The N-Word in the Classroom | Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor | TEDxEasthamptonWomen
Summary
TLDRThe speaker, a black woman teaching about race and slavery, recounts the moment a student used the n-word in class, sparking a deep reflection on the word's impact. She discusses her decision to never say the word in her lectures, opting instead for a euphemism, and the challenges this presents. The narrative explores the complexities of the word's history, its use in academic settings, and the emotional responses it elicits. The speaker advocates for open dialogue about the n-word, emphasizing the importance of understanding its historical roots and the need for careful, contextualized teaching to prevent further harm.
Takeaways
- 👩🏫 The speaker, a black woman teaching histories of race and slavery, experiences a classroom incident where the n-word is used, highlighting the challenges of discussing racial slurs in an academic setting.
- 🎬 The n-word is mentioned in a 1970s movie comedy during a class discussion, illustrating how media can introduce such slurs into educational conversations.
- 🚫 The speaker chooses to never say the n-word, even when quoting, to avoid perpetuating its harmful impact, reflecting a personal and professional stance on language use in teaching.
- 🤔 The incident prompts a deep reflection on the word's history, its violence, and the emotional responses it elicits, showing the complexity of dealing with racial slurs.
- 🗣️ The concept of 'points of encounter' is introduced to describe moments of直面 racial slurs, emphasizing the varied and personal nature of these experiences.
- 🤝 The speaker's approach to handling the n-word in class evolves, moving from avoidance to open discussion, indicating a shift towards addressing the issue head-on.
- 📚 The n-word's presence in literature and history is acknowledged, with the speaker noting its frequent appearance in assigned readings like 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'.
- 😣 Students express discomfort and trauma when the n-word is used in class without proper context or discussion, underscoring the need for sensitive teaching practices.
- 🔊 The speaker advocates for a classroom policy where the n-word is visible in materials but not spoken aloud, aiming to foster a safer and more thoughtful educational environment.
- 📈 The script discusses the historical and cultural significance of the n-word, tracing its roots back to the 1770s and highlighting its use as a tool against black freedom and aspiration.
- 🌟 The speaker calls for open and honest conversations about the n-word in educational settings, emphasizing the importance of historical context and student well-being.
Q & A
What was the unexpected event that occurred in the classroom when discussing race and slavery?
-A student, while quoting a line from a 1970s movie comedy, used the n-word, which was not anticipated by the teacher and led to a significant moment of discomfort in the classroom.
How did the teacher initially react when the n-word was used in her classroom?
-The teacher was unprepared for the situation and felt haunted by how she handled it for a long time, as none of her years of graduate school had prepared her for such an incident.
What decision did the teacher make regarding the use of the n-word in her teaching?
-The teacher decided to never say the n-word, not even to quote it, and instead use the euphemistic phrase 'the n-word' in her lectures.
What is a 'point of encounter' as described by the teacher?
-A 'point of encounter' is the moment when someone comes face-to-face with the n-word, leading to a range of responses that can vary from discomfort to pain and humiliation.
Why does the teacher believe the n-word is difficult to discuss?
-The teacher believes the n-word is difficult to discuss because it is not just a word but an idea disguised as a word that perpetuates the notion of black inferiority.
What policy did the teacher implement regarding the n-word in her class after the incident?
-The teacher implemented a policy where the n-word would be seen in class materials but would never be spoken aloud, aiming to create a space for discussion without the word's harmful impact.
How did the teacher's approach to discussing the n-word change after hearing her students' personal stories?
-After hearing her students' personal stories, the teacher realized the importance of open and honest conversations about the n-word and began to create conditions in her classroom to facilitate such discussions.
What is the significance of the n-word in the context of African American literature and history?
-The n-word is significant in African American literature and history as it encapsulates the accumulated hurt and the assault on black freedom, mobility, and aspiration, and is deeply intertwined with the history of racism and inequality in the United States.
Why do some students switch majors or drop classes due to the teaching of the n-word?
-Some students switch majors or drop classes due to the lack of proper context and discussion when the n-word is used in class, which can poison the classroom environment and break the trust between students and teachers.
What is the teacher's stance on the responsibility of teaching about the n-word in the classroom?
-The teacher believes it is her responsibility, not her black students', to teach about the n-word, and she comes prepared with historical knowledge to facilitate informed discussions.
How does the teacher address the difficulty of talking about the n-word with her students?
-The teacher addresses the difficulty by asking her students why talking about the n-word is hard and engaging them in thoughtful discussions, while also ensuring that the word itself is not used in the classroom.
