When I wrote “Why Black History Month Isn’t Racist But White History Month Would Be (and Other White Conundrums),” I summarized and closed with the following sentence: “Because you know your history and because you are a decent person.”

Of all white conundrums, “Why is it OK for black people to say the N-word but not white people?” is probably the most embarrassing. The answer to this question is of course identical to the conclusion of the prior article, but I did not include the infamous racial slur because it seemed like the topic deserved its own piece. Further, while the answer is the same the question is a bit different. The last article concerned why white people shouldn’t celebrate their race the way many black people do. That had something to do with whiteness — what should white identity really entail? White people being able to freely say racial slurs has nothing to do with whiteness. Only blackness.

Asking why it’s “not OK” for whites to use the N-word is really asking why it isn’t socially acceptable. Asking why something isn’t socially acceptable is asking why a majority opinion exists that this something is immoral. What’s socially acceptable is always rooted in ethics, from slavery to the age of consent, and thus the question is actually “Why is it immoral for whites to say the N-word but not blacks?”

Morality concerns what does harm to others. Our answer is thus self-evident. Whites who use the slur do more harm (psychologically, emotionally) to black folk than other black people who use it.

“It’s like a knife,” Ice Cube told Bill Maher after Maher used the slur. “It’s been used as a weapon against us by white people.” Maya Angelou described it as a “poison.” Human beings, she said, “are worth everything. Women are better than being called the ‘b’ word, and blacks are better than being called the ‘n’ word… You are better than being called the word that would deny your humanity.” It is astonishing that some white people seem confused that a term historically used to mark blacks as subhuman, worthy of oppression, rape, and murder, might cause emotional distress, from embarrassment to rage. (It’s not actually astonishing; white people have a long history of lacking basic empathy and critical thinking skills.) The slur causes such pain that physical dangers like knives and poison often accompany its description.

While some African Americans use the N-word and others despise it so much they do not (Ice Cube and Angelou, respectively), in either case the word coming from a white person has a different connotation because of our history. That is obvious and hardly complex. Even if the user considers himself or herself an antiracist or speaking without racist intent, the impact needs to be considered as well. It’s what ethical people do. They think about how their actions affect others; for the N-word, the impact of a white user is simply not the same as that of a black user, even if some black people are also bothered when fellow blacks use the term.

If what’s immoral is based on what causes harm to others, we know then that varying amounts of harm translates to varying degrees of wrong. Ethics exist on a continuum, a sliding scale; they are not black and white. A poor man who steals $25 from a rich man to buy a meal because he is hungry has not committed a wrong as grave as a rich man who steals $25 from a poor man because he is greedy. The intents are quite different, and while the financial loss is the same it hardly has the same impact. A woman who kills a rapist in self-defense has not committed so grave an immoral act (in fact, none at all in my view) as a woman who kills her husband to cash in a life insurance policy. Different intent, even different impact: though the loss of either man may cause pain to their family and friends, one scenario rids the world of a rapist.

Knowing ethics are situational, it’s easy enough to imagine a continuum for the immorality of the N-word, from least wrong (or perhaps not wrong at all) to most wrong, such as:

• A white person quoting a black person criticizing the word or a white racist using the word (as a means of education)
• A white person using it when singing hip-hop alone in a car (only potential harm exists: frequent use of the word privately could lead to public use)
• A white person using it in a joke or mimicking its use as a term of endearment among black people (these contexts cause emotional and psychological harm)
• A white person using it to degrade, vilify, oppress (overt racism, extreme emotional and psychological harm)

Other scenarios could be conjured. While some will object, insisting these are all equally immoral (or disagree on the order — perhaps the first and second could be switched, as the first one is public and might cause more harm), emphasizing that the use of the N-word is on an ethical continuum is key to demonstrating why it’s not OK for white people to use it, why it isn’t a double standard, hypocritical, all that intellectual laziness.

Imagine the scenarios we would put before those above. These would be situations even less unethical, perhaps morally acceptable. For example, a black person singing along to hip-hop, using the N-word as a term of endearment with a friend, writing a song that includes it, etc. None of these carry the harm or potential harm that the examples featuring white folk do (even though they may carry some, such as upsetting other African Americans who do not use the term, influencing white folk, and so on).

