This is a good question, one I am trying now to answer. I don't exactly think the word a curse word, and so I don't think it is filthy in that sense. So using it in the course of a dialogue on race, especially to recount how a person has leveled it as an insult, seems to me acceptable. But perhaps it is to many people a curse word. If so, then what does it mean? Does it mean "the worse thing a human can be" or "the worse thing one can think of" or "slave" or "innately bad person?" Sometimes I wonder if we run from silly ghosts. The word used as an insult should be despised not because of the word, but because of context. I often despise the word "idiot," for example, when it is used insultingly. But the word itself can be used in other contexts, such as in a discussion of Fydor Dostoyevsky's work by that name. One would not ask, "Have you read Dostoyevsky's 'The [I-word]'?"
Somehow, saying "n-word" when I mean "nigger" seems a bit odd, as if the word itself has some mystical power. I just do not think it does, and so up to this point have not tip-toed around it. In itself it is to me the word "bigger," except substituting an "n" for the "b." But perhaps I should be more sensitive and just say "n-word." (I can't help but think this is being "PC" though.) |
