WEBVTT
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How's that feel?
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Good?
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You look a little silly to me. Kind of foolish.
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You see, life ain't so complicated.
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Welcome to Amusing Jews, where we celebrate Jewish contributors and
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contributions to American popular culture. I'm Jonathan Friedman. And I'm
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Joey Angelfield. Producer-engineer Mike Tomrin is working somewhere behind the scenes.
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Amusing Jews is a project of Adad Chavarim, Congregation for
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Humanistic Judaism, the Jewish Museum of the American West, and
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Atheist United Studios. Hey, Joey. Words are symbols that stand
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for ideas, objects, and actions. Some words are harmless, others
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are not. Today's guest has written about her relationship with
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an especially fraught word and the man who brought that
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word into mainstream comedy.
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We're honored to chat with Elizabeth Storder Pryor, a professor
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of history at Smith College and author of the new book,
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Something We Said, Richard Pryor, A Notorious Word, and Me. Elizabeth,
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welcome to Amusing Jews.
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Hi, everybody. Thanks for having me.
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You didn't intend this book to be a memoir, correct?
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Yeah, I did not want to write about myself or
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my father when I started out. I mean, I knew
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that I wanted to talk about the N-word. That's what
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my scholarship was on. And I knew that I wanted
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to give examples from my own life. And that intersected
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with my father, but I had no idea how deep
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I was going to end up going.
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What has your scholarship on the N-word been?
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Well, back in 2010, I had an incident in my
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classroom where a white student quoted the word during a
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history lesson I was giving on the Fugitive Slave Act.
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And the student wasn't calling anyone a name or anything
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like that. They were actually quoting a film, Blazing Saddles,
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that my father co-wrote. And now I think about it
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more as a haunting, honestly. But at the time I
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froze and I became really confused. I didn't know what
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to do. Like, was I supposed to redirect her? Would
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that be an attack on free speech? Was I supposed to,
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how was I supposed to protect the black students in
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the classroom? Like, what was I supposed to do? And
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I thought really hard about whether or not I was
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going to say the word in class, but I had
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not thought about what to do when that, the racism
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that I taught came into the classroom uninvited.
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It took you a long time to get around to
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watching Blazing Saddles. What was that experience like?
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I mean, the movie's funny. I mean, it took me
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a long time to see it. I hadn't seen a
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lot of my father's works because I was a child when,
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you know, he was most prolific. And so I... you know,
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didn't watch things that were inappropriate. I mean, I watched
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a lot of stuff that was inappropriate, actually, but I
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didn't watch a lot of stuff that was that inappropriate.
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And so I, you know, I hadn't seen it. And
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I think there was a part of me that felt like,
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if I saw his work, I was going to know
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him like everybody else knew him. And I wanted to
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know him in a special personal way. So I held back,
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but then when I watched it, I mean, it was,
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it was a good movie. There were some things that, uh,
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there were some things that had me rolling and other
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things that I was like, you know, kind of, you know,
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but it was a great movie, some classic, um, things
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in there. And I was glad that I watched it
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because that was sort of embarrassing.
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Yeah.
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Any possibility of using that film in any of your courses?
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You know, I hadn't really thought about it, but I
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just taught a course called Richard Pryor's America last semester.
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And it was really wonderful. But I didn't show any
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of my dad's like live action movies. I only showed
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his standup and his comedy albums and stuff like that.
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I have such a conflicted feeling about the movies that
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he was in, but my students were like, no, we
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have to see that in order to get the context
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of what it meant for him to have his own
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voice in one context, like his stand-up, and then be
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forced to mold himself into a Hollywood voice on the other.
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And so I will be teaching in the future, but
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I hadn't really thought about Blazing Saddles until now.
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You were raised by your Ashkenazi Jewish mother and spent
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memorable time with your famous black father, which you detail
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in the book. I was struck by your admission that, quote,
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he struggled to show up as a parent, and I
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never felt funny enough or creative enough or black enough
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to be his daughter. When did you begin sorting all
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this out?
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Part of me is like, have I? I mean, actually,
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I think I have, but not really until the book
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was published. And I got to be more publicly his daughter,
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you know, and felt closer and closer to him in
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every single talk that I gave, every question that someone
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asked me about the book. Even when they weren't asking
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directly about him, there was this feeling of connection that
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I had. have felt. And so many kind people have
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said to me, he'd be so proud of you. And that,
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I don't know, that kind of bolstered that feeling of
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connection as well.
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Your half-sister, Rain, explores her own upbringing with a Jewish
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mother and Richard Pryor in her one-woman show, Fried Chicken
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and Latkes.
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How do your stories compare?
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I mean, I don't think our stories are really comparable
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because of what my father knew about us, which is
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that we are so different. But I was always sort of,
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you know, shaped as like a bookish person who, you know,
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was into books. And she was more, she's brilliant, but
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her brilliance, it comes out in her writing and on
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stage more. And so, I mean, our stories, we both
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had Jewish moms, white Jewish moms who were in their
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own right, you know, troubled and confusing people. But one
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thing about Rain is like she had, her grandparents were
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both very observant and So she like, you know, she
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knew all the prayers, you know, she every Friday night
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would get together with her grandmother and, you know, observe Shabbat.
