Censoring Words has bad results.

I learned last month that students, teachers and others in Vallejo City Unified School District could not access my website www.ethicalego.com. Vallejo School District uses a web filtering service that blocks my website and assigns an “R” rating for the use of adult language.

My website received this rating because of my article that reported how Comic Michael Richards screamed the “N” word at audience members. I discussed how this gave Americans an opportunity to discuss racism, but instead they talked about uses of the forbidden n-word and the appropriateness of apologies.

I added, “Even this limited discussion was dishonest, because mainstream print and television media standards require the use of the "n-word" euphemism for the word "nigger".  The last line is was the offense that motivated Vallejo School District and their internet filtering service to block my full website.

I enclosed the term in quotation marks to show I used it as a word and not for its meaning. It is ironic that I as a journalist cannot report someone using this racial slur without some school districts and web filtering service blocking my website. If I choose to, I cannot even describe on my website how someone called me this term without them censoring me. Nevertheless, Fox TV shows the Comic Michael Richards nightly in Seinfeld Show reruns. I asked them to reclassify my website.

Some people probably believe that banning the word is a positive outcome. It reminds me of hide-and-go-seek games I played with my young children. They believed they hid by covering their eyes. They could not see me, so they believed I could not see them.  This policy banning the word only prevents people from intelligently discussing American history. It does not stop people from shouting it as an insult.  

Forcing writers to use the N-word euphemism contributes to confusion about racial prejudice. It denies writers the freedom to write accurate history. This restriction against using accurate terms to explain American history of racism degrades my experiences and those of my ancestors.  “N-word” has no meaning to younger Americans. They only know it means something bad or obscene about people labeled black.

There is a current controversy over yet another television star using this racial slur. Bounty hunter Duane "Dog" Chapman apologized for using it after his son recorded him repeatedly using it to describe his son’s girlfriend.  He claimed that he was not a racist and often used the word conversationally with black acquaintances. He claimed that he did not really know until three or four days ago what that meant to black people.

I do not know if Chapman was honest and it does not matter.  Soon, younger Americans will be able to say truthfully they did not know what “N-word” stands for or meant to people. How can they when they never hear it or read its history?  They will not know understand the history that created it.

I suspect that few Americans know the terms history and meaning. Americans used it to indicate a person with dark-brown skin. They used it later to suggest lower human status in a slave and racially segregated society. They used it they way monarchal societies use “royalty” and “commoner” and “serf” and “landlord” as status terms. The people using those terms convinced themselves they were acknowledging differences in status and in human worth after imposing this status by power and law for so long. They did not see a need to fling insults at inferiors, although they suggest insult by believing themselves racially superior humans.

This changed when the white group’s absolute physical and legal power over dark-brown Americans waned in the 1800’s and into the 1960s Civil Rights era. Some people used the term as a weapon for racial intimidation and degradation to bolster their poor self-image and feelings of powerlessness. Recall Michael Richards screaming it repeatedly as if it were an incantation that empowered him against those brown-skinned hecklers.

People show their poor self-image and desperation when they use this racial slur. They make themselves the vulnerable partner in hostile partnership. The time passed when it had true power to do anything but to disgust those who hear it. Now, people using it need the person they target to cooperate and to accept the intended emotional wound by reacting emotionally to it. Otherwise, they stand there feeling foolish.  

Outlawing any written expression of this word only gives it powers it should not have. Nevertheless, television and cable should cancel the shows of stars that use this term, because the poor taste they display disgusts audiences. 

Kenneth Brooks is an independent writer. Contact him at P.O. Box 882, Vallejo, CA 94590. Opinion@ethicalego.com