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PaperclipPerfector  19d ago (text post)   3518 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 21, 2024

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If you attended an American high school, did you read the n-word aloud in English class? I’m curious. We did in like 2012 in NYC, I’m wondering if that was the cutoff point.

I went to high school in Louisiana around Obama's 1st term, and no, I don't recall doing so. I read Huck Finn on my own time at a younger age. I did get to read the part of the bigoted Juror #10 in 12 Angry Men but that doesn't have slurs because it isn't explicit about what the defendant's ethnicity is.

In Canada, 2016 one student had to say it out loud when we were reading To Kill a Mockingbird. I remember how all the white kids were really awkward about it but the black kids didn't care and were laughing a bit.

For Huck Finn- yes, but discussions outside of direct quotes didn’t use it, we were either supposed to say ‘negro’(which no one young enough to be in high school used naturally) if the word was the point- eg ‘Huck’s father was angry that a negro was better educated than him’, and otherwise use a neutral term.

Yes I mean direct quotes, for example reading out loud in class.

In direct quotes, generally yes, but it was suggested that students who were uncomfortable change it to ‘negro’, and teachers sometimes did.

High school graduate 1986, never did but this was Alabama. Then again Huck Finn and the like came considerably earlier and I vaguely remember my elementary school teacher (white, Mrs. Fletcher) doing so. But memory deceives. I honestly don't remember being exposed to other works in school with that word, at least in class.

Edit: slightly related, once this same teacher was talking about Brazil Nuts for some reason and--again this was a long time ago, how many caveats do I need, hmm--she was hesitant to say out loud the colloquial term (among whom I have no idea) for said seed, and elicited this term from the class, zeroing in apologetically on Steve, one of two black guys in my elementary school class at the time. He said he didn't know, nor did anyone else. Just as she had given up Steve blurted out happily, "Oh, nigger toes!"

I do not recall the general reaction but for me at least it was a pretty weird moment.

My memories are hazy but I think there was at least one teacher who read it aloud (I’m a couple years older than you).

Probably around 2014/2015 was the absolute cutoff point. Things changed very rapidly then, almost overnight. I distinctly remember around 2012, my gay friends thought I was very avant garde for knowing what the word “cisgender” meant. It’s crazy how far things advanced in just a year or two.

On the same topic, we had some mock debates in my high school civics class, and one of the topics was gay marriage. It was just taken for granted that it was something that reasonable people could disagree on, and you could take the anti- side without being perceived as a moral monster.

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