Political correctness
It was my junior year when I was tasked with reading an excerpt in an American literature class and the N-word looked me dead in the eye.
Uncomfortable with saying the racial slur in a bastion of political correctness, I peered up at my black British professor.
“Say it,” he said. “It’s OK; just say it.”
And I did, to no consequence.
I was appalled to learn it didn’t happen that way for Andrea Quenette, a white University of Kansas professor who offended some of her students last month by saying the word in a classroom discussion about race. Quenette was reportedly teaching a graduate-level course on how to instruct undergraduate classes when, according to Newsweek, a student’s question about how to address racism in the classroom sparked a discussion about campuswide efforts to eliminate it. That’s when Quenette said this:
“As a white woman I just never have seen the racism. … It’s not like I see [the N-word] spray painted on walls.”
The incident drove some students to write an online letter asking for Quenette’s termination. In the letter, students wrote that her use of the N-word “caused shock and disbelief” and went on to say Quenette made additional comments about institutionalized racism that were “uncomfortable, unhelpful, and blatantly discriminatory.”
No one can be sure whether Quenette’s tone was bitter, angry or otherwise hostile. Regardless, nothing in the letter suggests she was discriminating against anyone. Furthermore, it is clear the slur was mentioned as a reflection of her own racial experience — and not pointed at anyone in particular. As Jonathan Chait wrote in his now-famous critique of political correctness culture in New York magazine almost a year ago, there is a difference between speaking about racism and actually perpetrating it.
Historically, American white supremacists have used the N-word as a verbal tool to oppress blacks, institutionally and individually. But the once-taboo word has morphed into a slang term that is now commonplace among black youth and youth of other races in majority-black and otherwise racially diverse areas.
A story in The Washington Post published more than a year ago illustrates this phenomena through the example of Springbrook High School in Montgomery County — one of three schools in the county’s Northeast Consortium. This consortium also includes Paint Branch High School, from which I graduated in 2010. At Paint Branch, which was majority-nonwhite, it was not uncommon to hear “n—a” in casual conversation. But spelled with an “a” at the end, rather than the traditional “er,” the word carries about the same clout as “dude” — among those who pronounce it that way, at least.
Had the students who wrote the letter requesting Quenette’s termination never heard the N-word tossed around between black youths? Possibly, but highly unlikely. Of course, the difference here is skin color. As Chait wrote, two people can make the exact same statement, but excessive political correctness instructs us to interpret the meanings of their words differently based on the racial and sexual traits of the speaker. In this case, Quenette is a white woman. And because whites in America have traditionally used the N-word with hostility toward blacks, her saying it was discriminatory — regardless of the context.
If we subscribe to this dogma, perhaps German professors shouldn’t teach about the Holocaust, and male sex-education teachers should avoid discussing rape. In fact, according to many members of the political correctness police, this essay is blasphemous. A white man like myself has no business writing about the N-word. It just doesn’t make sense. As conservative and liberal commentators have argued time and again, freedom of speech trumps freedom from being offended. And please, let’s be more rational about what we find offensive, shall we?
And so, I commend my professor for standing up to institutional political correctness. I hope reason prevails in the case of Andrea Quenette, too.
