I’m solidly middle-aged – or maybe 46 is old now? I’m solidly middle-class. And, most significantly in this context, white. Super white. “I’m genetically 100% Swedish” white. “My concealer shade is “Custard”” white (side note: fuck you, NARS…). “I get a tan on one side of my face from driving in sunny weather” white.
And whilst reading the above may make me sound like a Connecticut tradwife, there are some curveballs in the mix. Quite apart from the fact that I never managed to find a husband (maybe add dog-mom spinster to the paragraph above?), I’m not quite as easy to pigeonhole as you may think. Sure, I’m a choral singer. And I mean “Bach and Handel” not “Pentatonix” choral singing. But in my own life? I was in my youth and remain in my heart a metalhead and a hip hop afficionado. You put my Music app on shuffle and you can never know if you’ll be hit by a harpsichord concerto, Pantera, or NWA… (Makes me an unpopular DJ, I can tell you.)
But that last one… NWA… that’s who – or maybe I should more correctly say WHAT – brings me here.
Rap emerged and grew from within an almost exclusively Black community – so naturally the vast majority of artists were (and still are) Black. And, to not pussy-foot around this any longer, there are words Black people can say, and white people can’t. You know the word I mean. I’m obviously not going to spell it out.
Would I use The Word in conversation myself? Never. Did I viscerally flinch every one of the 101 times it was said in Django Unchained (said, to paraphrase Bill Burr, “hard… not pronounced with an A… with the R… and (he) hit the R, like, STUCK the landing….”)? Hell yes I did.
But when this if-I-were-any-whiter-I’d-glow-in-the-dark, middle-aged, spinster dog-mom is listening to ODB, in the privacy of her own home, singing along (because she’s neurodivergent and has an ability to remember almost every lyric she’s ever heard, but not which day the garbage gets collected): Am I allowed to sing THAT particular lyric? In the context of the track that it’s part of. A track that’s made it past goodness knows how many producers, record label executives, DJs, and (because I’ve got enough musician friends to know that streaming makes artists minimal income compared to purchasing their music) I’ve even paid the artist(s) for. Is that word part of, for want of a less pretentious word, the art that the artist has created – integral to it and thus part of what makes the art what it is – so reproducing the track in my own voice means reproducing the whole piece? Or am I meant and expected to self-censor and skip that word? Because – and hear me out on this one – as a writer, if people can start randomly cutting out pieces of my writing without my knowledge, it’s only a hop, skip and a jump to my writing being edited into words and meaning I never put there in the first place.
This question has a myriad different answers depending on factors like the setting, who’s singing, and who can hear it (ref: Kendrick Lamar’s reaction to a white fan invited to join him on stage to sing one of his songs with him, and he stopped her when she kept singing the lyrics as they’re written, The Word included).
But critically: why am I getting hung up enough on The Word to actually go to the lengths of writing this piece? I am clearly struggling with the cognitive dissonance that lives within me: I have enough of an understanding of the background, origins, and implications of The Word to reflexively feel that I have no business using it – although if you’re after someone who can provide you with an annotated Intellectual Wank (translation: a long monologue that shows off the speaker’s depth of knowledge on a topic, but presented as a smug “aren’t I clever and well-informed” sermon, no interruptions allowed) on the subject, the people more qualified and better read than I am are, quite possibly quite literally, infinite. Yet the fact that it crops up so regularly in the music I listen to, and when I’m listening I feel that I somehow can get a “pass” in this one context, does not sit comfortably with me. Why does my knowing better not link straight to my doing better?
From what I’ve read and heard, Black people’s opinions of the use of the Word covers a broad spectrum. From people who loathe it and think it should never be used (ever – no matter the context), via “it’s fine in the music I listen to,” past “I use it with my friends”, to “that word needs to be de-weaponized and rendered meaningless – everyone should say it.”
I know there’s a sizeable subset within the Black community who actively want to take the word back, to take ownership of it. By using it themselves, they argue, they’re stripping it of all the subtext it carries. Very few words are just words – so often they’re laden with (if not positively dripping in) subtext, both historical and cultural. In my case (albeit with a far flimsier association, and one far less universally abhorrent to those it applies to than the-word-that-I-cannot-say), the C-word carries similar implicit criteria for its use. Ignoring for now the fact that the C-word is considered a far more offensive curse word in the US than in the UK (we’ve all seen a Guy Richie movie, right?), as a woman I personally feel that certain rules apply. I don’t care if someone calls a man a c**t. I don’t care if a woman calls someone that. But if a man calls a woman a c**t? Suddenly the word becomes heavy with the spectre of rape culture, misogyny, and the general implication that women are “lesser” – reduced only to our sexual organs.
In the same way, but to a far greater extent, THAT word out of my mouth carries, by the mere fact of it not applying to me, devastating historical baggage – a sickeningly acrid stench of slavery, segregation, lynchings, and disenfranchisement (to name but a few of the horrors). For that very reason, Black people taking the word back in to their own vocabulary and using it themselves seems (to my not-at-all-qualified-to-have-an-opinion-on-this mind) a gloriously rebellious act, stripping the word of its toxic undercurrents, and turning this horribly oppressive word from a verbal stick to subjugate people with into an impotent string of letters.
But as I said, critically, the one thing I do know is: who gets to use the Word is not my question to have an opinion on. “White people smell like wet dog?” I’ll answer. “Natural blondes are dumb as heck?” I’ll fight you, but I’ll answer. But this question? Nope. I don’t get to make moral choices about stuff that doesn’t affect me (a lesson non-medically qualified, male politicians could do well to remember next time they decide whether a rape victim should have access to abortion…)
But The Word has, in a sense, become a victim of the Black community’s success in reclaiming it. It occurs more and more often in both daily speech, and (most importantly here) in the lyrics to hip hop tracks. And if you couple the increasing frequency of its use in hip hop with the increase in the number of white people both listening to and creating hip hop, we’ve landed our asses (be they white, Black, or any shade of melanin you choose to imagine) in (to use a white-old-lady phrase) “a bit of a pickle.”
So here I stand with a genuine question about the “rules” (for want of a better word). I am not, as in the experience of so many people of color,, asking: “It’s not racist if I say it, right? You’re Black, so obviously you have the power to absolve me of any racist intent. On behalf of all Black people everywhere.” (Side note: I highly recommend an article by Professor A. D. Carson in The Guardian – theguardian.com – titled “It’s not my job to absolve white friends of racism, but it can seem that way.”) But I do sincerely believe that a discussion – with all the variously opposing and minutely nuanced arguments – should be able to be had (fuck the snowflakes – grown-ups are talking).
But as a starter question for $10: what’s the white lady actually allowed to sing in front of her dog?