Last week, Phillip Morris, a black columnist at the Cleveland Plain Dealer tried to use the word "nigger" in a quote as part of an essay about tolerance. The paper's ombudsman reports what happened next.
The debate was passionate, and opinions varied.
Morris wanted to keep the word in his column. "I don't think we should do so much self-censorship," he said. "I'm not saying that I find gratuitous use acceptable, but if I'm going to use that line as the crux of the point I'm trying to make, I've got to use the word."
Metro Editor Chris Quinn, who edits Morris' column, also wanted to leave the word in: "They're in the bar, the word is used, it shocks them, so Phillip wanted to use the word to achieve the same effect," he said. "By taking the word out, you lose the shock value." Deputy Managing Editor Elizabeth McIntyre and several other Metro assistant editors, both black and white, agreed.
However, Daryl Kannberg, the deputy managing editor whose duties include overseeing the copy editors, disagreed. "I got the point, without having to see the word," he said. "I didn't think it was worth offending the readers I knew we would offend by using it."
Profanity and racial epithets do not get published without approval from the top, which at The Plain Dealer means Editor Susan Goldberg and Managing Editor Debra Adams Simmons. Neither liked the idea of using the word.
"For many readers, it's never OK to use that word, given its history," said Simmons. "Particularly for people who are older, it takes them back to a place they don't want to think about."
Simmons said that she doesn't believe in a blanket prohibition but that the bar for using it should be high.
To the PD's credit, it has used the word at least 255 times in situations that other papers would not have, thus making it a more reliable source of information about race relations thant, say, The New York Times.
Morris himself has used the word several times. In one short 2005 column, used it 12 times. Here's his takeaway from that column:
Such is the continuing power of the N-word � a word so common, yet so heavily freighted with historical baggage, that America frequently abbreviates and hyphenates it, as if a hyphen would somehow ease the sting of a word that should be as dead as Latin. How uniquely American. How stupid.
