“Our Word, Not Yours” [Free the Jackson Five, May] is an extremely well-written and eloquent discussion of a sensitive topic. I’m a white thirty-year-old man. I grew up in Apple Valley. The family I was raised in was made up of Jehovah’s Witnesses and issues of race were basically never issues. My childhood friends were white and black and Asian, the congregation I attended contained just about every major ethnic group, and we were all just Witnesses, united by our religion. I don’t remember anybody ever talking about race or ethnicity. Given this background, it was not surprising at all to me that my formerly all-white family has expanded (through marriage) to include one Lebanese, one Japanese and three African-American members. At the DNA level, we’re all just people and I’ve always been taught that. So it’s really disturbing for me when I encounter examples of racism. Some people think it’s naturally present in all people, but when I’ve witnessed it I have felt sick, like I was watching the most unnatural and vile thing I could imagine. About the N-word: I recognize that I would never even want to use it in the way my brother-in-law or black friends use it sometimes. It just seems that there is too much opportunity for it being taken wrong and no reason to do it. I see no double standard at all for a word to take on different meaning in different contexts or in different groups or cultures. I also see no reason why somebody outside that culture (even if closely attached to it) should attempt to change that situation. Any person who has respect and love for their fellow man needs to learn to appreciate the differences between cultures. It’s ludicrous that there are white people who get upset over the “double standard” of black people being able to use a word they themselves cannot use.
Ryan Sutter,
Apple Valley
Leave a Reply