September/October 2004

The "N-word" and the Racial Dynamics of Teaching

By Wendy Luttrell and Janie Ward

It is the first day back at school and students greet each other after the long summer break. Racial, gender, and sexual slurs-all spoken without apparent malice-punctuate students' dialogue as they hail each other. One teacher bristles every time she hears the "n-word." A guidance counselor calls out, "Hey, watch your mouth." Two teachers exchange glances, and one says to the other, "You have to pick your battles." A new high school year has begun.

How do high school teachers contend with students' use of offensive racial and sexual language? What wells of emotions are tapped as teachers wrestle with their decisions about what "battles to pick" in their everyday interactions with youth?

These questions and concerns were raised by urban high school teachers participating in a five-year research and curriculum development project called Project ASSERT (Accessing Strengths and Supporting Effective Resistance in Teaching). The primary goal of the project, which started in 2001, is to develop a research-based professional growth curriculum that provides teachers with strategies and support for addressing issues of race, class, and gender with their students and colleagues.

In the first two years of the project, we (Wendy Luttrell and Janie Ward)¹ convened a series of afterschool meetings with Boston-area teachers to talk about the pressing issues they believe affect the learning and development of urban youth.

We were not surprised by the wide range of concerns teachers expressed about the influence of "youth culture" on school climate. The teachers spoke about concerns ranging from inappropriate language use to "improper" styles of dress (such as "do-rags") to some of the "X-rated," sexually provocative mannerisms that characterize male-female interactions at their schools. But one issue stood out as especially evocative-the role teachers should take in response to students' use of the "n-word." This topic generated the most conversation among the participating teachers about the role that race plays in their work.

"The Kids Use It Constantly"

Many teachers in the project described the n-word as ­ubiquitous, a "filler word" that students used to "call everybody." As one white female teacher explained:

Another white teacher agreed that use of the n-word is widespread among her students and added:

You know, for me, "nigger" is not an acceptable word in the [class]room, and the kids use that with each other all the time. And they say to me, "But you know, that's just how we talk to each other."

We saw wide variation in the ways teachers responded to students' use of the n-word. Many teachers, whether white, African American, or Latino, made a distinction between what kinds of language and behavior they tolerate from students in classrooms and what they tolerate in hallways. Both teachers and students acknowledged a difference between classroom culture, which is regulated more actively by teachers and their values, and hallway culture, which they saw as influenced more by students.

In general, the teachers who worked in the smallest school community in which we conducted the research were more likely to intervene in hallway spaces when they heard offensive language. As one white female teacher noted:

Another white teacher added that, for the most part, students respond well to this strategy:

They look honestly embarrassed, too, if they've said something that's really offensive and they see you there. They'll be like, "[gasp] I said that in front of a teacher?"

In this small high school setting, some teachers viewed the issue as part of "normal" adolescent development. As one white teacher reflected:

They're very, very different by the time they're seniors than when they were freshmen. A change does happen. You don't hear that kind of stuff. They become much more gentle with each other.

An African American male teacher agreed, but added:

I can see the kids mature, and that is a point that we have to grant . . . but again, we need to reinforce that it is not correct. I mean, "nigger" is a very insulting word.

There was a different sentiment among teachers who worked in the large, comprehensive high school. These teachers were more reluctant to confront students they didn't know personally. Deciding when to "pick their battles" depended on their relationships with students and the support they could garner from administration. Explaining that she is more likely to intervene if she knows the student involved, this white female teacher explained:

If I hear an inappropriate swear word or cussing I will always call the student's name. I don't get into a big fight about it. I just say, "So-and-so . . ." [Then, the student replies,] "Sorry, Miss." And then it stops there.

Another white female teacher described her experience as follows:

I used to intervene, and then I got so many threats and I got called so many names and I got no backup and I said, "OK." . . . And now it is hands off. But if it happens in my classroom, it's a little different (emphasis ours).

"My Classroom Is My Home"

In both schools, teachers experienced the use of the n-word in their classrooms as problematic; yet interestingly, this was not an issue they had uniform strategies for dealing with nor one they had spoken about as a whole faculty. In reflecting on their practice, teachers often claimed classroom space as their own, associating it in particular with their "home," a place in which their position and authority were more secure. This association especially occurred when teachers justified their enforcement of classroom rules regarding the n-word. One teacher explained her approach as follows:

In a pattern we noted in a number of our conversations with middle-aged, white, female teachers, this teacher views "home" as a female domain, where women ("your grandma and I") hold authority. She also claims her status as a white authority figure and her ability to serve as a role model in the socialization of predominantly African American children through her maternal (and therefore gendered) role.

"Passing Judgment"

Whether in hallways or classrooms, however, white ­teachers (who were mostly female, as reflects the urban high school teaching population) were more ambivalent or doubtful about interrupting use of the n-word than were African American and Latino participants. Given that the teachers who volunteered to participate in this project were those who had previous experience with or were committed to discussing diversity issues in their teaching, we found it especially striking that there was such internal conflict and uncertainty among the white teachers participating in the project.²

Questions about their "position" and "authority" hung in the air as white teachers exchanged their perspectives, struggles, and strategies. While African American and Latino teachers often intervened without hesitation when students used the n-word, white teachers reported interventions that were much more selective and context dependent. One white female teacher summed up her concerns about how to discuss the n-word with her predominantly African American students as follows: "How much do I really know about this thing? Am I equipped to be someone who can give a [black] child wisdom about this?"

