The N-Word Ban: About the Desperate Attempt to Correct Reality

A bookseller from Munich wrote to me to draw my attention to a novel. More precisely: on a page in it.

The book comes from the Berlin reporter Dirk Kurbjuweit and is called “The Excursion”. It is about four young West Germans who set off on a canoe trip to East Germany, one of the four is black. Unsurprisingly, there are problems with the local population.

“Since when can N… paddle?”

The drinking village Nazi makes his appearance on the page that the bookseller sent me. The four friends are sitting in the local pub and toasting the forthcoming canoe tour. “Since when can N… paddle?” the Nazi interjects.

I didn’t abbreviate the word, the ellipses were made by the author. If you take the sentence literally, you have to come to the conclusion that East German Nazis are now also careful not to be suspected of racism. But of course it’s not meant that way.

The book is up to date, and that has to be acknowledged. Tübingen Mayor Boris Palmer has just made himself impossible in a fit of political Tourette by using an appearance at Frankfurt University to pronounce the proscribed word several times. Palmer announced his departure from the Green Party on Monday. He also said he wanted to seek professional help to work on himself.

If it were up to me, tomorrow we could decide to wipe out the “N-word.” I’ve never been one to think that you have to hold on to words just because you’ve always used them. We didn’t lose anything when we said goodbye to “slant eyes”, “Fijis” or “spaghetti” as names for other people.

Unfortunately, not everyone adheres to the ban on pronouncing it, the bad word will continue to have its appeal in certain circles. There will probably even be people who appreciate it even more now, because the insult character increases the more a term is placed under taboo. When in doubt, you have to accept that too.

Consequences are not well thought out

As much as I share the desire to get rid of insults, I’m afraid the consequences have not been thought through. If not only the spoken word but also the written word is considered so offensive that it is best avoided: why stop at novels? Newspaper reports, scientific studies and in general every form of capturing reality must then put up with an examination.

I can see the discussion at the “Zeit” or the “Süddeutsche” in front of me. A young reporter was traveling in the east and delivered scenes from the AfD milieu. One of the officials featured in it loves to use racist vocabulary, he’s almost obsessed with it. Can the reporter now describe reality, even in its repellent sides? Or does he have to filter them by using abbreviations or paraphrases of what is said?

Another problem follows. The outlawed word is not out of the world by abbreviating it. What does the village Nazi near Kurbjuweit mean with “N…”, what is behind the three dots? Newbie, normalo, good-for-nothing? It probably means exactly what we think of when we read the letter. That’s the way it’s supposed to be: Anything else would run counter to the intention of the novel and make the subsequent course of action seem incomprehensible.

Remembering the suffering of slavery is traumatizing

So Kurbjuweit expects the word to form in the reader’s mind that he doesn’t want to name himself. But if the author assumes that everyone knows what is meant anyway, why doesn’t he name it himself? Out of consideration, he would probably say. But doesn’t real consideration have to mean that you don’t mention them at all?

A case like this happened in the USA, the America correspondent René Pfister mentions it in his bestseller “A Wrong Word”. A law professor at the University of Illinois Chicago used the “N-word” in the abbreviated and thus apparently permissible form in a test in which the students had to evaluate a case of discrimination. Several students then turned to the university management and complained that every memory of the suffering of slavery had a traumatizing effect, including the letter “N”, since it stood for devaluation. The professor was suspended.

Spellings change, word meanings too. What was okay just a moment ago can be considered a disparagement tomorrow. This sometimes happens very quickly. A video clip has been circulating on Twitter in the past few days, in which Jan Böhmermann makes fun of the fact that you should now say chocolate kisses to Negro kisses. He mentions the word “negro kiss” several times with great delight. The clip is from 2016. I can’t imagine that Böhmermann would still dare to talk like that today.

There’s also the joyful brutality of the innocence on display. I still remember how I squirmed inside when my father talked about “Schwatten”. Why, he said, I don’t mean that in a bad way. I found the insistence on the supposed harmlessness of what was said strange. If an overwhelming majority of those spoken to find a term offensive, it is wise not to insist that you know better than they what an offensive is.

Are we doing too much of a good thing?

But now I’m wondering if we’re not doing too much of a good thing. It is not far from being considerate in dealing with one another to falsifying reality. When the racist is no longer allowed to talk like a racist, at some point there will be no more racism. This is how the problem of racism can be solved. I just doubt it’s going to help.

Today it’s the people of color who insist on a paraphrase of reality, tomorrow it’s the trans people. The law for this is already in the works. In the so-called self-determination law there is a provision according to which the mentioning of the old name should be a punishable offense in the future. Anyone who says that a trans woman was born a man violates the “disclosure ban” and risks a fine of up to 10,000 euros. It is not entirely clear whether the regulation also extends to journalists. Somewhat nebulously, the draft law mentions that “special reasons of public interest” must exist in order to refrain from a penalty.

Just avoid what could be uncomfortable

Deadnaming is serious business in the scene. I remember the trouble Der Spiegel ran into when it informed its readers that actress Ellen Page was now Elliot. I don’t want to be in the shoes of a news editor. How are they supposed to tell their audience that a well-known person has changed gender when even the reference to their previous career under a different name is considered a violation of good morals? Without Ellen’s films, no one would know who Elliot is.

My wife says why is your colleague writing about Nazis in the East at all. Couldn’t he have found another topic? That is, if you will, the pragmatic view of things. Just avoid what could be uncomfortable. But if you start avoiding anything that could get you in trouble, you can wrap up as a journalist or writer. Then the only way out is Enid Blyton.

I don’t see an easy solution either. Perhaps one answer is that there is a difference between spoken and written language. You could also add a warning to texts that contain bad words: “Warning, read on at your own risk.” Sounds ridiculous. But if that’s the price of not turning a blind eye to reality, then I’d be willing to pay it.

Read all of Jan Fleischhauer’s columns here.

The readers love him or hate him, Jan Fleischhauer is indifferent to the least. You only have to look at the comments on his columns to get an idea of ​​how much people are moved by what he writes. He was at SPIEGEL for 30 years, and at the beginning of August 2019 he switched to FOCUS as a columnist.

Fleischhauer himself sees his task as giving voice to a world view that he believes is underrepresented in the German media. So when in doubt, against the herd instinct, commonplaces and thought templates. His texts are always amusing – perhaps it is this fact that provokes his opponents the most.

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