Listening to NPR news this afternoon, I heard a story about the Washington Redskins changing the name of the team. An NPR newswoman was interviewing a member of the Pawnee tribe about the name change. What struck me was that neither one mentioned the word “Redskins.” The NPR interviewer referred to the name as “this racial slur,” but never said what it was. Oy!
Whether the word no-longer-to-be-spoken is “redskin” or “the N word” or “the K word” for a Jew, I look forward to the day when derogatory epithets can be said aloud and written out, when appropriate, not with meanness or a desire to hurt people, but rather with a recognition that how a word is used may be more important than the word itself. Having to refer to Joseph Conrad’s novella not by its real name but as “The N word of the Narcissus” strikes me as silly.
Years ago, I led workshops in Jerusalem, as well as around the U.S. and Canada, in which Christians, Muslims, and Jews participated. We had two blackboards or whiteboards in the room. I labelled one “Jews” and the other “Arabs.” Then I asked people to say aloud, to the whole group, the names they had been called as Jews or Arabs, the names they had called other Jews or Arabs, and the names they had heard their friends and family call Jews or Arabs. All the names were then written on the boards. Some of the names were very unflattering! But by the end of the process, which turned into a sort of game, many people were laughing as they called out otherwise ugly words and phrases that had been thrown at them at some point in life. Context makes all the difference.
I hope that once a new name is found for DC’s football team, the old name will not be considered unmentionable. Indeed, I hope that someday we’ll all be able to laugh about it, even on NPR.