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Why it's so hard to talk about the N-word

2,277,861 views |

Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor |

TEDxEasthamptonWomen

• December 2019

Historian Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor leads a thoughtful and history-backed examination of one of the most divisive words in the English language: the N-word. Drawing from personal experience, she explains how reflecting on our points of encounter with the word can help promote productive discussions and, ultimately, create a framework that reshapes education around the complicated history of racism in the US.

Historian Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor leads a thoughtful and history-backed examination of one of the most divisive words in the English language: the N-word. Drawing from personal experience, she explains how reflecting on our points of encounter with the word can help promote productive discussions and, ultimately, create a framework that reshapes education around the complicated history of racism in the US.

This talk was presented to a local audience at TEDxEasthamptonWomen, an independent event. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.

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About the speaker

Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor

Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor

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Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor writes, teaches and engages questions on race and racism in the US.

Ta-Nehisi Coates | New York Times, 2013 | Article

"In Defense of a Loaded Word"

Ta-Nehisi Coates explores the meaning that words take on within a particular context. He demonstrates that, when it comes to the N-word and semantics, African Americans are routinely held to a double standard.

Jabari Asim | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2007 | Book

The N Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn't, and Why

Asim’s history teaches that the pervasive n-word is as old as American itself. He takes readers back 400 years by exploring Thomas Jefferson as the source of our enduring image of "the N-word" as a "a shiftless child-man with huge appetites and stunted self control." Asim uncovers the threads of white supremacist ideology embedded in American culture from Jefferson to LBJ and beyond.

Randall Kennedy | Vintage, 2003 | Book

N---er: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word

Kennedy traces the origins, connotations and controversies around the N-word. He answers America’s most pressing question about it; namely, should black people be able to use the N-word? Should there be legal ramifications for responding to its use with violence? Should it cost the speaker his or her job? From the Jim Crow South to contemporary pop culture, Kennedy makes a compelling case for challenging the attitudes and legal framework of our society when it comes to racial slurs.

BackStory, 2019 | Listen

"Oh, Bloody Hell"

Last year, the BackStory podcast produced an episode on the history of profanity in America. In this episode, Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor joins the BackStory team for a conversation about the history of the N-word and its use in African American communities.

Emily Bernard | The American Scholar, 2005 | Article

"Teaching the N-Word"

A black English professor in Burlington, Vermont details her experience teaching African American literature to an all-white group of students in the fall of 2004. Bernard navigates the meaning of the N-word and identity as she moves between the classroom, a press tour, meetings with fellow faculty and life with her white husband.

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This talk was presented to a local audience at TEDxEasthamptonWomen, an independent event. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.

Read more about TEDx.