equally pained by its use.

Words are symbols, and symbols are fluid. It’s not just that they should be fluid, they ARE fluid. Meaning changes over time, and often words that were once considered negative, are by future generations turned on their head to have positive meanings, like with the words “bad,” “fat/phat,” and even “punk.” If the current generation can overcome and redefine the meaning and negativity of the word nigger, then they are demonstrating empowerment, not willing racism.

It is the place of our social culture, not our political one, to determine the proper uses and meanings of words in a given era. “Liberal” adults must respect the changing of the guard and get off their racially-aware high-horse, because, in fact, the desire to prescribe such strict meanings to words is actually just a form of fascism.