Outlines
📚 Classroom Encounter with the N-Word
The speaker, a black woman teaching about race and slavery in US history, recounts an incident where a student used the n-word in class. Despite being prepared for sensitive topics, she was caught off guard. The student's use of the word was not malicious but rather a quote from a 1970s movie, which led to a realization that the n-word's presence in academic materials was not something the speaker had fully addressed. This incident prompted her to reflect on her approach to teaching about the word, leading to a decision to avoid using it directly and instead use a euphemism. The speaker grappled with the implications of this choice, considering her professional image and the historical weight of the word. She introduces the concept of 'points of encounter' to describe moments of直面 the n-word, which can elicit a range of emotional responses.
🗣️ The N-Word Beyond a Word
The speaker delves into the deeper implications of the n-word, arguing that it is more than just a word; it is an idea that encapsulates the belief in the inherent inferiority of black people. This belief, she suggests, is used to justify the ongoing inequality and injustice faced by black individuals. The speaker critiques the common discourse that reduces the n-word to a mere racial slur or an obscene term in music, emphasizing that such discussions fail to address its true nature. She shares her experience of implementing a policy in her class to visually present the word but never vocalize it, which led to a lack of understanding and discussion among her students. The speaker also reflects on the historical context of the n-word, noting that its use by black people as a form of political protest dates back to the 1770s, and she expresses a desire to educate her students about this complex history.
🏫 The Impact of the N-Word in Educational Settings
The speaker discusses the profound impact the n-word has when introduced in educational settings, particularly in literature like Mark Twain's 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,' which contains the word over 200 times. She describes how the word can poison the classroom environment when not properly contextualized, leading to broken trust between students and teachers. The speaker shares anecdotes from students who have been affected by the word's use in class, including instances of students switching majors or dropping classes due to the discomfort it causes. She also touches on the broader implications of this issue, mentioning protests at various colleges over the use of the n-word in teaching. The speaker advocates for a more thoughtful approach to teaching about the n-word, emphasizing the importance of understanding its historical and cultural significance.
🔍 Unpacking the N-Word's History and Significance
In this paragraph, the speaker explores the historical roots and political implications of the n-word, revealing that black people first used it as a form of protest against slavery as early as the 1770s. She contrasts this with the common misconception that the word's subversive use began much later. The speaker argues that the n-word is fundamentally an attack on black freedom and aspirations, and she gives examples of how the word is still used to suppress black success and rights today. She expresses a desire to facilitate open conversations about the n-word in her classroom, without using the word itself, and without placing the burden of explanation on black students. The speaker also shares her own personal encounters with the word and the emotional weight it carries, emphasizing the importance of understanding its history to navigate discussions about it effectively.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡N-word
💡Points of Encounter
💡Academic Setting
💡Freedom of Speech
💡Racism
💡Historical Documents
💡Euphemistic Phrase
💡Cultural Fabric
💡Teaching Crisis
💡Taboo
Highlights
A black woman teaching histories of race and US slavery experiences a classroom incident with the n-word.
The n-word was used by a student quoting a 1970s movie comedy, causing discomfort in the classroom.
The teacher's decision to never say the n-word in class, even when quoting, to avoid perpetuating its harmful connotations.
The concept of 'points of encounter' is introduced to describe moments of直面 the n-word.
The n-word's impact is not just historical; it carries present-day implications of racial inferiority.
The classroom becomes a fraught space for discussing the n-word, often leading to a breakdown in trust.
Students' reactions to the n-word in class can lead to switching majors or dropping classes.
The n-word's presence in literature and history makes it a challenging topic to navigate in academic settings.
The n-word is not just a word; it's an idea that perpetuates the notion of black inferiority.
The teacher's realization that the n-word is an assault on black freedom, mobility, and aspiration.
The importance of providing context and discussion when the n-word appears in educational materials.
Students' stories reveal the n-word's deep impact on their lives and the need for better education on its history.
The proposal of a freedom of speech debate on the use of the n-word in academic spaces.
Students' confessions during class discussions reveal the personal and emotional impact of the n-word.
The historical roots of the n-word as a political protest by black people, dating back to the 1770s.
The need for open and honest conversations about the n-word in the classroom, led by the teacher, not the students.
The importance of not making black students responsible for teaching others about the n-word's history and impact.
The teacher's personal journey and the significance of understanding one's own 'points of encounter' with the n-word.
