Too Taboo for Class?
@Einherjar86 @rms @Dak
What are your guys' opinions on this?
What I'm about to say will probably be unpopular, but I'm not presenting it as my position. I'm upset by the way that Adamo's been treated, and I think he handled the discussion professionally and admirably (and this just goes to show that academic freedom is really an issue for professors, not students). That said, I still think there's a conversation to be had.
Some years ago, R. Scott Bakker published a controversial blog post in defense of censored versions of Mark Twain's
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. His argument: if non-censored versions of the text are going to be banned while the discussion goes on, then we should permit censored versions so that students can still read it.
I'm not sharing this to voice my agreement with it; in fact, I highly disagree with it because Bakker shifts the goalposts of the debate. He's no longer addressing the ethics of language itself, but has instead taken a pragmatist approach toward education. I sympathize with his intentions (which are ultimately in service to education), but I lament his evading the actual issue. I share this because it points to what I see as the primary impasse of this controversy: scope of discussion vs. efficacy of education (both of which are aspects of academic freedom).
The IHE article's final paragraphs capture this dilemma:
“I’ve taught courses on hip-hop where the word is ubiquitous, and it’s always a stumbling block,” he said in a Twitter message. “By using the term, even in a quote, you’re essentially asking students, particularly black students, to take it on faith that this is not a vicarious thrill or a kind of ventriloquism that allows access to an otherwise forbidden term.”
In many instances, he said, “it will not be. In some instances it will.” Either way, the student is “almost always going to puzzle over that moment like a Rorschach test.”
So while it’s important question to debate, Cobb added, “the potential downsides of actually saying it are large enough, and the likelihood of derailing conversation high enough, that it’s not worth saying even if you have the most purely pedagogical motives.”
I think this is the savviest take on the issue, i.e. that saying the word aloud poses a possible stumbling block for students in the class. Speaking honestly, I think Adamo handled the issue professionally and educationally by allowing the students to discuss whether the word should be spoken. Fortunately, his honors seminar afforded the time for that discussion, which isn't always the case in every seminar. And I think it's fine to conclude that speaking the word is ultimately more distracting than not saying it.
It's easy to discuss stories and essays that use the word without speaking it. I've done it both ways in class. The first time I ever taught Flannery O'Connor's "The Artificial N--er," I used the word; but I also told the class at the outset that I'd be saying it because it's in the story, and that they didn't have to use it if they didn't want to. I never asked students how they felt about it, but I found my using the word personally distracting. It impeded my ability to engage with the class in the moment.
Since then, I've also begun by saying that the story contains the racial slur, and that we don't need to say it aloud even though we'll be reading it on the page. We were able to refrain from using it for two classes while we discussed the story, and it didn't negatively impact the conversation. It takes about the same amount of time to say "artificial n--er" and "artificial n-word." Not saying the word doesn't erase the historical gravity of the word, while saying it can have the effect making students feel uncomfortable.
To return to Bakker's comment, I disagree wholeheartedly with introducing censored texts in class; but I think that reading texts--historical and cultural documents--is different than speaking aloud in a classroom, even when discussing the content of a text. There's no way around the fact that we're talking about these texts today, and today's cultural atmosphere has an impact on how students encounter language. If that poses a serious challenge to educational continuity, then I'm okay with not speaking the word aloud; but I'm not okay with censoring the word from the page. The unspoken word allows students to grapple silently and internally with what it means for an author to have used it. When spoken aloud, it potentially forces students to grapple also with what group dynamics behind the spoken utterance.
tl;dr, I'm disappointed with how Adamo's been treated, but I do think there's more to discuss regarding how we approach teaching the n-word. I don't think it's cut and dry.