So we see how different contexts and different speakers cause varying degrees of harm, which changes the immorality accordingly. To be moral, we whites must be cognizant of the pain we can cause. You do not use the N-word because you know your history and because you are a decent person.

(Here I must acknowledge my bias. As a white writer interested in race, I often am in the first category for whites above, quoting others word-for-word so as to preserve the full power, whether wickedness or wisdom, of the N-word. I do not censor the words of James Baldwin:

What you say about somebody else, anybody else, reveals you. What I think of you as being is dictated by my own necessities, my own psychology, my own fears, and desires. I’m not describing you when I talk about you, I’m describing me… I didn’t invent the nigger… I’ve always known that I am not the nigger. But if I am not the nigger, and if it’s true your invention reveals you, then who is the nigger?… You’re the nigger, baby. It isn’t me.

Nor do I censor — whitewash — the true wickedness and hatred of whites who use the slur to tear down and demean black people, such as when a Baltimore teacher, in addition to calling her black students “idiots” and “stupid,” screamed that if they didn’t take schoolwork seriously each would end up a “punk-ass nigger who’s going to get shot.”

There are times when the N-word is redacted not to protect black people but to protect white people. Not all readers will agree, but I think there are moments when quoting the word — in writing; verbally falls elsewhere on the moral continuum — can remind whites of its evil, its pain, in the same way exposure to the true barbarism of our racial history can deeply impact white people and change them in positive ways. In a time of white denial, such an education of the word’s full power may be helpful.)

But even after understanding the moral difference between users of different colors and accepting that whites should not use the term, whites may yet have a remaining conundrum: “Why do black people use the term when it’s hate speech targeting them?”

While again emphasizing that many African Americans detest the word no matter who says it and would never say it themselves, we need to understand that appropriating derogatory labels is a very human thing to do, almost to the point of being predictable. Victims often seize the hate speech of perpetrators and adopt it because it strips the latter of their power.

There are many examples in world history of this. “Yankee Doodle” was originally a song used by the British to mock the American troops during the Revolution (yankee itself was likewise a term of derision). The song was quickly appropriated by the Americans. Next, observe what the GLAAD Glossary of Terms notes of queer: “Once considered a pejorative term, queer has been reclaimed by some LGBT people to describe themselves; however, it is not a universally accepted term even within the LGBT community.” Impressionist was created to mock Monet and others who didn’t paint in an ultra-realist fashion. If a sneering art critic inspires the reclamation and redesign of insults, why wouldn’t white supremacists? A jesuit was originally someone criticized for using the name of Jesus too often. Suffragette was first intended to mock militant women. Nasty woman became a badge of honor in 2016, as did deplorable. For many African Americans, “black” used to be a pejorative, “negro” respectful, but now it’s the reverse. There are countless other reappropriations, varying in their degrees of popularity, from tree hugger to bitch. Parents even teach children to handle bullies in a similar manner. Adopting words meant to attack and insult you is a human trait that speaks to our resiliency, feelings of self-worth, and deep appreciation for irony and tragicomedy. Understanding this should erase white people’s assumptions that black people who use the N-word are expressing nothing but self-loathing.

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On the weekend of August 19, 2017, leftist activists organized two events in Kansas City, Missouri: a rally against prisoner abuse and a march against white supremacy. Though successful, these rallies were stalked by men dressed in camouflage and armed with knives, handguns, and rifles — members of a right-wing “militia” group called the “Three Percenters.”

These men were inspired by the “militia” that protected the neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and Confederates in Charlottesville, Virginia, the week before. They were not present to protect the Kansas Citians gathering for justice for prisoners and people of color, as they absurdly implied in the press and to passersby. They came to intimidate, no doubt with some hope a protester would break a window or step out of line in some fashion so they could murder said protester and call it justified. The Three Percenters circled the protesters during speeches and then followed them on their march.