Transcripts
the minute she said it the temperature
in my classroom dropped my students are
usually laser focused on me but they
shifted in their seats and looked away
I'm a black woman who teaches the
histories of race and us slavery I'm
aware that my social identity is always
on display and my students are
vulnerable too so I'm careful I try to
anticipate what part of my lesson might
go wrong but honestly I didn't even see
this one coming
none of my years of graduate school
prepared me for what to do when the
n-word entered my classroom I was in my
first year of teaching when the students
said the n-word in my class she was not
calling anyone a name she was
bright-eyed and bushy-tailed she came to
class with her readings done she sat in
the front row and she was always on my
team when she said it she was actually
making a point about my lecture by
quoting a line from a 1970s movie comedy
that had two racist slurs one for people
of Chinese descent and the other the
n-word as soon as she said it I held up
my hand as I whoa whoa whoa but she
assured me it's a joke from Blazing
Saddles and then she repeated it this
all happened ten years ago and how I
handled it haunted me for a long time it
wasn't the first time I thought about
the word in an academic setting I'm a
professor of US history it's it's in a
lot of the documents that I teach so I
had to make a choice after consulting
with someone I trusted I decided to
never say it
not even to quote it but instead to use
the euphemistic phrase the n-word even
this decision was complicated I didn't
have tenure yet and I worried that
senior colleagues would think that by
using the phrase I wasn't a serious
scholar but saying the actual word still
felt worse
the incident in my classroom forced me
to publicly reckon with the word the
history the violence but also the
history the violence but also any time
it was hurled at me
spoken casually in front of me any time
it rested on the tip of someone's tongue
it all came flooding up in that moment
right in front of my students and I had
no idea what to do so I've come to call
stories like mine points of encounter a
point of encounter describes the moment
you come face-to-face with the n-word if
you've ever been stumped or provoked by
the word whether as the result of an
awkward social situation and
uncomfortable academic conversation
something you heard in pop culture or if
you've been called the slur or witnessed
someone getting called the slur you have
experienced a point of encounter and
depending on who you are and how that
moment goes down you might have a range
of responses could throw you off a
little bit or it could be incredibly
painful and humiliating I've had lots of
these points of encounter in in my life
but one but one thing is true there's
there's not a lot of space to talk about
them that day in my classroom was pretty
much like all of those times I had an
uninvited running with the n-word I
froze because the n-word is hard to talk
about part of the reason the n-word is
so hard to talk about is usually only
discussed in one way as a figure of
speech we hear this all the time right
it's just a word the burning question
that cycles through social media is who
can and cannot say it black intellectual
tonica's Coates does a groundbreaking
job of defending the african-american
use of the word on the other hand Wendy
kaminer a white freedom of speech
advocate argues that if we don't all
just come out and say it we give the
word power and a lot of people feel that
way
the Pew Center recently entered the
debate in a survey called race in
America 2019 researchers asked US adults
if they thought it was okay to for a
white person to say the n-word 70
percent of all adults surveyed said
never and these debates are important
but they really obscure something else
they keep us from getting underneath to
the real conversation which is that the
n-word is not just a word it's it's not
neatly contained in a racist past a
relic of slavery fundamentally the
n-word is an idea
disguised as a word that black people
are intellectually biologically and
immutably inferior to white people and
and I think this is the most important
part that that inferiority means that
the injustice we suffer an inequality we
endure is essentially our own fault so
yes it is
speaking of the word only as racists pew
or as an obscenity in hip-hop music
makes it sound as if it's a disease
located in the American vocal chords
that can be snipped right out it's not
and it can't and I learned this from
talking to my students so next time
class met I apologized and I made an
announcement I would have a new policy
students would see the word in my
powerpoints in film in essays they read
but we would never ever say the word out
loud in class nobody ever said it again
but they didn't learn much either
afterwards what bothered me most was
that I didn't even explain to students
why of all the vile problematic words in
American English why this particular
word had its own buffer a surrogate
phrase the n-word most of my students
many of them born in the late 1990s and
afterwards didn't even know that the
phrase the n-word is a relatively new
invention in American English when when
I was growing up it didn't exist but in
the late 1980s black college students
writers intellectuals more and more
started to talk about racist attacks
against them but increasingly when they
told these stories they stopped using
the word instead they reduced it to the
initial end and called it the n-word
they felt that every time the word was
uttered it opened up old wounds so they
refused to say it they knew their
listeners would hear the actual word in
their heads that wasn't the point the
point was they didn't want to put the
word in their own mouths or into the air
by doing this they made an entire nation
start to second-guess themselves about
saying it this was such a radical move
the people are still mad about it
critics accuse those of us who use the
phrase the n-word or people who become
outraged you know just because the word
is said of being over principled
politically correct or as I just read a
couple of weeks ago in the New York
Times insufferably woke right so so I
bought into this a little bit too which
is why the next time I taught the course
I proposed a freedom of speech debate
the N word in academic spaces for or
against I was certain students would be
eager to debate who gets to say it and
who doesn't but they weren't instead my
students started confessing a white
student from New Jersey talked about
standing by as a black kid at her school
got bullied by this word she did nothing
and years later still carried the guilt
another from Connecticut talked about
the pain of severing a very close
relationship with a family member
because that family member refused to