Like the white teachers quoted earlier who believe that the n-word holds different meaning for them than for their students, the following two white teachers expressed concern about unfairly "judging" kids who use the n-word. This white female teacher echoed the belief that her classroom was her "home," but she wondered aloud about how "hard a line" she should take with her students and wrestled with her place and the potential impact of her actions:

This classroom is like my home and I spend a lot of time here. I just don't want to hear these words. Actually I don't want to hear them at home either. But maybe what I'm trying to say is, yes, I would like them to have a more respectful way of dealing with each other. But then, I'm not quite sure. Am I passing . . . (long pause)-maybe the judgment I pass is not entirely useful.

This teacher was not alone in questioning her impact or her moral authority as her students "step out of her classroom" (i.e., her sphere of influence). Still another white female teacher grasped for words as she described her conflict:

I don't correct students. I mean, I don't call students on that when I hear them calling each other "nigger," depending on the intention certainly. But I have not heard it used maliciously in the school, and I'm sort of in conflict with this. . . . It's so complicated. I feel like it's not my . . . (long pause)-I don't feel like I'm in a position to tell them whether or not they can use that word.

Learning how to negotiate one's authority as a white teacher in relation to racially diverse students is an inevitable part of teaching. That white teachers might worry about correcting or "passing judgment" on students' language use (whether black dialect or offensive racial epithets) is part of a larger debate about the role of culture and power in education. Lisa Delpit, author of the now classic book Other People's Children, offers one explanation for the reluctance of white teachers to intervene in certain situations. She notes that white, middle-class, progressive pedagogical views don't always help students understand what she calls "codes of power," the vocabulary and language skills that are necessary for academic success. When students use the n-word, Delpit would regard judicious and respectful intervention not as an option, but as a responsibility and an obligation if teachers are to serve their students of color in the most effective way.³

Our project suggests, however, that white teachers' discomfort has other sources as well, including feeling a lack of support from administration, a sense of alienation from kids they don't know, and anxieties about not feeling "equipped to provide black children wisdom" about their culture. Interestingly, to exercise their authority about this issue, teachers claimed the classroom space as their "own"-either a "home" where as women they feel comfortable claiming authority, or as a professional space in which they are the boss. But no one seemed to want to exercise authority as a "white" adult; yet this is how white teachers are viewed by many black students.

During one teacher conversation, the group focused on an incident in which a black student complained of mistreatment by a white teacher who constantly corrected his English in class. One white female teacher reflected on her strategies for dealing with this. She added a powerful shift in point of view at the end, reflecting the centrality of race in making these judgment calls:

If a kid was telling a story in class . . . I would not correct his grammar in class. But if I saw there were chronic issues-and I could see it in speech and see it in writing, I would say after class, "Do you know, do you realize that you do that? Let's talk about that construction." But I would not stop him in class. If I were a black teacher, would I do that [wait until after class]? Probably not.

Is it important that this white teacher imagine what she might do as a black teacher? Does this sort of racial awareness improve her teaching practice? Perhaps not directly. But we suggest that, at the very least, opening up rather than avoiding discussions about the role race plays in the strategies teachers use to impact the lives and learning of their students is a crucial starting place in teacher education and professional development.

What Teachers Know

As education scholar Linda Darling-Hammond once wrote, "Teachers teach from what they know. If policymakers want to change teaching, they must pay attention to teacher knowledge [and make] investments in those things that allow teachers to grapple with transformation of ideas and behaviors."⁴

Insofar as African American and Latino teachers hold a firmer sense of comfort or entitlement to influence the socialization of racially diverse youth, then what they "know" benefits their students. White teachers must be supported to sort through their conflicts so that they feel, in the words of one white teacher in these conversations, "empowered to influence students' lives."

These discussions about the n-word highlight why we need a professional growth curriculum so that white teachers can consider what they know and what authority they can claim in their work with racially diverse youth. Such a curriculum would need to include the following:

• identifying the expectations and aspirations that white teachers hold for their racially diverse students;
• becoming aware of the authority they claim (or abdicate) for themselves in the racial socialization of their student charges;
• surfacing, rather than covering over, teachers' conflicts about being white that emerge in daily interactions (such as teachers' responses to students' use of the n-word), and the role these emotions play in the decisions they make as teachers and authority figures.

Finally, we wonder what it would take within the organization of high schools for teachers to extend the authority they claim in classrooms to the hallways. We also wonder what it would take to support teachers in redefining the source of their authority so that they would be encouraged to exercise it in new ways, moving from "This is me and my space, and you will do what I say," to "This is how we are going to create a respectful, cross-racial community, and we both have a stake in-and share responsibility for-doing so."

Wendy Luttrell is the Nancy Pforzheimer Aronson Associate Professor in Human Development and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Janie Ward is an associate professor at Simmons College.

Notes

1. Our cross-racial collaboration (Wendy is white and Janie is African American) has greatly benefited this research and curriculum development project as we have wrestled with our own reactions and assumptions throughout the project. Similarly, the Project ASSERT research team has been racially and ethnically diverse, which has provided continual opportunity for dialogue, disagreement, and, at times, avoidance of racial awareness and conflict.

2. There was obvious selection bias in the sample of teachers who volunteered to meet and talk about their concerns, and we do not mean to suggest that the views of the participating teachers represent all white teachers, or all teachers of color. Rather, we were interested in hearing from those teachers who identified themselves as "urban educators" and who are concerned about the challenges of teaching racially diverse, urban students.

3. See Lisa Delpit, Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom (New York: New Press, 1995).

4. From Linda Darling-Hammond, "Instructional Policy into Practice: The Power of the Bottom over the Top," Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 12, no. 3 (Fall 1990): 339-348.