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No South Asians, you cannot say the N-word.
Yes, even if it’s been used against you.
“The N-word is unique in the English language. It is the ultimate insult; a word that has tormented generations of African-Americans. In 2008, Neal A. Lester, dean of humanities at Arizona State University, taught the first-ever college-level class designed to explore the N-word. According to Lester, as early as the 17th century, the N-word has been used to address African-Americans in a derogatory way (Price, 2011, p. 3). It has always been a sign of disrespect. The word is inseparably connected with viciousness and severity on African-American minds and deprecatory slanders cast on Black bodies.” — From this article.
When my article on the accusations of a toxic workplace environment from the women of colour who worked on Hasan Minhaj’s Patriot Act went viral, Black people sharing it in tweets added comments about him using the n-word in a show.
Full disclosure: I do not watch Hasan Minhaj. I had no idea about this until I saw those tweets. I thought at first it must have been some lesser-known or much earlier piece of work by him in which it happened.
Nope. It was on Homecoming King.
Which is from 2017.
And is still on Netflix.
