The "N" word...

OK quick backstory -

I wrote a first draft for a short story a while back which i have sat on ever since largely because i am torn on what is and isn't acceptable for non-established writers.

My story features a black american man who is subjected to racist abuse by two white cops who are killing black people and burying them in the desert. The story ends with a twist that sees the two racist cops meet a horrible end, and my whole reason for writing the story is that sometimes i like to write about the victims of people i dislike (racists, rapists, paedophiles and childkillers etc - basically horrible ) getting revenge.

Now the question - I found myself dropping a lot of "N" bombs to really emphasise the racist attitude and to hopefully make the reader hate the protagonist more with each use of the word, and also show the struggle the MC goes through not to react and lose his temper. Is the repeated use of this word acceptable for this reason? I don't particularly liked it but i need almost every sentence that comes out of the cops mouth to be racist and i don't know what is more acceptable - constant repetition of the one word or swapping in for other equally disgusting names?

Thoughts anyone?

 

1. Like all things, it’s about your intent and purpose. If your character is a racist individual, he’s not going to soften his verbal blows save for in those situations where he knows the reprocusions against him are greater than his wish to use the N-word. I’m not a black man. I’m a gay man. In my version of this question, your hypothetical homophobic character who never says fag or faggot, but instead refers to LGBT people as LGBT people would leave me scratching my head.

2. Revisionism is a real thing and there will always be those who wag their judgie fingers at you for referring to the fact that racism is still a real thing by showing actual racism rather than just referring to its existence. You’ll never make those people happy.

 

I’ve moved this to Character Development because this really is about accurate portrayal of unsavory characters.

 

I'd say you need to be realistic. Even racist don't drop N bombs in every sentence - they just don't. If you're actively trying to insult someone, you don't use just one word over and over. You get creative. Like, yes, there will be some N words, but why should it be every sentence? From your description, you're hoping the use of the N word alone would be enough to make your readers hate those characters, which means you're using it for shock value. In my opinion, that's a bad reason for using it, yes. The more you use a word, the more numb your readers will grow until they just gloss over it. An excessive amount can turn even moderate readers off and make them put down your book - I mean readers who would otherwise have been all right with its appropriate usage. (I don't mean crazies who advocate banning To Kill a Mocking Bird because it uses the N word)

It's rare that you're gonna need to use the same word in every sentence like you claim. Don't use the N word in excess - not because you'd offend, but because it will lose the power the word has and therefore the effect you're hoping for.

 

If you are going to use a word like that, a one-time use will probably have a greater impact than if you are using it all over the place. But be careful and really think this one over. Are you a back man? Have you ever been called the N word? I think when you start writing things like this, your background and identity does come into play. I used to read submissions for a literary journal. There was one story I read that used the N word. The story was okay but not great up to that point. When the N word was used I stopped reading.

 

Thanks a lot for the feedback everyone. Gave me a lot to think about. For me the journey I went on as I wrote it was one of creating a character I hated and found that the more I used the word the more I hated him and the more I was looking forward to them getting what they deserved. Then, when they did meet their end I felt a vicious satisfaction and really want to take the reader on this same journey. So now I think, based on this feedback, I need to find other ways to ramp up the hatred towards these cops other than just having the obvious horrible name calling which is starting to feel like a rather cheap nasty way of doing it. Really glad I posted on here. Thanks guys!

 

I see nothing wrong with using the n word. Bob Dylan used it, Harper Lee used it. I won one of the monthly contests here with a story that used it four separate times.

 

I think you're on the right track with the idea that it might be a bit of a cheap way to show that they're awful people. Your reference to a desert makes me assume this is set out in the Southwest somewhere, but from the Southeast my observation (as a white person) is that the racism is frequently casual. Going over the top is going to start to seem comical or tired, or just end up desensitizing the reader after a while.

These cops aren't going to be vitriolic rage machines 24/7, but it is a fundamental underlying facet of their worldview that black people are less-than. It's not all overt racial slurs -- it's also comments about how the convenience store clerk who fumbled making charge should've never been hired in the first place, and how the driver who cut them off deserves to be rammed, and how the office worker should be held down and had her head shaved because her hair 'looks nasty', and how their refrigerator doesn't work quite right because it was installed by [your racial epithet here], and not letting their wife/daughter go into a fast food place alone because there are too many black people eating in there.

Every black person they encounter already has two strikes against them and any little mistake -- even ones that aren't their fault -- is met with, "Well, what do you expect from one of them?" It's constant confirmation bias. They already 'know' that black people are stupid, are violent, are dirty, are worthless, so they don't have to go all out to make a point of it. They're making that point quietly just about all the time.

 

Read

Read your story and loved it. Really enjoyed seeing Dylan's work used so well. Felt like the N bombs seemed less important in shaping the character than his overall demeanour and his subconscious reactions. I definitely need to re-assess my approach to my own story as reading yours has made my own seem even more poorly written even though they are completely different. Glad I asked a question rather than just posting the story and getting ripped to pieces.

 

I'm glad you asked the question, 'cause of all things I wanted to inquire about for my own story, this was one I was not ready to ask yet.

 

I had a similar concern with, 'Negress' and whether I should use it or not. I visited a number of sites and the consensus seemed to be that it's perfectly acceptable within a piece of historical fiction, which is the genre I write in. My editor said there was no need to make a change, and that if Robert Louis Stevenson can use it in Treasure Island than I'm safe to use it in the same context.


For a middle-aged man, Gael retained a tireless vitality. The man who managed animal acts at an opera house in decline — and at present, with a twelve-year-old girl in tow — resembled a disheveled lion that had an appetite for bourbon and brothels. A deep scar cut across his left cheek, a souvenir he had acquired on one of his travels; whether it was given him by a leopard or bear, one could not be certain, for the details, embellished always with wine, had a habit of changing from one telling to the next. Only the perpetrator herself — a jealous lover, a Negress from one of the southern islands — knew the full truth.

