99 New: The N-Word

At the very last minute, the high school in a northern suburb abutting Milwaukee cancelled its scheduled run of a student production of “To Kill a Mockingbird” because of protests threatened by community members over the N-word which would have been spoken if the performance adhered to Harper Lee’s original narrative.

Social media scolding ensued. Black people scolding white people. White people scolding white people. When is it acceptable to say the N-word? Never. Well, never by whites most people say but, unfortunately but consistent with the story line, it is, in fact, a white person who says the N-word in the book and would be a white student actor who would have said it in the production. Others note that black people do sometimes use the N-word as if to throw sand on the fire that the N-word is fundamentally unspeakable.

Yes, black people and some white people will say, some black people do use the N-word but it is theirs and only theirs to use, it’s unutterable by white people. It’s up to black people to decide when and how to use the N-word because it is their trauma and history that are revisited by its use. I would never not use the N-word because it is only black people’s word to say. I just would never use it. It conjures up the worst of our American history, the sickest, most evil part, so the word has no currency in my vocabulary. That I even have this view, this choice to say or not say, or more importantly, to hear or not hear, would be labeled by some as a manifestation of my white privilege.

Still, the word is part of Harper Lee’s prize-winning novel, a book that has been read by high school students for decades and used to teach the gruesome facts of racism, prettied up as it was by Scout’s precocious dear self and Boo Radley’s unexpected heroism. But must a production use the N-word because it appeared in the book? Is the production violating some principle of fidelity by omitting the word or using a different word?

My first reaction would be to say yes. Initially, I came down on the side of going forward with the production, thinking school administrators had erred in so quickly dropping what had probably been weeks of work by students, both white and black. But that view comes from my privileged view of the N-word as an historical artifact. “To Kill a Mockingbird” is an illustration of our racist history so the N-word would be spoken in that context – historically. Nope. That is my privilege talking and it has taken writing this essay up to this point to realize it.

If the use of the N-word was actually historical, something that people used to say, an invective that once was used, long ago, but not anymore, that would be one thing. And it would be a happy, almost fanciful thing. Gee, look, we all used to be racists but thank God we aren’t anymore. Then we could utter Harper Lee’s words like they were as unassailable as Shakespeare’s, old words said in old ways, heard in the time they were written, taken for the fossils they are.

But the N-word is hardly a fossil. The N-word is still breathing. It has wings and feet, it flies and lands, walks the earth, sits on the bus, elbows people waiting patiently in line. Said by the wrong people in the wrong way, the N-word is a formidable creature, with teeth and talons that sink into people and leave deep wounds that scar over but bleed underneath. The N-word causes injury and damage.

So we can’t have that. We can’t allow weapons in our schools.

Maybe it’s too bad. Maybe it’s a sad day in our history when we can’t have an ‘honest’ depiction of how life was in the American south decades ago. Maybe we are missing an opportunity to have a ‘genuine’ discussion about race in this privileged suburban high school. Maybe we are violating copyright laws or the sensibilities of theater purists. Maybe we are being checked by angry community members. Maybe we just want to avoid controversy. Maybe it’s the wrong decision to cancel the production.

Or maybe we are realizing that the wounds caused by the N-word, by the history and the current events it engenders, well, those wounds are still bleeding, they are fresh, not scarred over. Not yet. Not for a long while. If we are to be decent people, we can’t knowingly be part of causing damage – not in school plays, not in anything we do.

I think Harper Lee would understand.