The N-Word: The Playground Argument

It took me a day to digest this incident. I think the N-word has so much power that it would be remiss of me to blog about my thoughts on it all willy nilly.

Yesterday, Todd and I took the kids to the Fellini's on LaVista for lunch. We Beat the Baptists, as my Dad always called it when I was growing up. As a kid, after Church on Sundays, we would be ushered quickly out of our Methodist (Baptist Lite) church, and herded to the cars, all of us except Dad just wishing we could go home and change out of the damn panty hose and do something fun with the rest of our Sunday, before the 60 Minutes clock started ticking. Not Dad, though. He had one goal in mind: Beat the Baptists to Morrison's. I may not attend church anymore, but Dad and I have more than a little in common with one another. I still like to Beat the Baptists if I am having lunch out on a Sunday.

We went into Fellini's and ordered. As we waited for our order, we watched Chelsea and Liverpool play soccer on the large TV. Business was slow, as we had beat the Baptists soundly, and the cooks were standing around watching the match, too. Rollie will usually narrate any sport that we watch on TV, even if he doesn't even know what sport it is. I would be lying if I said I didn't filter out about half of everything he says in a day, but Todd and I both were interested when he said the following:

"What is that black man. . . blue shirt doing?"

Todd and I looked at each other questioningly, as if to say, "have you heard him say anything about a person's color before?" We live in a pretty diverse neighborhood. On any given day, there are a pretty equal number of White and African American kids on the playgrounds nearest our house. Same breakdown at the kids' center at the YMCA. Not once has he ever asked me why some people are one color and others are another. It just hasn't happened. It is not for his lack of curiosity, because he has been curious about people in wheelchairs, and he has (quite loudly) asked why the people at the next table in a restaurant are "so big." (As I have said before, parenting is not for the faint-hearted.)

I whispered to Todd, "Maybe he just got confused about the color of the jersey."

Todd replied: "We're lucky he didn't use another word."

"What? What do you mean?"

"He heard a new word at the playground a lot yesterday."

Todd proceeded to tell me about their trip to Kirkwood playground yesterday. They had gone over there, because Brownwood Park was being used for a family reunion. This is a common occurrence, but it is kind of difficult to keep up with two kids by yourself in a mass of people, so he thought he'd be able to better keep up with them at Kirkwood. Turns out there was a family reunion at the Kirkwood park, too. The family reunion was for an African-American family.

Todd said that there were kids of all ages there, and that the boys on the playground were liberally using the N-word.

"You mean there were teens using it?"

Nope, kids. Kids under 8, under six even. He nodded seriously to affirm that yes, there were children using the N-word to each other on the playground.

I looked at Todd aghast.

Todd said that Rollie didn't seem to notice the word at all, but anyone who has a young one learning to talk knows that just because they haven't said something doesn't mean it hasn't been soaked up by their little sponge brains. Exhibit A: Car runs a red light last year and narrowly misses my van as I am taking Rollie to school. I slam on brakes and mutter "Asshole." I look in the rear view mirror and Rollie seems oblivious to the word. Thank God. I get to school and get out to take Rollie in. As I open the van door, I say hello to the woman who works in the church preschool office, who is parked next to us. The door slides open to the sound of Rollie singing, "Asshole, asshole, asshole." Kids have perfect comedic timing. Impeccable. It has been 48 hours since Rollie heard the N-word on the playground, and it has not surfaced, so I am thinking we dodged a bullet with this one. At least, he dodged a bullet.

Me? I feel like I was hit with a silver bullet right through the heart. I have such strongly held emotions about the n-word as it is, but to have my child enmeshed in the discussion makes my blood boil. Three-year-olds should not be presented with the n-word. I am sure there are PhD students writing their dissertations on the origins and power of this word; how on earth is my child prepared to digest the meaning of the word?

I am well-educated. I understand that many African Americans feel that they have taken this word back. I think it is a stupid argument and that people who use the word are ignorant and that the word itself is so fraught with pain that I cannot fathom why someone would want to use it, rather than let it be buried by the sands of time. But I do not think that I can remotely understand what it is like to be African American, and so I tend to just think that it is a word that I myself will never utter, and that my children will never use.

But when I imagine people using the word with one another, taking the word back, so to speak, I imagine that it is teenagers and adults who wield the word; Never in a million years did I imagine that children, some my own son's age, would be using the word on the playground. I shudder to think what would have happened if my son the sponge, with a love for the sound of new words on his tongue and for the plays on words that he so adores, had heard those boys calling one another the N-word, and in his childlike naivete and playfulness, had called one of them by the same word they were calling one another.

What, pray tell, would have been the reaction? I know what my husband would have done. He would have gotten down on his knees and firmly told Rollie, looking him in the eye all the while, that this is not a word that we EVER use. But how do you explain the pain and history of such a word to a three-year-old? How do you explain to a child, one that does not even seem to see the color of skin, that it is alright for one color of people to use the word, to throw it around like a ball at play, but for others to even utter the word is unacceptable?

What would be the reaction from the other children if Rollie had uttered that word? What would have been the reaction of their parents? I would like to think that the parents' reactions would be one of understanding. But in this racially-charged city (and to say that Atlanta is not preoccupied with race is naivete incarnate), I fear that the parents might assume that this is a word that my son learned from us. I am glad that it didn't come up. At times, I prefer being an ostrich, head in the sand. There are some questions to which I don't want to know the answer.

All I know is that I have never liked the word, and I have never used it. I was raised that it was ignorant to use the word. I have never understood why people would want to use it, most especially those for whom the word has such a terrible past. The thing about the word, though, is that it has a terrible past for us all, doesn't it?

I will teach my children that the word is unacceptable and that its users are ignorant. I am sure there are African Americans who would find fault with me calling them ignorant for using the word. I don't know what to say to them; I just know that my heart hurts for those children who know not what they utter on that playground. My heart hurts for my own son, who came so close to having his first introduction to the word, an introduction that I wish would never happen, much less when he is three. I only know that I would be much happier if we all let the word go.

I am one of a multitude of people who have thought about the word, or written about it. My treatment of it here is superficial and barely skims the surface of the myriad ways this word works and thrives and undermines and causes harm in our society. But in everything I have read and watched and heard about this word, I have never found a single argument against any of us using the N-word that is quite as compelling as the playground argument:

Is this a word that we want uttered on our playgrounds? Is this a word that we want little African American boys teaching to their white playmates?