 

First of all, I would try to humanize the cop. Racists are people too and you bring your reader no closer to truth by making him a cardboard cutout racist character. But, if your goal is simply to provide a revenge fantasy, roman gladiator style, primal, entertainment piece, then carry on. If you want to make art, though, your racist needs to be an actual human being. Secondly, of course you can say "nigga" or "nigger". It's just a word. If it makes sense for any character to use it in the context they used it in, then of course it's fine. I'd be a lot more annoyed if a story used any word where it doesn't make sense then if it used "nigger" a thousand times if it makes sense.

 

Now that's an interesting point. Maybe make this racist a generally decent person...when the racist isn't around blacks. I once had a boss who hated minorities, yet at the same time was an otherwise pleasant individual to be around...so long as you didn't get him on one of his political rants that "(insert minority) ruin't this country!" Not every racist is a goose-stepping, openly-KKK/Nazi-wannabe hateful bigot. Sometimes they're that wonderful old man in the neighborhood that treats you like you were family, cooks BBQ and watches sports on Friday nights with beer. The guy you could easily see running into a burning building to save someone.

Make us wrestle with just who this guy is. Make us uncomfortable in liking all his positive traits, yet hating him when he goes off about why he hates black people so much. I think this is what Harper Lee attempted to do with Atticus Finch in To Set A Watchman.

 

To be fair, these characters are not your garden variety racist fucks, they're cops who're murdering black people and burying them in the desert.

Like, I'm all for humanizing monsters because I don't believe that othering terrible people in an effort to pretend that we're not all capable of terrible things is healthy or useful but ... I'm not sure how much you can make not only a violent racist but a murderer seem like 'a decent person'. A human being, yes. Probably quite pleasant to most of their fellow white people. Not constantly murderin' folk. But definitely still doing the murdering and -- presumably with considerable more frequency if their hatred runs deep enough to get into serial killing -- still saying/doing racist things when not preoccupied with the racially-motivated murder.

Certainly don't write these characters as cardboard cutouts. Give them depth, make them real -- let one of them give to charity and the other love his wife and children. But we're clearly not talking about the kindly old man who lives down the street, here. My grandpa is an old Southern white man and I love him despite his overt racism, but he's also not running around perpetrating heinous serial hate crimes, y'know?

 

Considering what your story is about, I'd say it would be an injustice to not have the racist people in the story use it, considering that's been it's primary use.

That said, people will complain about it as there are some who think that any use of the word is wrong, but that generally falls into the "category" of: no matter what you write, someone will get offended and complain about it.
Especially when tackling stuff like racism.

 

I had planned to gloss over the word entirely in my draft because I did want to use it in one section, coming rather casually from a town member in my Colonial setting, it was being used as old term for a slave. It felt dirty to put such a thing in there, even if it was followed by the MC and his mother being obviously put off by it and the mother denouncing the man's tone. It was not directed toward them, but it was used in reference to a slave woman within the community as the man shared a story, thus emphasizing how casual it was. As much as I am personally disgusted by it, I thought that using the word would really get across not only how accepting some people in the town were about slavery, but also how, even in that time, it was not uncommon to detest the foul treatment of other human beings. The scene came across incomplete without the word as, without it the main character and his mother seemed to be put off by the mention of a slave which felt like it sent the wrong message.

I felt somewhat validated in my decision by the comments here, but maybe I shouldn't as the context is different.

 

While I do completely agree with this as regards not whitewashing the truth for sake of sensitive souls or political correctness, I think there is some wisdom in what a few above commenters have mentioned. Book dialogue isn't a genuine parallel to daily verbal discourse of humans. We don't include in our books the endless inane babble that fills our days unless that inane babble is actually not inane, but instead germane to what's going on. In the same sense, I agree that some judiciousness needs to be shown as regards deployment of these kinds of words otherwise we either create what feels to the reader like a hyperbole (even if it were a genuine representation of actual discourse) and we also risk killing the impact and taking the teeth out of the word through overuse.

Another example comes from my work as an interpreter & translator. I am often commissioned to first transcribe recordings and then translate the resultant transcription. Because it's for court, every false start, redirect, um, wait what meant was, total detour and stuttered repetition of words has to be perfectly and faithfully rendered. It would genuinely astound you to realise how broken and messy natural speech is, and this for people who don't suffer from any speech impediments or pathologies. Just regular Joes and Janes. We don't write dialogue this way because we're typically unaware that it's even happening. The brain has an amazing capacity to take this utter shite and edit it all together into smooth sentences that we somehow parse. Genuinely gobsmaking. But again, we would never actually represent this in our dialogue unless we were showing an individual whose speech idiosyncrasies go above and beyond the level of the average Joe.

 

I say if it's authentic to your story, do it. I'm a black person, I'm never offended just because the word is used, it's how it's being used. Obviously, if it were there just to insult black readers, that would be an inappropriate thing to do, but it doesn't sound like that is what you are going for. If you have characters that would use the word, then I say keep it authentic. Sometimes, you have to offend people in order to get folks thinking.

 

All of this reminds me of a comment by the author Mark Lawrence: "I am not my characters."
Think that's pretty important to remember and something some people may forget.

 

But that doesn't mean they are right.

 

True, but we can't control how they act.

That said, your characters need to be honest. If he/she is a racist, let 'em be racist. If he/she hates a religion, let them hate a religion. They don't have to be flippin' Simon LaGree* or anything, but let them be true to their character.

* Simon LaGree was a major antagonist in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. He was a slave owner. I'll let you fill in the details yourself but suffice to say, she held nothing back when framing his character.