The N Word

It is remarkable how one word can carry with it so much hate and pain and suffering. Just six letters strung together to form two short syllables. And yet I find it difficult to say it out loud. In Go Tell It on the Mountain James Baldwin’s characters only use that word when scorning those they direct it at. Today, this use of the word is still prevalent, however, it has also become associated with many other connotations. While it is impossible for me to ever fully understand the pain and suffering that this word has caused and still causes, I feel strongly that Baldwin would agree that those feelings are in some way muted by the casual way in which the word is now often times used.

In the novel the word comes up often, but usually under similar circumstances. Whether it be Florence cursing Gabriel for his berating of Roy or John remembering how his father sought to stress the title under which he and John both existed, the word consistently turns up at heated points in the novel when one character uses it to some how diminish another. By examining the connection between the uses of the word in the context of the novel it is possible to understand Baldwin’s own feelings towards the word. Baldwin believed that a large part of the black man’s struggle was a psychological one, “You can only be destroyed by believing that you are really what the white world calls a nigger,” he said. The word itself serves only as a label for that intangible perception, and still, to deny that the word brings with it that meaning is to jeopardize the harsh memory of the hurt that it caused. The word should now serve to remind us always of that hurt lest we should ever forget it.

This brings us to the problem of understanding the word today. Between two black people the word can be used as a term signifying friendship, but also as a hurtful epithet. For any white person to use it in describing someone else, however,