The Kansas City Police Department allowed this. It could have kept these counter-protesters behind a police line, cornered off away from the crowd, as it did during a June 10, 2017 protest/counter-protest. But instead the “militia” was allowed to stalk the crowd. Videos even surfaced of a disturbingly friendly police-“militia” relationship, in which one Three Percenter says the KCPD asked them to come and another tells police they’d “keep you in the loop” concerning any altercations (highlighting what they were there for, to take matters into their own hands, the police a mere afterthought).

Because the Three Percenters were there to intimidate, because weaponry readied against unarmed protesters is both unnecessary and enormously increases the risk of altercations, violence, or death, because protesters felt unsafe, and because (as with a car mowing down protesters) it is only a matter of time before a “militia” kills a protester for no reason, we demand the following:

1. During future events, “militias” and other counter-protesters will be kept at a safe distance behind a police line. The police will not allow them to leave their area, circle the crowd, enter the crowd, follow the crowd, or harass or terrorize or intimidate the crowd in any way.

2. The KCPD will immediately release a public statement declaring the above is official policy and will be followed to the letter.

https://www.change.org/p/kcpd-keep-the-militia-on-a-leash

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The chilling hatred white supremacists, white nationalists, and neo-nazis displayed in Charlottesville, Virginia, the weekend of August 12, 2017, was an affront to human dignity — and at multiple times a literal attack upon it. On Friday night on the University of Virginia campus, students standing up against the “Alt-Right” were surrounded and assaulted. At the “Unite the Right” rally the next day at a city park, a rally participant ran over and killed Heather Heyer, a paralegal and anti-racist activist. He injured 19 others in the attack. Others severely beat Deandre Harris, an anti-racist protester and hip-hop artist, in a parking garage. Fistfights broke out elsewhere.

Symbols of white supremacist violence, genocide, and oppression were prevalent. Swastikas and Nazi salutes, Ku Klux Klan hoods and crosses, Confederate flags and burning torches. Chants like “Proud to be white,” “You will not replace us,” “White lives matter,” and “Blood and soil” (an old Nazi slogan) filled the air. Many enjoyed the privilege of walking around with heavy weaponry and acting provocatively without fear of swift and painful police retribution.

Yet standing against them, arm-in-arm and singing, were local clergy. People of all colors, genders, orientations, and beliefs worked together — truly, the American ideal — to show with their bodies and voices that white supremacy has no place in a decent society. Residents and visitors from around the nation, youths and workers, radicals and civil rights activists, they all marched through the streets together in the name of justice. Not all went home unscathed. One did not go home at all. But all did the right thing in that moment. History will look as admirably upon them as it looks upon the souls attacked on the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday 1965.

It is their example that Kansas City must follow. With our words and with our bodies, Kansas Citians must confront racial hatred in all its forms. What happened in Charlottesville can happen here.

Kansas City is still scarred by its history of oppression of people of color: from where we live to how long we live to how much wealth we have. Events in 2017 alone have left an open wound in our present. As documented, swastikas, nooses, slurs, vandalism, threatening phone calls, declarations of “white power,” Alt-Right literature condemning a diverse America, beatings, and a shooting by a man hunting Arabs have all been experienced in our city in the past eight months alone. The past few years is an even darker story. There is no question the same elements that made this weekend’s horrific events possible exist in Kansas City.

We will confront daily the legacy of Kansas City’s white supremacy, working for equality and prosperity for all people. All of Kansas City — especially white people, who have turned away in the face of injustice for too long — must address racial and other mistreatment or stereotyping wherever they see it and at the moment they hear it. All of us must be fearless in the face of danger. We must confront hatred with our words and our bodies. We will speak up and show up. Justice expects nothing less. History expects nothing less.

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In the 1920s through the 1940s, Dr. Theodor Seuss Geisel worked as a political and advertisement cartoonist, his work appearing in publications such as Life, PM, Judge, and Vanity Fair. He started writing and illustrating children’s books in 1936, but most of the popular works we know today, like The Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham, weren’t created until the 1950s and 60s.

