By Katie RessmeyerThe Daily Northwestern
Mark Twain wrote the word 215 times in “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”
Rappers use the word in their songs.
Now, it has become the basis for Jabari Asim’s latest book, “The N Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn’t, and Why.”
Asim, a former Northwestern student who did not graduate but has gone on to become deputy editor of the Washington Post Book World, spoke about the book and his take on the racial epithet Friday. About 30 people attended the event, which was part of the Crain Lecture Series, in the McCormick Tribune Center.
“I was very interested in looking at its role in American culture specifically,” Asim said.
Medill Prof. Charles Whitaker, also the chairman of Students Publishing Co., the organization that publishes The Daily, facilitated the speech. He began with questions on the cultural history of the word and specifically Asim’s charge that Thomas Jefferson was “the foremost architect of Negro inferiority.”
Although Asim acknowledged that the Founding Fathers were proponents of slavery, he said Jefferson was different.
“He was lying basically,” Asim said. “It was really inaccurate, awful by any measure.”
Jefferson’s written myths included claims that slaves did not feel physical or emotional pain.
Asim said Jefferson was not the only historical figure to contribute to the dehumanization of blacks: Charles Darwin said blacks would become extinct over time, and Abraham Lincoln did not believe blacks to be equal and proposed a number of colonization schemes for freed slaves, he said.
“We often have an all-or-nothing opinion of history,” Asim said. “We need a comprehensive portrait of these men.”
Asim said that in everyday language, neither whites nor blacks should use the racial epithet, which he excluded from his speech.
“There is no justification for conversational usage,” Asim said. “We are capable of coming up with something better.”
Journalists, writers and other artists have the right to use the epithet, he said. For example, according to Asim, a writer is obliged to use the word when portraying a period of history when this language was used with regularity.
A small number of rappers have also learned to use the word when it is justified, Asim said. However, he said he disagrees with many rappers’ notion that the word must be “reclaimed.”
“Why reclaim a word that is synonymous with black inferiority?” he said.
Readers have approached him with questions on the word and other similarly contentious words. Asim said this signals that Americans are ready to address the issue and recognize that they are responsible to a certain degree.
“People see it as an opportunity to facilitate another type of conversation,” he said. “As long as racist attitudes exist, then we have to confront these questions.”
For Asim, confronting these issues involves educating younger generations about the meaning and history of the word, he said.
“It is valuable to get the direct commentary from the people who have lived it,” Asim said.
He said he recognizes the difficulty teachers face when trying to educate their students about words that essentially cannot be spoken in a classroom.
“They must tiptoe very lightly onto that land mine,” Asim said.
However, teachers should not target black students when addressing such issues, said Medill Prof. Susan Mango Curtis.
“Bring up the subject, but don’t direct it at the child,” Curtis said. “They are not a representative of the race.”
After hearing Asim speak, Weinberg senior Nick Tygesson said he enjoyed the discussion of the progress of race relations and plans to read the book.
“It was very interesting,” Tygesson said. “I appreciated Asim’s recognition of multiple viewpoints.”
Reach Katie Ressmeyer at [email protected].
