Nigger

Nigger. Definitely not a word I have ever really been fond of but a word I’ve known and understood for most of memory recollecting life. I remember the first time I was ever referred to as that word to my face. In third grade my teacher and another teacher would switch classes to teach different subjects. That year my social studies was the teacher who primarily taught the other class. One day I remember a discussion about racism and it came out that not all of the students in her class came from families that believed in equality. I was on guard (en garde !).

One afternoon after the bell had rung I found myself one of the few students in the school and had a rather unpleasant encounter in the main corridor as I was exiting the school. A boy from the other teacher’s class and I came too close to one another, apparently, and for the first time the epithet was hurled at me. I didn’t cry. But it was weird. I mean, I had kind of been expecting it, or assumed it would definitely happen sometime in life, but who ever wants to be engaged in acts of racism? I told my mom when I got home. She had noticed I was acting weird. She wanted to know if I wanted to tell the school but I don’t think I did. I already knew his family wasn’t of a different mindset so what would really be the use. Who knows, he might have even been heralded.

The second time was during sixth grade and was much more emotional. I had been playing with one of my best friends on my front yard and somehow she had done something that caused her to exclaim she was hurt… something I thought did not warrant as much of an outcry as it had received and I laughed and called her a “sucker for pain.” Then. It happened. And that time it hurt. But we continued playing. And in good time she went home. Maybe I even went over to her house. It was confusing.

I was confused. And again, my mom noticed I was a bit off. And in my hesitation she sensed something of this nature had occurred and asked me what happened. I explained. “Do you want me to call her parents?” I said yes. But only because I wasn’t sure there was anything left to lose. “I’m not sure if we’re friends anymore,” I replied.

She called and spoke to my friend’s mom and they were all apologetic, one of her older sisters called in from the background “it only means ‘fool!’” and the obliviousness was exposed, and it was interesting to think that Americans could live a life so far removed from the history of that word while it still resonates so deeply within many people in the same spaces.

Outside of historical and social studies of American culture, and the recently popular philosophical discussions surrounding the use of the word in music and pop culture at large, my life had been mostly unaffected by that word until this February.

This February during one of training seminars a group of us had the opportunity to serve as a test class for four potential new language teachers. I volunteered to be one of them. The last day of the testing sessions, in the last class, there was a foul. One of the PC staff members asked the would-be teacher to explain the difference between three similar words ‘imi’, ‘immi’ and ‘imim’ in one of the Berber languages. The teacher misunderstood the question and focused on the word of the three which means mother thinking the question, which was asked in English, was asking to specify something about that particular word. He proceeded to tell us that ‘black’ people call their mother one thing and that ‘white’ people call their mother by another name, which the same staff member told us was false, but his greatest error was that he used the word ‘black’ and ‘nigger’ interchangeably.

For serious.

The room fell silent. All concentration was lost. I felt flushed. I am sure I would have been blushing it were possible for that to be apparent.

We students said nothing. The staff in the row behind us said nothing.

As soon as the session ended the staff member who asked the question immediately went to talk to the teacher in private and the rest of us began our debriefing with the remaining staff.

We were told they were surprised that none of us said anything. The prevailing chorus among us was that this was his test and we did not want to spend so much time correcting him/did not know if we could/we did not know what to do. We agreed that if it were a class situation we would have reacted differently. It would have been more urgent. But I am not sure I was convinced in that instant they/we’d necessarily act any differently.

The aftermath of the incident was curious. One of my fellow volunteers, a Caucasian male, turned to me and said, “I don’t know how you feel about that word but I’m sorry,” which I found to be an interesting response. Sorry it happened to me or did he actually mean he felt sorry? Then other people said other things and agreed with me when I said my concentration was shot, and then the teacher was criticized for not noticing the faux pas by seeing a shift in our attitudes. But then, my then boyfriend, who was sitting next to me, said something I will never forget, “I was looking at you to see how I should react, but you looked like you were [okay]” and so he didn’t do or say anything. So, yea! Awesome I was being regarded, but how awful! Because I didn’t cry out nothing happened? Is it necessary that I always be the one to speak first? And what would have happened were I not there? Would more or less have been done? Well, granted it’s hard to do less than nothing, but would less thought have been given to the issue?

I realized I would never know what it’s like to be in a room in which I am not present.

And this a day after I was used in a prop in a game of charades, enduring my cheek being rubbed by another volunteer, in order to ‘help’ the other players guess Nelson Mandela. Really?? I’m happy to report it only confused people more. There’s nothing quite like high velocity, incessant chatter to mask mass discomfort.

Fast forward to April. Cambrey and I are walking through the medina in Marrakech with Stacy while trying to avoid persistent shopkeepers and a strange phenomena happens. At least twice, after failing to give someone what they thought was proper attention, they would call ‘nigger’ at us, non-maliciously, as if it single us out from the crowd, used almost as if it were name, expecting us to immediately (and happily?) turn around. At first we giggled to ourselves, well after the immediate shock passed. But wow, that was the first time since sixth grade I had ever been called a nigger.

