I don’t think the N-word should never be used, but close to never. Philosophers and grammar nerds respect a key distinction between actually employing a word’s meaning and simply referring to it or saying its syllables — the “use/mention distinction.” This is why it was bonkers when a professor at The New School was recently threatened with censure for uttering it in quoting James Baldwin, after a white student complained. Thankfully, she was cleared of wrongdoing.
The N-Word is the worst word in the English language, especially in American English. I vividly remember the first time I heard it used in real anger. Its vileness stands apart from other “bad” words. At the risk of being told to read another book, I’m going to mention Harry Potter: The kids in the series won’t say “Voldemort.” Instead, it’s “he who must not be named.” These characters, themselves users of magic incantations, understand such is the power of language. For reasons social and historical, certain “curse words” have a different dark magic all their own.
Today, our maledictions are slurs. The truly unsayable sequences of syllables are mostly derogatory racial epithets rather than sexual or excretory words as they once were. This is positive movement, in my opinion, since sex and effluvia aren’t inherently shameful. Being nasty and racist is. Slurs should retain their special power.
But, as they say, power corrupts. Since racial slurs are the highest and most powerful imprecation today, of course people are going to try to abuse that power in slimy and absurd ways. David Nir, a prominent activist-journalist, recently implied the word “clown” was a new racial slur:
“Republicans have increasingly been trying to dub Democrats “clowns.” Weird, right? [Ed: No it isn’t.] Turns out it’s the latest meme from the far-right/white supremacist/chan world …”
And so on. Like that, a new C-word was born, or at least Nir would have liked it to be. It seems unlikely to stick. One should believe some claims about “dogwhistles” and employing racist “tropes” and the like. But not every one! You shouldn’t be able to just claim any old word you like is a racial slur and expect everyone to fall in line like it isn’t obvious what you’re doing. The taboo legacy of the real C-word is so ingrained that bawdy old William Shakespeare wrote around it in Hamlet with a pun about, erm, “country matters.”
But good sense never stopped outrage-mongers. There’s a fresh example of this kind of manufact-slurring almost every week if you pay attention. Recently and spectacularly, Chris Cuomo, the CNN anchor and youngest, (somehow) less competent brother in a powerful New York family, ranted bitterly about being called “Fredo,” saying “it’s like the N-word” for Italians.
The idea that “Fredo” is an ethnic slur is, of course, plain bunk. It’s a reference to probably the most famous movie about America and family ever made. There are plenty of other outdated slurs for Italians one might use to slur an Italian American who were not the son of former Gov. Mario Cuomo, not the brother of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and also not an embarrassment.
As Andrew Sullivan wrote recently, this is dangerous to language, as it can dilute the real, naturally emergent social stigma genuine slurs gain by consensus. And that gives linguistic weaklings the ability to betray the remainder of English language-users by manufacturing new, false slurs and then pretend everyone else is the crazy or nasty one for not respecting a fraudulent taboo.
I know it was you, Chris Cuomo. You broke my heart. You broke my heart.
—By Nicholas Clairmont
