“You can tell me.” He leans forward, his eyes teasing me conspiratorially. “Not even when you’re singing along to the hippity hop and they say it?”
“We’ve already established that I don’t listen to the hippity hop very much,” I say wryly.
This is such a sensitive topic, one I’d hesitate to approach with people I know well, much less someone I just met. In conversations like these, before we say our words, they’re ammunition. After we’ve said them, they’re smoking bullets. There seems to be no middle ground and too little common ground for dialogue to be productive. We just tiptoe around things, afraid we’ll offend or look ignorant, be misunderstood. Honesty is a risk few are willing to take. For some reason, it’s a risk I decide to take with Grip.
“I just mean, isn’t that a double standard?” I pause to sift through my thoughts and get this question right. “It’s such an incendiary word with such an awful history. I completely understand why Black people wouldn’t be okay with it at all.”
“Well, then you’re halfway there.”
I shoot him a look from under my lashes, trying to gauge before I go any further if he thinks I’m some weird, entitled white girl asking dumb questions, which I probably am. He’s just waiting, though, eyes intent and clear of mockery or judgment.
“So why . ..why should anyone use it? Why put it in songs? Why does Skeet feel okay calling another Black man that?”
“First of all, I’m not one of those people who assumes because I’m Black, I somehow represent every Black person’s perspective,” Grip says. “So, I’ll just tell you how I and the people I’m around most think about it.”
He pauses and then laughs a little.
“I guess we don’t think about it. It’s such a natural part of how we interact with each other.” He gives me a wry smile. “Some of us feel like we take the power away from it when we use it.”
“Taking the power?” I shake my head, fascinated, but confused. “What does that mean?”
“Like we get to determine how it’s used.”
He pauses, and I can almost see him weighing the words before they leave his mouth.
“You have to account for intent. It was originally meant to degrade and dehumanize, as a weapon against us, but we reappropriate it as ours and get to use it as we see fit.”
“I don’t know that I really get that or agree,” I admit, hesitant because I’ve been misunderstood before in these conversations. I’m too curious. I always want to understand, and don’t always know when to stop asking.
“Because of our unique history in this country, that word will never be safe for anyone to use to us,” he says quietly. “But with all that Black people endured, being able to take that slur back and decide how we want to use it feels like the least we should be allowed. And it’s the very definition of entitlement for others to want to use it because we can.”
“That I get.” I hesitate, wanting to respect his opinion, his honesty even though I don’t agree with parts of what he’s said. “I guess to me, we have enough that divides us and makes us misunderstand each other. Do we really need one more thing we can’t agree on?”
Grip’s eyes don’t waver from my face, but it’s as if he’s not as much looking at me, as absorbing what I just said. Processing it.
“That’s actually a great point,” he says after a few seconds. “I hadn’t thought of it like that, and it’s good that you ask that question. You’re not asking the wrong question. Is it the most important question, though? To me, some guy calls me the N-word, we’ll probably fight. I’ll kick his ass, and we’re done. It’s over.”
He slants me a cocky grin, and my lips refuse not to smile back. “But I want to hear the same dismay and curiosity,” he continues, his smile leveling out. “About the issues that are actually eroding our communities. Let’s ask why Black men are six percent of the general population and nearly forty percent of the prison population. Let’s get some outrage over people of color getting longer sentences for the same crimes other people commit. And over disproportionate unemployment and poverty.”
His handsome face settles into a plane of sharp angles, bold lines, and indignation.
“I can fight a dude who calls me the N-word,” he says. “It’s harder to fight a whole system stacked against me.”
The passion and conviction coming off him in waves cannon across the table and land on my chest, ratcheting up my heartbeat.
“It’s not bad that you ask why we call each other that, Bristol.” The sharp lines of his face soften. “There’s just bigger issues that actually affect our lives, our futures, our children, and that’s what we want to talk about.”
Nothing in his eyes makes me feel guilty for asking, and I think that he wants me to understand as much as I want to.
“When other people are as outraged and as curious about those problems as Black people are,” he says, “then maybe we can solve them together.”
It’s quiet for a few moments as we absorb each other’s perspectives. My mind feels stretched. As if someone, this man, took the edges of my thoughts and pulled them in new directions, to new proportions.
“Now that I get,” I finally say softly. “You’re right. Those things are more important, and that’s powerful.”
I look up and grin to lighten the moment.
“But don’t think you’ve changed my mind about the N-word. That still doesn’t make sense to me.”