Daily writing prompt

If you could permanently ban a word from general usage, which one would it be? Why?

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If it were in my power to purge, cancel, ban, whatever you want to call it, one word from lexicon, it would be the “n” word.

As a Caucasian man, I’m the least qualified person based on race to comment on this, many of you may say. However, sitting outside the zone, I posit the “n” word is the most obnoxious, degrading and unwelcome term in the English language.

Swapping an “a” for “er” does not take the power back from hatred, as conventional thought has alarmingly force-fed into our current society. I offer an alternate view and invite you to take it or leave it. I’m a minority in my opinion, so much my mixed-race son understands and respects my outlook and censors himself in my company but would just as soon see me “get over myself.” My rebuttal has always been and always will be, I will not bow in my convictions on this subject.

What would Malcolm X, Dr. King, Baynard Rustin, Rosa Parks, Huey P. Newton or Ella Barker, who loved their race so much they risked all to stoke a justful uprising say right now? How could any of them stomach the reek of a modern society flaunting a despicable word amongst its own, for which said freedom fighters and civil rights figureheads gave their lives to be rid of? A word carrying such divisive ridicule, shame and degradation it licensed racists of the world to go unchecked until the 1960s. Blood spilled, martyrs made, yet that goddamn word still lingers deep into the new millennium. No matter how you rebrand it, the “n” word is still venom.

For all the progressions we’ve made in America, we’ve regressed three steps backwards as racism continues to lurk in certain pockets of our country. One reason is not only from a pass-down of bigotry between hate-mongering generations, but the inexcusable pushing of the “n” word as street (and now mainstream) orthodox. Richard Pryor was flagrant of dropping the full monty “n” word for comedic purposes during the 1970s, but nowadays, you can’t get away from the “a” connotation in this era’s (or the 1990s, for that matter) hip-hop, rap, entertainment and sports communities. Dropped between friends, enemies, even non-acquaintances, it’s shameful and as dumb as white folk exchanging amongst themselves, “Waddup, my honkey?”

Worse are the discussions I hear over who gets a free pass to use the “n” word in other cultures and walks of life, based on street-level worth. It’s gotten so out of control, I’ve heard youngblood gangstas, rappers, athletes and comics not only toss out the “n” word in equal increments as f-bombs and doofus-minded, horndog sexism (where’s Queen Latifah to bark in protest “Who you calling a bitch?”), but to claim white rapper Eminem (one of the greatest of all-time, to be sure) has the open invite to use it without leading to fisticuffs. As Cris Carter used to say on ESPN, C’mon, man.

Long and short, friends, the “n” word as it’s used today, does its own community a tremendous disservice. It shows a communal disrespect for both its heritage and its contemporary culture. It tells the racists of the world a large percentage operates under a disturbingly brainwashed acceptance of deprecatory self-loathing. The J. Edgar Hoover Administration infiltrated sectors of urban California six decades ago, pumping drugs and guns into oppressed hellholes they became. The brutally honest 1990s films Boyz ‘n the Hood and Menace II Society were not celebrations of gang life and its “n” word-huffing nihilism; they were caveats of Hoover’s slum-created poisoned well carrying on in destitution and self-deprecation. If anything, “gangsta” has gotten worse and even more dangerous today, hitting not only the inner cities of every major American metropolis, but well past their suburbs. The so-called reclamation of the “n” word is one reason why.

The longer the “n” word prevails in modern culture amongst its own populace, the racists continue to win.

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.