I Heard the N-word and Silence
What a conversation I overheard in college says about race and parenting
I snort a little when I read what conservatives have to say about racism. That’s not because I’m anti-conservative or especially left-leaning. Instead, it’s because there’s always a tell, a knee-jerk reaction to pretend racists aren’t still among us. There is a desire, always indulged, to downplay racism at any level, whether institutional or interpersonal. With this article, I hereby serve notice that they are not only among us, but they’re having babies.
When I went to college, I attended a predominantly white institution. I had come from a community where I was surrounded by people of my background and ethnicity. Though I was being recruited by a historically black college, I followed the money and my curiosity about American life as seen on TV.
Early on, I found that white people are not kind to each other by default— institutionally, maybe, but not personally. I was not raised to make class differentiations in my community, but it didn’t take long for me to witness differently in this new setting. “I don’t know what she’s talking about,” one student said aloud to her friends (and me, because she wasn’t whispering), “since I don’t speak cracker redneck. Maybe she should try English.”
As a creole-speaking black person, I felt sort of bad for ‘cracker redneck’ girl in her absence. I also felt bad for the girl who insulted her; it was as if she was unaware of her own accent.
I’m really writing this article because of another conversation I happened upon. It was Saturday night, early fall. Underage drinking was at pandemic levels, but most people were still asymptomatic. A few yards away from me a female voice goes: “So how do y’all feel about black people?”
The question itself let me know that I was not in the field of view of the speaker or the people she was talking to. This was all the assurance I needed to begin eavesdropping for helpful (maybe even life-saving) information. Bachelor’s aside, hadn’t I come to this college for just such a purpose?
Before I talk about the responses, I want to be clear about the demographic. I was on a college campus. These were college students, children of the 1980s. There is no reason for me to believe that they did not enter the working world, and I can confirm that some have. Though I’d later hear someone encouraging a prospect with low SAT scores to apply to this college (which definitely made me rethink my choice), this was a group of 10 or so competent students. I would later learn that some of these students would become managers and software developers and business owners. So the following responses are a small sample of the people running software companies and raising children today.
The immediate response was an uncomfortable silence. I’ll call it the first silence. Nobody spoke up in ridicule, partly because they had to recognize it as a question that needed to be asked. Race was and is still a potent topic for people who were raised to understand that they are white and other people are black, even though our public rhetoric tends to embrace colorblindness. I imagine glances were shared as they each tried to calculate what kind of response would be appropriate to give to other people who were raised white: Toe the ancient line? Speak from personal experience? Introduce newfound conclusions? So went the first silence.
The answer that crawled out of the first silence was in ways predictable and appropriate, or so I thought at the time. “I’m okay with black people,” a male voice answered, confident and willing to take a risk, “but I hate n—rs.”
Read it again: Hard R; didn’t stutter; knew they would understand.
Though the “black people vs n—r” dichotomy has been used by black people, it is more of a reaction, a way to distance oneself from false stereotypes about black people. Black people didn’t invent race. We don’t uphold it. We never created laws around it, never used it to determine who should or shouldn’t get housing, medical care, or an education.
However, the descendants of the people that did were in that group. With ne’er a durag in sight, they were having a whole conversation about blackness. To all of my conservatives that pretend that race is only a factor when black people make it a factor: You’re wrong.
The only worded response so far was to avoid a discussion about black people as they actually are — actual black collegiate and high school students they may have known and worked with. Rather, the one person who responded wanted to certify that they all agreed on the odiousness of — brace yourself; I’m spelling it out — the nigger.
There was a time when all black people were the nigger. It is in that ironic sense that the term still has any use among black people outside of its inherent use to demean people of African ancestry. It is impossible for all of us to be rascals and sloths (paychecks, anyone?), but any one of us can be called nigger. Goes one rib-tickler, “When does an African American become a nigger?” In a way, I was witnessing the answer in real life.
I’ve come to see the nigger as a trope, a bit of paternalistic deception, like the tooth fairy and Santa Claus, that outlives its peers. Children eventually discover the reality behind two of the three, but the nigger, never seen in-home or church but ever-present in media, seems to be a real thing. Children are raised to be antagonistic to the nigger.
The nigger does not exist, yet he lives (yes, he). The nigger is the main character in America’s shadow story, both protagonist and antagonist. White people believe themselves to be mere observers or at best a Greek chorus, giving backhanded praise for black people and primal-urge boos to the nigger, in a black tragicomedy that nobody produced.
Logically, the nigger is impossible. To be one, the better you have it in life, the more churlish you get. You can raise white children, but not your own. You can work well under white people, but would forget all you ever knew if left to yourself. You can clean white homes and mow white lawns but have no need or motivation to seek decent housing for yourself.
Even after segregation laws were overturned, the logic lives on, but a little differently. Black people looking for well-paying jobs and nice houses are steered away from predominantly white spaces, as though there was a whole other economy with jobs and money in reserve for black people. To want what white people have is to be the nigger. This is because the nigger will leave not money under pillows or presents under a tree, but ruin and human degradation in his wake (yes, his).
Not that this has ever happened. This is all in the minds of people committed to their own specialness. In the real world, most people want nice things and want to raise nice families, even if their great-grandparents were slaves. So, no, Virginia, there is no nigger.
“Y’all understand what I’m trying to say, right? I mean, I’m not a racist,” the male voice continued. Maybe there weren’t enough heads nodding.
“I know what you mean,” another male voice conceded. A barely audible breath of relief collectively issued from the group, and at this point, second silence had already begun. None of these millennial students were openly questioning race or the idea that some black people were niggers. None were offering advice from their parents about the ultimate silliness of racial divisions. None were advocating for any black people they knew as friends, family, or close associates. Legend has it, that second silence continues today.
When I read articles that pretend that race is wholly the province of black people, something black people alone find interest in and attribute unequal outcomes to, I snort. Maybe the black conservatives truly believe that the same rules hold in their absence as in their presence, which is probably true if you’re Thomas Sowell or John McWhorter.
But to believe that there is no interest in race among people raised as white is to be gravely mistaken. They are thinking and talking about it, and seem extremely motivated to read (or skim) articles like this and reply that race doesn’t matter to them. They’re college-educated but still believe one of their black peers may turn out to be a nigger.
They’re raising children now. They are teaching them to look for the Easter Bunny’s eggs and to avoid the dark and unfamiliar. They are sending those children, today’s elementary students, into adolescence and young adulthood where they will be still haunted by the nigger, unless they learn not to succumb to the first and second silence.
