The Word
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about “the question.” The question being examined was asked of an author in an interview, “Why aren’t there more female characters in your books?” And he set off a firestorm with an honest—and, to my mind, at least, humble—answer. But not an answer especially sensitive to the demands of political correctness. (In case you haven’t noticed, political correctness is alive and well among the creators and purveyors of children’s literature, for better and for worse.)In much the same vein, I find myself ruminating on “the word,” the one our president used recently in an interview about racism in American society, a word not ordinarily spoken in polite society unless it is referred to rather coyly as the “n word.” President Obama didn’t throw the “n word” at anyone. He didn’t even apply it to himself. He used it to refer to the kind of hate language too often applied to blacks. He made reference to it and moved on to larger issues.Because he is black himself, you would think the man might have been given a pass on this obviously very conscious choice he made, but he wasn’t. The word represents hate, some said, and should never be used under any circumstances.As a writer, this argument interests me . . . and concerns me as well. Should any word be off limits, no matter how it is applied? I have some familiarity with this firestorm, because I found myself in a small one myself after my collection of young adult short stories, Killing Miss Kitty and Other Sins, came out.The “n word,” written out fully, was there. The context, however, was a small northern town that had once had the “n sign” posted outside of town. “N . . ., don’t let the sun set on you in this town.” How could I have written about that historical reality, that terrible offense, without calling out the word? And if I had managed to dance around it, the way we do every time we say “the n word,” would the moment in my story have had the same power to call out racism?I am a lesbian, and I have watched with interest while my community has taken ownership of the word queer. Some in the black community have tried to do the same with their hated word, but the attempt has not held. Still, the fact that it is possible to cleanse the word “queer” suggests strongly that a word’s offensiveness lies primarily in context, in intent.(And as an aside, I have always been curious about my community’s casual acceptance of the word straight to refer to heterosexuals. Given the standard applied to opposites in other language insults—man/girl, for instance—is it not a word that gives offense?)I belong to a Unitarian Universalist church where, to my amusement and occasional despair, the word God is one of the most controversial our pastors can utter. Many in the congregation receive it as meaning, not quite the kindergarten concept of a bearded old man sitting on a throne in the sky, but still as a power making decisions about the details of our lives . . . your child will die, yours will live. Yet that is never what is meant in a UU church. It’s not even what is meant these days in the majority of more theologically conservative churches. So each time I encounter another rumble of dissatisfaction about “the word” among my fellow congregants, I want to say, “Please! Get past your indignation. You might find the message of interest!”Words are powerful. Not quite as powerful as they were in earlier times when a hurled curse could send its recipient home to die. But along with having learned the “sticks and stones” rhyme when we were children, perhaps we can all learn to listen more closely to context, message and intent.