On Slurs and Systems of Oppression
You’ve all heard the arguments before: Non Black people can say the n word and men can say the c word as long as they don’t “mean it in a derogatory way,” or as long as a Black person or a woman isn’t around to hear them say it. What’s the sitch?
Often times people simply don’t care about the language they use. They think their individual use of a slur has no real effect in the world at large, and they reject “language policing,” in its efforts to educate them and undo systems of oppression, as “political correctness.” What these people ignore is the larger and historical context of slurs within systems of oppression in society.
In this article we unpack how the use of slurs by groups of people not oppressed by the same slurs upholds, contributes to, and perpetuates wider systems of oppression in society. The role of language in shaping the institutions and attitudes in our society cannot be ignored in a world where communication is everything.
The power of words to uphold systems of oppression is underrated. When used by individual people, words have little effect, but when they are used collectively by millions of people — that is when their impact is clear. This impact is exacerbated when people in positions of power co opt words to discriminate, oppress, and enact violence and harm upon marginalized groups.
Such misappropriation of words is how slurs emerge and gain their deeply offensive nature. Slurs cannot be removed from their historical context when the systems of oppression that molded them still exist.
By using a slur, a person upholds, contributes to, and perpetuates the systemic oppression of marginalized groups that the slur has enacted historically, and likely still enacts today because it remains a slur in the lexicon. Even if a person uses a slur in a “non derogatory way,” its capacity to discriminate people is called into play. And even if they use a slur around people who aren’t directly oppressed by it, they normalize its usage and make other people — who want to use it in a derogatory way — think that it’s okay.
For example, men using the c word enforces the sexist idea that women are somehow inferior to men by reducing them to their bodies in a derogatory way (not to mention the inherent transmisogyny here). Even if a man uses the c word casually, it inflicts harm on women by perpetuating sexist attitudes. The same is not true for a word like “dick” because men are not oppressed by sexism. Men hold power over women in our society.
Reclaiming a slur is a different ballgame. It often irritates privileged people who don’t understand the dynamics of oppression. “If I’m not allowed to say it then no one is” is a mindset that centres the oppressor and brushes aside the group who has been disenfranchised by the slur.
Marginalized people often reclaim a slur to empower themselves. The oppressive usage of the slur becomes a point of resilience, in which the marginalized group continues to rise above and survive the harm enacted by the slur.
So, why can’t other people reclaim a slur “in solidarity with” marginalized people? The reason remains that the normalization of a slur among those it has not oppressed gives people in positions of power the capability to use it to inflict harm. People outside the community can support marginalized people’s choice to reclaim a slur, but to use it themselves — no matter how honest their intentions — does more damage than good.
In the end, ignoring the voices of marginalized people who denounce the usage of slurs by people outside their community is deeply unsettling. And being overly picky about marginalized groups’ choices to reclaim slurs centres the oppressor and derails what should be a conversation about why other groups’ usage of the slur upholds, contributes to, and perpetuates wider systems of oppression.
Refraining from using slurs outside of reclamation efforts within a group respects the agency of marginalized people and works to undo systems of oppression in our society. Just because you may not see the negative effects of slurs in your own life doesn’t mean that there aren’t any. It is critical to listen to marginalized people and understand the history behind their experiences in order to liberate them from their oppression.
