Discrepant Awareness Alex Fleck

Well, I’m sure everyone’s seen this garbage floating around in the last few days.
Fortunately it’s popped up in a lot of places, which means there’s probably enough outrage out there to keep most editors from following NewSouth’s example.

Aside from my obvious distaste for the school of thought that likes to make these kinds of ill-advised emendations, the way the word’s being tackled calls some interesting questions to mind. Instead of changing it to “N-” or using an explanatory footnote, the publishers are simply substituting “slave”.
First of all, “slave” doesn’t represent what’s really happening in the language. It isn’t a pejorative. It isn’t even race-specific unless you know the historical context. But remember, feared ignorance of historical context is what prompted this whole issue…
That leads to the weirdest thing about this whole debate: teaching (or not teaching) context. The only real reason for this emendation seems to be that parents and teachers don’t want to address this icky historical word in front of their kids.
The subtext: parents are comfortable teaching their kids that “black people used to be slaves in Antebellum America and that was bad” but not “black people were commonly called niggers in Antebellum America and that was bad”. Is one so much harder to explain than the other? Better yet, is one any better than the other? Isn’t it more horrifying that there was a practice of human slavery on our continent within the last two centuries than that there was is an insulting word for its victims?

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised at this lack of insight. The kinds of people who come up with these things don’t really ask follow-up questions. The whole initiative was designed to avoid awkward or complex questions.
We shouldn’t worry though. Children are still receiving a cultural education about the word in a sensitive and thoughtful environment.
Kanye’s last album went platinum in like, a week.