Wool & Words

Warning: Not Knitting, Poetry, or Kitty Related. Continue at your own risk.

Read this. Then come back.

OK. I'm all for being sensitive. Sensitivity to each other is crucial if we are going to be unified. But as a black woman, I am offended that the university has covered up this statement in the exhibit. Yes, "nigger" is an offensive word. It should be offensive because it is a reminder of an offensive time in our history. Students at UGA should be offended by the very notion that this word would have been freely hurled at this young woman as she bravely broke the color barrier that had kept blacks out of this state university.

When I heard about this on the radio, I was really upset that our desire to avoid being offended would cloud the fact that we should be offended. Some things should offend us. We should feel offense, experience it, so that we can do what we can to ensure that it never happen again. The incongruity of the image of this young woman and that hateful word should be foremost in our thoughts when we encounter such an exhibit.

In the local paper (the article is from the Atlanta one), there's an editorial that chooses to focus on the fact that the quote in which the epithet appears is unattributed, and that officials at the university should have to come up with some person to attach the quote to in order to make it factually accurate. This really set me off, mainly because calling for a person to attribute the quote to ignores the whole rhetorical point of the display. To say that the phrase "Here comes the nigger" (I think that's what it says) is only usable if we can say someone said it absolves the historical community from the reality of its past attitude toward this woman and others like her as they challenged the structures that barred them from the university.

While I don't know that they made the best choice of phrases, this notion that because we're offended and hurt by the use of the word "nigger" we should avoid it denies us the chance to heal ourselves and the wounds that this word causes.

On the Other Hand

I was really saddened by this story.

I can only hope that the student in question learned something from the very real responses he must have received to his artistic endeavor. Some statements are too real to be made in reality.

I sense a connection between these two incidents and a reason why one is less odious to me than the other. I'm grappling with that. Any thoughts?