Friday, Jun. 04, 2004
The N-Word, posted at 2:07 p.m.
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com In teaching Fences this week, I've had the repeated dilemma of using the word "nigger" in class. I've actually never said the word out loud in my entire life. I remember hearing my uncle say it once when I was about ten years old, and I was shocked by it, and it was then that I decided that the word would never be part of my vocabulary. I did my big unit while student teaching on Huckleberry Finn, and was hyper-sensitive about the word during the unit, talking about the word to death in my efforts to demistify it. I'm not sure if I ever did for myself, though.I don't really think about it too much right now. It doesn't come up in much of the literature, and I certainly don't have a problem with my students saying it in the context of literature. There's something about it where I just think that it should be black people's right to do whatever they'd like with the word, and I'm going to leave it well enough alone. While reading Fences, though, the word appears a lot. My students, when they're acting out the play, say the word and it's all good. However, when I take the reins of the Troy Maxson part - which I do, often, because it takes a special kid to really dig into that role and go over-the-top with it (Charles S. Dutton was born to play the role, if that give you an idea), or simply because it's a lot of fun to get up there acting with the kids and all the audience likes to hear be shout raunchy and funny lines across the room - I just cannot bring myself to say the "n-word," even if the role calls for it. Often, it doesn't matter. In some of the contexts in which it's used, it only means "friend" or "man," so a line like "I love you, nigger" can be easily changed to "I love you, man," without changing much, if any, meaning. Other times, though, like when Troy screams at his son, "You're just another nigger on the street to me," the context is totally different without using that word. I don't know if I could ever feel alright about saying that line, as a white teacher to a black student, even if it's done in a play and even if it's scaffolded with plenty of talk about the power of language and the history of that word. So, with a scene like that, I've just got to hope for a really good actor to play Troy. I found two this year, out of six classes. In the others, it sounded like they were reading the lines out of a book instead of acting. I can't fault them for it, but the power of the play is certainly diminished even moreso than it naturally is in transitioning from a theater experience to reading it in a classroom.
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We started The Odyssey today. We're reading The Lotus-Eaters, The Cylcops, and The Sirens. I'll be much better at this text next year. Spending only two days on The Odyssey makes me feel like a crummy teacher. A colleague joked that since I finished (quote-unquote) a major play and a major epic in four days, maybe I should try to tackle Don Quixote on the last day of school.
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I complained about the 38-hour, 5-day week I was given this week at Ze Mean Be an, and they gave me the weekend off except for Sunday morning. I'm not sure what I'll be doing with my time, although I'm pretty sure beer will be involved. It has been impressed upon me to come up with an idea for this Friday Happy Hour. A "Fridea," if you will. I'm thinking about Thirsty Dog, so we can be in Federal Hill for the free Cracker concert later tonight. But my anti-Federal Hill feelings are still fairly rampant, so I'm not sure.