Imagine if an internal bleep censor screened out all the inappropriate words you heard everyday. You know, the ones that are shown as *@#&! in Sunday morning comic strips.
That's the idea New York City Council members put into play last February when they passed a symbolic ban on the n-word. Councilman Leroy Comrie, a sponsor of the bill, even flew down to Houston in July as the keynote speaker for the word's burial ceremony.
While the ban is legally unenforceable, it does send a clear signal: "We need to be really careful about what we say and how we say it," said councilwoman Darlene Mealy.
Not content to stop at that, the council is considering a similar ban on the word "bitch" and its much-maligned cousin "ho." Mealy, who proposed the bill, claims that the terms are exceedingly derogatory against women.
Well, that's just *@#&!
By banning racist or sexist epithets, you continue to reignite old battles and cleave people apart. English has a host of unpleasant words for unpleasant ideas. Ban them if you want; bigotry happens all the same.
Like Glinda Upland of the Uppity Uplands, we could go inventing words left and right to suit our purposes. Linguistics tells us that when popular demand for an expression exists, a word for it crops up.
Suppose, for instance, that we started saying "Gutmann" in place of our favorite curse word. Soon it would acquire the taint of profanity.
A similar issue came up for debate in 1993, when Penn student Eden Jacobowitz was accused of racial harassment by tossing the epithet "water buffalo" at a group of black sorority girls.
The point is that eradicating discrimination takes digging at its roots. Racial slurs and hate speech are just markers of racism and hate. Your mother had a point when she told you that only sticks and stones would break your bones.
English abounds in euphemism. College students delight in the opposite. At Penn, we call public sculptures "bloody tampons" without batting an eyelash.
Crude but healthy behavior. Naming something involves coming to terms with that thing.
As Dumbledore tells young Harry, "Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself." Censorship garners curiosity. You give words even more venom by making them taboo.
You also stop minority groups from re-appropriating hate words for empowerment. LGBT activists have taken over the words "gay" and "queer" with pride.
Of the n-word, black rapper Mos Def once said that black artists were using "a word that has been historically used by whites to degrade and oppress us, a word that has so many negative connotations, and turning it into something beautiful, something we can call our own."
As for the word "bitch," I wouldn't mind being called a fierce one every now and then.
After all, it's much easier to fight something overt rather than covert. We should tolerate intolerance because it reminds us of the value of our own tolerance. Got that?
Suppose comic Michael Richards had been more careful about launching his anti-black tirade. Suppose Mel Gibson had only internalized his anti-Semitic views. However shocking, these incidents alert us to the fact that bigotry persists in America.
Banning offensive words amounts to arbitrary censorship. Juliet was right: What's in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
Yet William Bowdler didn't think so when he expurgated Shakespeare in 1818 for Puritan ears, replacing "Out damned spot!" with "Out crimson spot!" and "God!" with "Heavens!"
A similar menace is coming to a city near you.
The n-word (a term which reminds me of second-grade cafeteria banter over naughty expletives like the a-word or the f-word) appears throughout Western literature.
Some libraries and schools have simply chosen to take books with the offending word off reading lists.
These include timeless works by Joseph Conrad, Mark Twain and Charles Dickens - several of which attempt to transcend racist attitudes by depicting vernacular realities.
Yet all these measures to eliminate hateful language amount to a blind erasure of history. Our language reflects our realities. Without hate speech, I am afraid we'll forget about the prevalence of hate.
Elizabeth Song is a College junior from Clemmons, N.C. Her e-mail address is song@dailypennsylvanian.com. Striking a Chord appears on alternating Mondays.
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