Meanwhile my white daughter is being taunted at school by black children calling her the n-word (with hard R) and saying “you can’t say it but we can”. Soo what can we do about that? If it’s going to be an unspoken word it should be for all. Kids will do stupid shit.
Edit: so downvotes and no response is just as much an apologist as the other response. Why can kids taunt with words that are supposed to be off limits? It only perpetuates the issue by reminding kids that those words exist, their usage should be stopped by all so they can fade from the vocabulary.
Soo what can we do about that?
Talk to the school authorities? That’s what I would do if my kid were being bullied.
The bullying is the problem here, not the word being used.
Why can kids taunt with words that are supposed to be off limits?
They can’t? Bullying is wrong no matter what words you use.
Because it’s not your place to tell people from a marginalized group how they are allowed to interact with the slurs that have been used against them. Reclaiming words and for once holding the power around the word is their right if they so choose.
It’s your job as a parent to explain the historical and social context to your children. You have work to do if your child is bothered they can’t call other kids a slur that those children have reclaimed. It does nobody any good to bury our heads in the sand, say persecuted people can’t say it if my privileged child can’t say it, and pretend there’s no complex history there.
Marginalization is not universal or absolute. You can easily have people who are marginalized in some contexts, and privileged in others.
An easy example is religion.
A christian in Spain is probably considered part of the majority and privileged, meanwhile, that same person could be subject to intense persecution in a country like Saudi Arabia because of the same beliefs.
The same can be applied to this child being bullied by their racist peers.
It’s not absolute, yes. But we’re not talking about any situation—specifically white and black children using a specific racial slur. One of those belongs to a group that has been (and still is) systematically persecuted with that term connected. The other has not. We’re not seriously going to say that one white kid potentially being bullied is somehow comparable to the history of societal persecution against black people I hope.
The point I was making is it’s not reasonable to turn one situation of someone being bullied as evidence that black people are not allowed to use the n word if white people can’t. That’s it. I’m really amazed that is somehow controversial.
My kids should not be punished for things they have never caused and never said. We need to stop punishing for sins of the past.
It isn’t punishing for sins of the past, it’s punishing for sins if the present. If your daughter calls a black classmate a slur today, then that happened today. The reason why it’s bad has to do with a whole lot of history, but it was still said today.
Nobody is going around suspending students because their great granddaddy used a slur in 1840.
