The Adjunct

One of the stories that I require my students to read and analyze is “Brownies” by ZZ Packer. It is the story of an all-black Brownie Scout troop that goes off to camp and finds there is an all-white Brownie Scout troop there as well. The Brownies instantly want to kick the asses of each and every white girl in Troop 909, and they soon have an excuse when Arnetta hears one of the Troop 909 girls use the word nigger. The Brownies confront some of the Troop 909 girls in the bathroom, intending to beat the snot out of them, but discover that the Troop 909 girls aren’t just white, they’re developmentally disabled.

The story is not so much about racism as it is about children acting out the same hatreds of their parents, often without cause or reason. After the discovery that Troop 909 is developmentally disabled, we learn from their counselor that many of the girls are echolalic, which means they repeat what they hear without knowing what they are saying. If they did say the n-word, it was just an echo of what they may have heard from their parents, and this becomes a very clear parallel to the Brownies looking for a reason to beat up Troop 909 because of their race, an echo from their own parents.

It is a great story for analysis and discussion, and I always enjoy bringing it into class.

Last week, however, things didn’t go too smoothly.

I have two students, let’s call them Beverly and Tom. Both happen to be the only black students in my class. During discussion, Tom said something along the lines of, “I found myself questioning whether Arnetta is a reliable witness. Later, she couldn’t identify the girl who called them niggers, and I just feel she probably made it all up in order to start trouble.

Beverly, who was sitting two seats down from him, recoiled visibly when he said nigger, and before he had finished his sentence she demanded, “Will you please not use that word!”

Let me also take a moment to point out that these are, without doubt, the top two students in this class. At this moment, I remembered a very well written paper Beverly had turned in at the start of the semester about how she did not think anyone, including African-Americans, should use the n-word. Now she was voicing that belief in class.

“I think the important thing to remember,” I said carefully, uneasy with the subject, “is that Tom was using…that word…in analysis of the story. He didn’t say it at, or about anyone, and there was no intent to offend. Let’s focus on intent, and the fact that this is a respectful discussion among scholars.”

“Yeah,” Tom said. “And I’m black.”

At this, Beverly visibly scoffed (this may be because Tom is much lighter skinned than Beverly), and Tom immediately took offense to this reaction. Trouble was brewing, and I decided to chicken out instead of going with my gut.

“I don’t think it is unreasonable,” I said, mostly to Tom, “for her to ask that we simply refer to…that word…as racial slur, racial epitaph, or just the n-word.”

Tom didn’t like this, and I didn’t blame him. It was the chicken-shit approach, and I was coddling Beverly unnecessarily.

“Well, then!” Tom continued, clearly annoyed. “What I was saying is that I think Arnetta might have been acting like, oh you…a total b-word.” He sarcastically acted like he should not even have said b-word, and it struck home for me how ridiculous it was for me to ask him to refrain from referring to a word that had appeared in the story I had assigned.

Tom is indeed an excellent student, and he had been hanging out with me before and after class, drilling me with questions about being a college professor, because he was very interested in teaching math after he graduated. I felt as though I had let him down. Actually, I felt that I’d let them both down. The whole class, in fact.

In my syllabus, for every class I teach, even introduction to grammar, there is a section that reads:

Also, please be notified that some students may deem some class content objectionable. It is not the instructor’s intention to offend, but to challenge students to analyze and interpret new ideas and concepts.

This was given to me during my time at the University of Arizona. My mentor had told me that students needed to be challenged, and they needed to be uncomfortable. The ultimate point of learning is to go outside ourselves, find something new; force ourselves to leave our safe boxes and be challenged by the world around us. I’ve required devout Catholics to write persuasive arguments in favor of legalized abortion, forced fierce liberals to rhetorically analyze Rush Limbaugh without passing any form of personal judgment, made countless conservatives and moralistic persons read stories about rape and suicide, not to mention the recreational drug use of a character named Fuckhead. I should have forced Beverly to hear the word nigger, not hurled at her or anyone else, but just spoken of in analysis of a story about how racism is passed from parent to child without anyone even noticing.

The worst part is that if Tom and Beverly hadn’t been black then I could have done it, no problem. The fact that I was white, that they were of color, all the history and hate and things associated with that word, intimidated me. I couldn’t stand there and tell a young, highly intelligent black woman that she had to sit and deal with this guy using the word nigger.

And if the situation were to ever repeat itself, I don’t think I’ll be capable of doing anything differently.