Earlier in September a black woman named Brandi Johnson took her black boss to court after he called her the n-word several times in a rant about her professionalism. The court ruled in her favor, and she walked away with $280,000. Headlines in the aftermath read “Black boss’s n-word rant to black employee costs him” and “Lawsuit airs double-standard myths of the n-word,” proclamations that to me sounded a lot like a bunch of white people clapping and cheering and crying, “Take that, blacks!” Now, to be sure, the reactions have been much more varied than just these oddly smug headlines. Most notable were the contrasting views of Shayne Lee, professor of sociology at the University of Houston, and Tammie Campbell, founder of the Honey Brown Hope Foundation, who encouraged the use of the n-word and frowned upon it, respectively. But the majority sentiment throughout mainstream news sources has been that justice was served.
The reactions, though diverse, were all strong. Understandable, considering the word’s clear ties to times of slavery and oppression. Even though slavery in the United States was abolished over 140 years ago, racism is alive and well, there cannot be any doubt about that. Just recently my mixed race step-sister, while working as a hostess in a family restaurant, was told by a customer that he didn’t want a black girl touching his food. However, I grew up in a town where every person is the same color. Racism just is not something that I have personally experienced. I do not think I have ever even heard the n-word outside of a rap song (although I do listen to plenty of those). Forgive my sheltered life thus far, but the only point of view I can legitimately present is my own, right? So rather than discuss at length a word for which I have no context and therefore no right to opine on, I will focus on a word that I know too much about: slut.
Slut, like the n-word, is a word that induces a strong reaction. Also like the n-word, I tend to hear it in my rap songs. Brooke Candy’s self-defining anthem “Das Me” proclaims, “It’s time to take the word back; ‘slut’ is now a compliment … lady who on top of it, a female with a sex drive.” Candy’s rap echoes the growing movement among women to “take back” the word slut, as made famous by protests such as the SlutWalk, a march against victim-blaming in rape cases. The premise of the movement is similar to what started blacks using the n-word: this word has been used as a weapon to oppress us, so we will take the weapon away from our oppressors. We will negate its definition and we will nullify it. “Slut is now a compliment,” or in the words of Shayne Lee, “As smart, educated, modern people we can use our hermeneutics, our ability to interpret context, rather than just imposing in a blithe way meaning and degradation to a particular word.”
Certainly it is a positive goal to blunt the blades that would try to cut us down. For years, the so-called double standard that the headlines decried has worked in the opposite direction. Only whites called blacks the n-word. Now the tide has turned, and for slut, too, the tide is turning. Power over something that in the past has had power over me gives me hope, but it is not hope without reservations. I’m not alone in this; others have been slow to embrace the term. Melanie Klein writes for Ms. Magazine, “The word slut now brings up feelings I’ve developed over time about the hypersexualization of our culture … Collectively, this makes claiming the word slut, an effort I found revolutionary and exciting over a decade ago, now feel cliché, confusing and counterproductive.” The important factor, I believe, is how we then use our newly repurposed words. Brandi Johnson’s boss clearly was not using the n-word in a positive way. If, by claiming the word slut as our own, we assert that it will be used to empower women, we cannot turn around and then use it to degrade them. With so many ins and outs at stake, is it not better to simply put such words to rest? Are we really making a difference with how we choose to perceive one word, or are we, in the end, only embracing a reversed double standard, and perpetuating the same stereotypes we wish to erase?