“Nigger”
'I knew it was bad, and the first time I heard it I could only respond with shock. The second time, I was disturbed.'
By thelittlewarrior | Originally Published at Medium. Culture Club. February 2, 2015 | Photographic Credit; thelittlewarrior Sometime around the 5th grade.
The boy who first called me nigger was my classmate in the 5th grade—a dark-skinned Filipino boy, with the darkest skin in my school. He actually didn’t really offend or upset me. I don’t even consciously remember learning about the word, maybe except in my mother’s sporadic mentions of negro spirituals, slavery, and Nina Simone. I also saw old photographs of white Southerners and the KKK holding “nigger” signs, but I thought it was a time long forgotten.
Although I knew so little about the word, I equated it with dark-skinned black people. Bryce was ten to fifteen shades darker than me, and for a while I think I even thought he was black, so as far as I was concerned, if there was any nigger around it was him.
Despite my disconnection to the word, it was as if intergenerational/ transgenerational traumatic memories had been inherited from my ancestors and embedded in my mind before I’d even had a chance to confront the term on my own. But I knew it was bad, and the first time I heard it I could only respond with shock. The second time, I was disturbed.
Mitchell, a plump, red-faced, Chinese boy sat behind me in a classroom of 40 students. Neither of us had ever really fought. I don’t remember a conversation, but he was already upset with some other boys after a game of softball had gone sour during lunchtime.
There was no conversation, but I was facing him when I turned around, most likely to hand over a new worksheet from the teacher, and as he stared directly into my eyes, grabbing the papers, he suddenly muttered, “Nigger.”
I don’t think I even responded, but I told on him immediately.
When Mrs. Johnson took us both into the hall, I reported what he’d said, and with her piercing blue eyes, she viciously retorted, “but you called him fat!”
Mitchell concocted some cockamamie story about how I’d made fun of his weight, and that therefore warranted him calling me nigger. I never called him empathyeducates - “Nigger”: