No Proofreads. No Edits.

In maybe the most awkward five minutes in television history, The Office episode “Diversity Day” seems to touch on every negative sterotype about almost every race. Michael Scott makes all his employees put a notecard on their head as others “describe what race it is” in hopes that the participant will guess. It culminates in Michael crossing every unwritten rule there is in office banter- slavery, holocaust, bad drivers, marijuana usage- shoutout to TBS for really going for it. Michael does congratulate himself on not touching on the Arab community (due to the recency of 9/11) only to end the self-aggrandizing monologue with a terrorist reference. Wild that this episode aired.

The only race really not touched upon in that episode is white/caucasion, but I think that is intentional. The writers of The Office allow Michael to portray every sterotype that is wrong with white culture…right down to saying the N word while portraying Chris Rock’s famous routine and questioning the audience why he does not have permission to say it. “Is it because he’s black and I am white?” Michael says while staring into the eyes of the audience.

Maybe the greatest sterotype, when it comes to race, is the ignorance of white people about their own racial shortcomings and knowledge of others. The sterotype that white people have it all figured out here in the west and we get to sit in the catbird seat critiquing others. Michael Scott was his own walking notecard for the audience to guess the race.

We had our first N word sighting this weekend. Baby girl said is so casually. Made me wonder how long she had waited to test it out in her new vanilla landscape. I am sure this word has been used in front of her no less than 500,000 times in her short life and I pray that she was 500,000/500,000 when it came to hearing it in a way that was not demeaning or degrading. I am no idiot, I know her 1.000 average will be washed away soon enough. She is a black woman in the south and there is a whole life beyond this city’s perimeter.

I do not have a huge history with that word. What some poeple do not know is that I was the only white kid on my high school travel soccer team. The rest of my teammates were black. It was a blast to be a part of their life for 4 years. I’ll never forget being in a hotel room with them in Memphis when they said I had “the pass” and tried to pressure me into saying it. I never did. I knew they would have been cool and just laughed it off. A pass like that, however, is no pass at all; I knew that.

The way my teammates used the word was hilarious to me. They would clown on each other sliding it in as an insult. They would cry together using it as a term of connection. They would also use it before a big game getting their brothers of the pitch in the right headspace. They would come find me in the box after a save and with one hand on the back of my head and our noses being two inches apart hit me with a, “Good shit, N*****”. The word was theirs and I knew that; I was more than cool with that.

When I got to college there was a running back named S.J. God made S.J. in a special lab. He was a beautiful man, no doubt about it. Skin black as night, teeth white as paper, and body that would leave a crossfitter wondering why they even bother. SJ had two sides to him: (1) I remember when my roommate let SJ borrow a tie for an event. I think he even had to help SJ tie it. SJ returned the tie three weeks later perfectly clean, pressed, and folded with a thank you note. (2) I remember when my teammate who lived on SJ’s hall may have kissed the wrong girl on the dance floor and how said teammate spent an entire night in a different building because SJ was so mad. The man who folded the tie was going to fold my teammate if he could find him. SJ the huntsman was not the SJ anyone wanted to mess with.

SJ was a leader of a movement at my school. He rocked a shirt that said, “N-word Is Out.” He wanted his fellow black brothers and sisters to stop using the word all together. He would eloquently describe it as a word with no postive meaning and debate that reclamation of the word did not deem the word worthy of use. The movement, from what I could tell, caught on within the walls of the school.

As I sit here almost 20 years later, I have no idea what is right when it comes to that word being used amongst black men and women. I also am not positive on the best way to teach my daughter. I am well aware there are two layers, at a minimum, that we as parents have to consider: (1) what can a 5 year old say, genreally and (2) what can a black little girl/teen/woman say while under our roof.

I am currently far more concerned on teaching all my children to stand up for themselves and each other. I have a high level of expectancy for my eldest to find his way between words and his family, regardless of how long they have been here. There is a part of me that wants to teach her like SJ taught us. Tell her the word has no place here and that it is disgusting and should never be uttered. There is also a part of me who wants her to decide for herself how she wants to integrate vocabulary and her identity.

She has a right to say that word. In society’s unwritten but strongly enforced rules of life, my daughter and my baby boy have one additinonal word that is only theirs if they choose to use it. That’s how it is. That’s how it should be.

But for today… Baby girl cannot read yet. She struggles to spell. She’s five, she will be fine. I guess we can have a longer talk about this when the letter “N” actually means somehing to her.