I am speaking as a faculty member of the IU School of Education at IUPUI. Many of my colleagues embrace conversations with teachers (future and practicing) around language that confronts or upholds biases, discrimination and racism. I assign readings about the n-word, and this summer students in the Urban Principalship Program and the Urban Education Studies doctoral program at IUPUI joined me in a discussion on those readings and their own ideas about the use of the N-word.
In my experience, teachers are likely to say they easily reject the use of the word, as their upbringing disallows such blatant disrespect of a people. But we all as educators at all levels must be aware of the coded language around demeaning Black people. This is “The Code,” as in the words and phrases tapped out into the world like Morse code that send messages about the unruly, savage Black child, teen and adult. Code protects the racist and the narrow-minded because who sends the message is never as important as the message itself. That’s why “code” is such an appropriate term for it.
Even though we had a funeral for the N-word in 2007, we still get called demons by police officers and thugs by sports news. Let’s ask other athletes or people on the street about their affiliation with violence, theft, savagery and death. I’m sure this exercise would be labeled as a childish, even a heinous way to alienate good people from a community that treasures them. We know how to protect those who deserve protecting.
This code, heard over the airwaves, in schoolbooks and in real-time, helps to keep the dignity of the messenger while seeping poison through an entire Black community. We have to be alert and call out any code that speaks death and disconnection into the Black experience. We have to protect the integrity of those pummeled by negativity and stop focusing on the natural evolution of equity and a racism-free world. Just as activist Malcolm X warned us decades ago, we can’t underestimate the power of a racist community, and the truth in Toni Morrison’s novels where the brutality of slavery, assimilation and internalized racism are as real as patriotism and privilege. The code is not a new idea, but each generation must continue to lay truth on top of it and demand freedom from it.
While it is important to “hear” the code, those words that minimize Black children, parents, teachers, leaders with words like “angry,” “unsafe,” “uncivil,” “inner-city,” “uneducated,” that throw shade on our strengths, we must turn to the one tapping out such messages and tell them we heard the n-word in their conversation or speech, and that political correctness is not intelligence or decorum, but the most vile way to hurt and not take credit for the pain.
As a representative of the school of education, I would argue that teachers are made in their communities and can be transformed by environments like a strong urban teacher preparation program that challenges bias, discrimination and racism. That’s what I and many of my colleagues in the IU School of Education at IUPUI hope to do. And I hope the rest of society joins us in erasing the code and getting to the business of empowerment and equity.
Natasha Flowers, is a clinical associate professor of multicultural education at the IU School of Education at IUPUI.