While such books are beloved, Dr. Seuss’ cartoons in the newspapers often contained vilely racist imagery. Depictions of black Americans and Africans played on white notions of black savagery, inferiority, and animalism. His drawings of the Japanese and Japanese Americans served propaganda functions important to the United States, namely presenting them as treacherous and evil to stoke support for the war effort and justify discriminatory barbarism like the illegal imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of Japanese Americans in what U.S. officials called “concentration camps.”

To his credit, Dr. Seuss did change his tone over time–it is believed he looked back on his racist fear-mongering with regret. His cartoons about blacks changed first, transforming during World War II to encourage the eradication of anti-black prejudice and support for equal opportunity in the workplace, to unite the nation in its fight against racist, fascist regimes abroad.

Yet at the same time, he was creating cartoons featuring Japanese monsters you see. He wrote to readers that complained:

Right now, when the Japs are planting their hatchets in our skulls, it seems like a hell of a time for us to smile and warble: “Brothers!” It is a rather flabby battlecry. If we want to win, we’ve got to kill Japs… We can get palsy-walsy afterward with those that are left.

Dr. Seuss visited Japan in 1953 to study the effects of the war on Japanese children, an experience that changed him. He dedicated Horton Hears a Who! to Mitsugi Nakamura, a university dean he befriended there. Horton and books like The Sneetches are widely viewed today as apologies for past racist sentiments and artwork.

One example of his early anti-black racism were ads for Flit, a bug spray. Dr. Seuss’ drawings of Africans strongly resembled apes, a popular comparison of that era–not to mention earlier and later ones.

Another example was a cartoon playing on popular American figures of speech. The setting is a store. Shoppers are looking to buy things one would never buy: a needle for a haystack, a fly for your ointment, a wrench to throw in your machine to make it stop. In the final panel, with their massive red lips, are “n—–s for your woodpile” (a saying that meant something seemed suspicious, likely derived from escaped slaves hiding at Underground Railroad locations). A white sales clerk shows off his black merchandise to a white buyer.

During World War II, the Japanese were widely considered racially inferior, unintelligent, treacherous, savage, and murderous. The majority of the American populace, media, and governmental bodies characterized them as mad dogs, yellow monkeys, cockroaches, vipers, and vermin. Dr. Seuss did his part to feed the bigotry and fear, portraying the Japanese as monsters, as pig-nosed, squinty-eyed, devilish little fiends. Dr. Seuss’ “Japs” were an infestation of street cats, large insects, or terrorists waiting for word from Tokyo to begin blowing up Americans.

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On Wednesday, June 29, 2016, about 40 Kansas City high school teachers, college professors, and public librarians gathered for an educator summit at the Central Resource Library of Johnson County to begin creating a curriculum on Kansas City’s racial history.

The library’s Race Project aims to “facilitate intentional dialogue about the structural forms of racism in America and Kansas City. We focus on the American education system in particular, attempting to conduct a sincere investigation into the history, causes, and potential solutions to systemic, structural racism.” The project has several important partners, including high schools in Blue Valley, Raytown, Wyandotte, and Shawnee Mission, Rockhurst University, and author Tanner Colby (Some of My Best Friends are Black), who has spoken at more than one event.

Wednesday’s summit sought to

create meaningful curriculum on racial inequalities in the KC area, and to promote social justice initiatives that encourage community and student engagement incorporating We are Superman, Our Divided City, Racism in Kansas City: A Short History, and Some of My Best Friends are Black. Participants will engage in active dialogue about the difficulties embedded within “race talk,” practice the use of “classroom tools” to enhance classroom conversations about race, develop grade-level appropriate curriculum that fosters critical thinking, research skills, and that address local social justice issues in the Kansas City area.

Of importance to the group was teaching high school and college students current inequities between blacks and whites in Kansas City — in wealth, education, healthcare, police stops and searches, and so on — and then researching the historical causes, all in a student-led manner. Various proposals were offered after this, including having students go to grade schools or middle schools to teach the next generation, having students design feasible ideas on how to address the inequities and social ills and then competing for grant or scholarship funds in the spirit of a “science fair,” or taking students on bus tours to important places in Kansas City’s racial past.

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