The Upshaws

The Shaws's, language a) teaches children to be disrespectful to peers and elders, and b) diminishes children's communications skills. The idea that "respectful" sitcoms are “outdated,” as a CBS news' website reported, is ludicrous (not the rapper). As an ELA tutor of K through third graders, I cringe each time I hear a child use the n-word and other profanities. The n-word, historically spawned from a deep vein of poisonous hate, awash in an ocean of African American blood, forms a grating and scornful force field around its target. The intangible, stun-gun static, that broadcasts its target is inferior (maybe not even human), doesn’t dissipate when casually “re-imagined” by African American family, friends, comedians, rappers and Black sitcoms. “Reimagining” or “grammaticalization” of the word doesn’t bleach it of its core meaning; doesn’t cancel its menace. You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig. If the foul energy from the n-word were truly muted through so-called "ownership," Black people who cavalierly embrace and spew it, wouldn’t vehemently protest White people using it. My concern is, why would anyone want to “own” a word created to degrade them??? Other cultures understand this and refuse to bombard their children with racial slurs in their music or culture. For example, Puerto Ricans don’t write the slur “spic” into their music. Each time a Black person uses the n-word, he or she, subconsciously, reinforces the scornful insinuation of “inferiority,” having “no value,” of “nothingness,” of “less than.” Realizing this, the late, incomparable comedian, Richard Pryor publicly announced his decision to stop using that slur after returning from a visit to Kenya, Africa and being awestruck by the humanity. He came to understand that slurs, like the n-word, is designed to diminish, even destroy, a people's humanity and sense of self-worth.