Words are only powerful if used in the right context. If you call someone a nigger in a rap song, no one cares. But write that word on a wipe board, and the university calls in the FBI.
Northwestern found that out last year. During Winter and Spring quarters, racial epithets were written on boards at several dorms, causing an outcry on campus and resulting in a student task force, of which I am a member. Despite police efforts and the involvement of the FBI, no suspects have been caught.
Some might not want to keep talking about this in a new year. But forgetting about the past just leaves us open to a new crop of racial hatred. I know; it happened to me. It might not have been on my door, but sometimes, the spoken word cuts just as deep.
I was at The Daily, typing notes on the University of Michigan’s affirmative action case, which then hadn’t even reached the Supreme Court. Someone asked me what I was working on.
“Marisa’s writing an article on how she got her job this summer,” another person interjected as he walked by.
That was enough to rile me up. “Don’t even go there with me,” I said.
He took my advice and forgot about affirmative action. Instead, he pursed together his lips and spat out, “Spic.”
He probably didn’t realize he was insulting my language skills by using that ethnic slur, which originally referred to Mexican immigrants who could not speak English. And that irony passed over me also, as I was too busy dealing with the fact that he had made me embarrassed to be Latina.
How ironic that this word came from someone who regularly complimented my Daily articles, which I assume take proper English skills to write.
Actually, the ironic thing is that the person who said this to me generally wasn’t a racist. But to break something down, you’ve got to know what it’s made of. And this is something I found in a surprising place.
When I told my brother, a sophomore at a large state school, he told me that kind of thing happens all the time.
True, I said. But I know a lot of people who don’t write racist comments on walls after a long night at The Keg of Evanston.
Then he said something that brought his perspective home for me.
“I started saying the word nigger, because nigger’s a funny word, right?” he said.
I can think of funnier, I thought. How many other words are there in the dictionary?
“So I kept saying it and saying it, and I realized, I had become a racist.”
I thought about giving my brother a big-sister ass-whooping for saying that, but he wouldn’t care if I did.
That’s the problem. The people who commit hate crimes don’t care about the effects they have on others. I guess there is something funny in those words to those who say them –I laughed hysterically when I first heard the word “asshole” at age 7.
But if we don’t continue a dialogue, those who perpetrate these crimes will continue to act like second-graders, redecorating with hatred until the graffiti becomes wallpaper.
