Racism in Literature at Lang

It’s the beginning of the semester and classroom engagement is high. Lang students sit around a conference table discussing and debating the assigned readings, exploring literary themes and motifs. The professor passes around a handout, asking the students for a volunteer to read aloud. Several students raise their hands, eager to participate. The chosen student begins, “I used to think that a Southerner had to be always conscious of n…” the student breaks off, unsure of how to handle the word, and the room fills with awkward silence.

There is no clear rule dictating how professors or students at Lang should deal with racist language in literature. Because so much of what is read in the Literature program (or other majors, for that matter) is historical, it is likely that students will run into racist language within their assigned readings. Encountering racist language in the “safe space” of the classroom can be jarring, leaving both teachers and professors at a loss with how to handle it.

“It’s just awkward,” says New School student Alex Wright. “Even at a school like Lang there are people who don’t understand the meaning of that word, or that it continues to degenerate.”

This semester, Professor Julie Napolin, a Faulknerian scholar and professor at Lang, shifted her policy for reading the “n-word” out loud during her Faulkner courses.

“I used to think that it was ok if it was being true to the text and the historical context…[but now I think that] there’s a certain white privilege that’s marshaled in terms of who can say it without injury to him or herself,” Napolin said.  “And really, I don’t think that there’s anyone who can say that word without injury to him or herself.”

Napolin began to rethink her policy after seeing the Bell Hooks lectures at The New School last year, as well as reading an open letter from students to professors in the Free Press. The open letter to the Free Press asked professors not to regard minority students as representatives of their race, something Napolin feared she may be implicitly doing in asking students to use the “n-word.” Similarly, Hooks asked in her talk for the audience to consider whether, in saying “racism,” they were really saying “white privilege.”

“And that was what made me think, ‘well is there a sort of privilege that goes along with saying that word?’” Napolin said. “One thing I didn’t want was for the students and for me to feel like, because we were in a liberal arts classroom, that the politics of everyday life could suddenly be suspended, because it’s also about class privilege, education privilege.”

Orville Lee, another New School professor who is teaching a course called The Classification of Race, spoke to this idea of the classroom as a unique space.

“Because it’s a classroom, I would treat the word as language, as an object in its context, in its time, to sort of see how its working, and take an objective position,” Lee said. “But you know people are upset by words, and the classroom should be a space where people are comfortable, so I think in the classroom and any professional setting avoiding that upset is a reasonable goal.”

Professor Lee explained that he generally does not have students read aloud portions of text containing the “n-word,” but that he does assign them as readings. “For a lot of my students, it’s not an issue. If they raise it as an issue then I’m happy to engage it, but I don’t want to preemptively racialize or genderize my classroom.”

While some may argue that there is an inherent racializing that occurs when that word is spoken or read, there remains ambiguity within the student body over how it should be handled.

“A part of me wants to say, just say the word, because its in the book and it’s just a word. But a part of me knows the larger context ,” said Alex Wright, a student in Orville Lee’s Classification of Race class. “I guess in my personal viewing of it is, at least in a class setting, it’s not a good idea.”

Rather than brushing over the word or caricature, or simply waiting for that awkward silence to give way to a continuation of conversation about plot, some think that these words provide opportunity to engage with literature as it actively affects our lives and sense of self.

Prominent African American writer David Bradley said, “We cannot avoid being hurt. Language hurts people, reality hurts people. . . . If the [“n-word”] did not have meaning today we wouldn’t care that it was in [literature].”