Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America

by Michael Eric Dyson

You are proud of your principled stand against the use of hateful language. If the word must be referenced, it needs to be verbally castrated, stripped of its hostile spelling and snipped into harmless abbreviation. Nigger limps into the “N word.” My Lord, how you contort language; my God, how we demand that you do. You bend over backward grammatically to avoid the appearance that you for one moment tolerate bigotry. Yet the bigotry the word refers to remains in place. It is understandable that many of you cannot say that word, at least not in public, and never in front of black folk. We have made it clear, well, at least most of us, that we find it unacceptable for white folk to say it under any conditions. But despite all your effort and care, the word is still out there, still wreaking havoc, even when it’s not being spoken.