Sun 24 May 2009
Verbal Skeletons in Our History – The “N” Word
Posted by Trish under Awards and Contests, Family Secrets, Oral History, Personal Stories, Reminiscence, Rituals, The past is now
[7] Comments
Papa with his granddaughter on his 90th birthday
My great-grandfather, Ed Rinne, was born in 1880 in Illinois. As a young man, he spent a short time farming with his father in Alabama. I am lucky to have an audio interview with him done sometime in the late 70’s when he would have been 90+ years old. But I was shocked when I listened to him talk about his time in the south. He uses the the word “nigger” repeatedly in telling this story. I vacillated about posting it. Would listener’s understand the language usage in the era he grew up in? He clearly is not using it in a pejorative sense. As a matter of fact, he has scorn only for the white southerners. But it is shocking to hear, nevertheless.
This has been an issue in the past with Twain’s Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. As well as Shakespeare’s language in The Merchant of Venice that is derogatory toward Jews. Are we using any language today that will be shocking to our great-grand kids? Should we, or even could we, hide or sanitize our past use of language? Here is his story as he told it, warts and all. (Note: The “they” he refers to at the end are the white towns people.)
Papa Rinne on working in Alabama
wow – is there more to this? Is this another of Dad’s tape. I think the skeleton’s need to be shared. Momo Byrne would use the “n” word and I know it shoked my senses when I was in high school.
I grew up around grandparents who used the N word. My grandfather had a black man who worked for him and valued him and his work very much. Bu,grandpa never gave it a second thought saying the N word- at any time. To him, it distinguised blacks from whites. He would use the N word exactly the same as we use the word African American or Black.
I don’t think that my grandparents had the awareness that there was anything wrong with it.
I have a problem with giving any word so much gravitas that we should never use it. In fact giving it so much value it becomes the division we are trying not to uphold. It becomes a martyr in its non/use and sets it on a grandiose pedestal. The more we fight to devalue its use the stronger its meaning becomes.
But can we as white people make that determination about this word?
Gwen, yes, clearly my great-grandfather (and my grandmother) did not have a sense of it being wrong. I wonder what we will be saying to make our grandchildren cringe.
Mary, this is another of the tapes I got from dad. Papa tells another story about that same time in Alabama when he got to know this young lady. He went to her house to ask her to an ice cream social and the her father met him at the gate and told him to basically get lost because he was from the north.
Strikes a resonant chord for me; I heard many things like this growing up.