Fast forward to last week. I was volunteering in Essaouira at the 13^th annual Gnaoua Music festival. Gnaoua music is a tradition north/west African type of music that is associated with slavery as sounds it incorporates are specifically supposed to bring to mind the sounds of shackled hands rowing. It is a spiritual music and according to lore, only musicians trained by ‘Gnaouis’ are endowed with the ability to cause a spiritual moment in the listeners. I was volunteering with primarily PC health volunteers with an HIV/AIDS awareness association corralling people during the day to head over to the organization’s booth for free, confidential and quick (20 minutes or less to get results) testing.

Essaouira is a really cool city. Laid back atmosphere. Good food. On the Atlantic. It was the one city that my friends that had previously told me that I needed to visit. It was the city I was most excited for. And, it is a city, during this festival time celebrating ‘black’ music, I was called a nigger on the street more times than I can recall.

And how did I feel? Okay. Surprisingly okay, actually. After the teacher incident in February I gained a whole new outlook on the word’s usage—at least in Morocco. The teacher who used it had no change in his demeanor when he used it. I am 100% certain that he meant no offense and had no idea of the profundity of that word.

I actually felt, or maybe I pretended?, all these instances were not meant to be harmful. They were meant to signify that I was seen. And to get my attention. But not necessarily to be mean. No one yelled or growled it at me. I would like to say no one’s face contorted but for the most part I never gave one of my callers so much as a sideways glance. I am great at pretending to not hear things or see (re: completely, and intentionally, ignoring) people. And it served me quite well. I honestly don’t believe they meant me any harm or ill will. And being American, and accepting that as Truth, I have felt I should have more difficulty with than I have actually experienced.

Identity, especially black identity, I have learned is a strange something in Morocco. My host sister’s roommate (they’re in college) lives in the south (Western Sahara) and we had a conversation in December while going through a book of pictures from the region and came across an image of a woman completely covered with basically only her eyes showing. She asked me, “Do you know why she’s dressed like this?” I naively guessed, “Because it’s sandy? Because it’s hot?” And her matter-of-fact answer was, “No. Because they don’t want to get black.” ZING! Without irony. Without any change of tone. She told me, an obviously black female, that these women didn’t want to look like me. And then I wondered, well, what am I? Am I not perceived as black or was that somehow not thought of as an offensive comment? At any rate, I wasn’t offended.

In my experience, people don’t identify as black here, or not very many multi-generational Moroccans with long ties to the land. A fellow young black female pcv who lives near me told me once she was with her host family looking at some pictures or somehow trying to identify a person whom the volunteer referred to as ‘black’ and all the ‘black’ women around her laughed as if she said the silliest thing in the world and refuted her idenitification. But all of these women are definitely what most Americans would qualify as black without a second thought (but Americans don’t know much about their favorite social construct). Those women would never call themselves black, at least not in their own words. They are Berber. And proud. And that’s awesome. Good for them (non-sarcastic).

Being in Morocco has made me think more consciously about how race is perceived and how it is practiced, for race definitely has a perfomance aspect. Morocco has also made me think about the power of words. I love words. Spoken, written, imagined, yet unvoiced… the whole gamut, they bring me joy. But I am learning to really think about how context based they truly are.

Yes, I was called a nigger, multiple times. But did they know I was an American? And does it even matter? The question really is, do they know the power of their own words? Do they know what what they are saying? How it effects me is based on my life experiences and the experiences of others’ that I have been privileged to know. If I were unexposed to these things the word would might have no effect on me, but such is not my experience and that is not how language works. Words exist to convey meaning. Both speaker and listener are responsible for knowing the code and adding to it in turn. Failures to communicate often result from false assumptions and/or misinformation. It’s everyone’s job to keep language alive, pure and educated.

Perhaps, if tiring, and if difficult, it is my job to always speak up when faced head on with a concept badly expressed. If no one ever corrects misinformation it will only promulgate within a society… but what is the balance? It cannot (should not) be my job to educate every shopkeeper, or would be suitor, or whatever the case may be, about his (or potentially her) improper usage of the word and its ‘real’ meaning. I suppose for now I’ll take away from these experiences that not everyone is American (should be a ‘duh’ but I think I’m realizing how much ‘common’ knowledge really isn’t that common). Not everyone is endowed with a rich understanding of American culture or our history, despite our media creeping into the lives of people all across the globe. We, as a people, have no idea what is normative in any other country. As a traveler, as a world citizen, as a person who likes to be happy and unstressed… I am learning the importance of context. Case dependent, be happy or rightfully offended at home, educate when you can, and don’t hold a grudge against innocent displays of ignorance. The world isn’t out to get you.