stop saying the word one of the most
memorable stories came from a very quiet
black student from South Carolina she
didn't understand all the fuss she said
everyone at her school said the word she
wasn't talking about kids calling each
other name in the hall she explained
that at her school when teachers and
administrators became frustrated with an
african-american student they called
that student the actual n-word she said
it didn't bother her at all
but then a couple of days later she came
to visit me in my office hours and wept
she thought she was immune she realized
that she wasn't over the last ten years
I have literally heard hundreds of these
stories from all kinds of people from
all ages people in their 50s remembering
stories from the second grade and when
they were 6 either calling people the
word or being called the word but
carrying that all these years around
this word you know and as I listen to
people talk about their points of
encounter what the pattern that emerge
for me is a teacher that I found most
upsetting is the single most fraught
sight for these points of encounter is
the classroom most us kids are going to
meet the n-word in class one of the most
assigned books in u.s. high schools is
Mark Twain's The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn in which the word
appears over 200 times and and this is
an indictment of Huck Finn the word is
in lots of US literature in history it's
all over African American literature
yet I hear from students that when the
word is said during a lesson without
discussion and context it poisons the
entire classroom environment the trust
between student and teacher is broken
even so many teachers often with the
very best of intentions still say the
n-word in class they want to show and
emphasize the horrors of u.s. racism so
they rely on it for its shock value
invoking it brings into stark relief the
ugliness of our nation's past but they
forget the ideas are alive and well in
our cultural fabric
the six letter word is like a capsule of
accumulated hurt every time it is said
every time it releases into the
atmosphere the hateful notion that black
people are less my black students tell
me that when the word is quoted or
spoken in class they feel like a giant
spotlight is shining on them one of my
students told me that his classmates
were like bobble heads turning to gauge
his reaction a white student told me
that in the eighth grade when they were
learning to kill a mockingbird
and reading it out loud in class the
student was so stressed out at the idea
of having to read the word which the
teacher insisted all students do that
that the student ended up spending most
of the unit hiding out in the bathroom
this is serious
students across the country talk about
switching majors and dropping classes
because of poor teaching around the N
word the issue of faculty carelessly
speaking the word has reached such a
fevered pitch it's led to protests at
Princeton Emory the new school Smith
College where I teach and Williams
College where just recently students
have boycotted the entire English
department over it and other issues and
these are just the cases that make the
news this is a crisis and while student
reaction looks like an attack on freedom
of speech I promise this is an issue of
T of teaching my students are not afraid
of materials that have the n-word in it
they want to learn about James Baldwin
and William Faulkner and about the civil
rights movement
in fact their stories show that this
word is a central feature of their lives
as young people in the United States
it's in the music they love and in the
popular culture they emulate the comedy
they watch it's in TV and movies and
memorialized in museums they hear it in
locker rooms on Instagram in in the
hallways at school and the chat rooms
are the video games they play it is all
over the world they navigate but they
don't know how to think about it or even
really what the word means I didn't even
really understand what the word meant
until I did some research I was
astonished to learn that black people
first incorporated the N word into the
vocabulary as political protest not in
the 1970s or 1980s but as far back as
the 1770s and I wish I had more time to
talk about the long subversive history
of the black use of the n-word but I
will say this many times my students
will come up to me and say I understand
the virulent roots of this word it's
slavery they're only partially right
this word which existed before it became
a slur but it becomes a slur at a very
distinct moment in US history and that's
as large numbers of black people begin
to become free starting in the north in
the 1820s in other words this word is
fundamentally an assault on black
freedom black mobility and black
aspiration even now nothing so swiftly
unleashes an n-word tirade as a black
person asserting their rights or going
where they pleased or prospering think
of the attacks on Colin Kaepernick when
he kneeled or Barack Obama when he
became president
my students want to know this history
but when they ask questions their shush
and shamed by shying away from talking
about the n-word we have turned this
word into the ultimate taboo crafting it
into something so tantalizing that for
all us kids no matter their racial
background part of their coming-of-age
is figuring out how to negotiate this
word we treat conversations about it
like sex before sex education
we're squeamish we silence them so they
learn about it from misinformed friends
and in whispers I wish I could go back
to the classroom that day and push
through my fear to talk about the fact
that something actually happened not
just to me or to my black students but
to all of us you know I think in we're
all connected by our inability to talk
about this word but what if we explored
our points of encounter and did start to
talk about it today I try to create the
conditions in my classroom to have open
and honest conversations about it one of
those conditions not saying the word
we're able to talk about it because it
doesn't come into the classroom another
important condition is I don't make my
black students responsible for teaching
their classmates about this that is my
job
so I come prepared I hold the
conversation with a tight rein and I'm
armed with knowledge of the history I
always ask students the same question
why is talking about the n-word hard
their answers are amazing they're
amazing
more than anything though I have become
deeply acquainted with my own points of
encounter my personal history around
this word because when the n-word comes
to school or really anywhere
it brings with it all of the complicated
history of us racism the nation's
history and my own right here right now
there's no avoiding it
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