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My grandmother did it alone. And I don't know if
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that's like more, her grandparents were, you know, very wealthy.
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Her grandfather was in the business. He was like the
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manager of Danny K. And, and my grandmother, My grandmother
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worked in a department store and my grandfather drove a
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cab and they were fairly recent, second generation immigrants. Well, no,
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actually my grandfather immigrated here. My grandmother was born here
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to people who had just come. And I don't know why,
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but they observed like Shabbat on Friday nights, but they
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did it privately. Like I had to ask later, like,
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why are you lighting those candles? Right. She just did
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it by herself. And so the outcome of that was
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that I did not have a lot of confidence. You know,
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I'd say at the beginning that I wasn't, you know,
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this enough, that enough or black enough to be my
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father's daughter. But I also didn't feel Jewish enough.
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You're joining the show?
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Click like and subscribe.
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Do you think you would have had an easier time
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growing up now when being mixed is much more common?
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I mean, 100%. There's so many great content creators on
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TikTok and, I mean, mostly on TikTok who are like,
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I am Black, I am Jewish, do not tell me
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I'm not either. I can occupy these spaces 100%. I
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don't have to give up who I am. I don't
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have to deny that identity. I felt like I had
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to sort of be one or the other. Um, growing up,
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I mean, I was like in second grade at Wilshire
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Boulevard temple in Los Angeles and having people tell me
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I wasn't really Jewish. So, you know, I couldn't be
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Jewish cause I was black. So, um, I don't think,
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I mean, maybe people are hearing those things, but they're
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like sticking up for themselves when they do. And I, yeah,
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I didn't, I didn't really have that, um, you know,
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that role model. Right.
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And even the term Jews of color is very recent.
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Totally. Like, I love it. I just, I love the
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whole thing of it because it's so, there's something so
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ferocious about it. It's like, you know, I would cower
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in some ways around Black people who felt like, you know,
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that being Jewish was sort of like at the crosshairs
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of blackness, this is of course not in terms of
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civil rights, but in, you know, in terms of urban
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renewal and development, you know? And so a lot of
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the people I met in college were black people from
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cities and, you know, their ideas of what it meant
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to be Jewish was a particular framework. Right. And so
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to say that I was Jewish in those contexts felt
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like a little like, and then, you know, as I
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explained already, like, you know, my my blackness was sort
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of rejected in the Jewish circles I traveled in. And
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so I love that they can be all who they
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are unapologetically.
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If you're in an argument, with another man, he may
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be white, but it's man on man for a minute
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and the shit.
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Get rough, he end up calling you.
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You gotta go, oh, shit.
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Fuck.
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Now I ain't no man no more. Now I got
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to argue with that shit.
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It's interesting that your father made the N-word a prominent
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part of his comedy, and you've made that word a
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prominent part of your scholarship.
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Do you see this as a family inheritance?
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I mean, there was a moment when I wanted to
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call the book inheritance. And there's... Let me tell you,
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I was the very last one to know that my
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deep dive into... the n-word and its history and you
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know the pedagogy how to teach it and in my
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own life had anything to do with my father's work
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now i knew that i had these stories as a
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child like you know where my father told me don't
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let nobody ever call you that but the idea that
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it had to do like he was a scholar of
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the word and so was i like that was like
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a very recent development in the process of the.
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Book Richard Pryor eventually distanced himself from the N-word. How
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did that change come about?
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My father, for people who don't know, Richard Pryor was
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a groundbreaking stand-up comedian from the 1970s. And part of
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what he did is in 1967, he famously walked off
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stage and refused to do this kind of more sticky
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humor that was popular in the Las Vegas stages. And
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et cetera. And he was like, I am not going
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to perform in crowds where they wouldn't have my grandmother
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as sitting next to them in these audiences. And so
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I want to start developing my own voice. And that
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included being authentic to the impoverished middle America, Peoria, Illinois
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world that he grew up with. He grew up in
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a brothel. His grandmother owned it. My great-grandmother. And he started...
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Speaking from that authentic voice and that voice included the black,
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the particularly black, subversive, resistant use of the N-word and
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his two Grammy award winning albums with that. And then
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at the end of the 70s, so that's at the
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beginning of the 70s. At the end of the 70s,
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he takes a trip to Kenya, sort of following the
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Alex Haley roots sort of model. And he gets there
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and he takes stock. And he's like, you know, I'm
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looking around. I see Black people running the country. I
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see Black people doing menial jobs. I see Black people
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doing everything in between. In this context, the N-word doesn't
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mean anything. This is a word that only has resonance
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in the way that I'm using it in the U.S. context.
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And it's there, he says, like kind of to describe
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his own wretchedness, you know, that blackness is degraded. And
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he's like, I don't feel like it makes sense for
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me to ever call another Black man the N-word. And
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he was so moved by that, he like broke down
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in the lobby of the Nairobi Hilton. That's the story
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he tells on stage and live on the Sunset Strip
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in 1982. And I believe it. But I also see
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in earlier moments of his work that he's starting to
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question He's starting to be in conversation with what does
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it mean, much in the way that Dave Chappelle did
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when he did the Chappelle show and kind of was like, okay,
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I'm making fun of certain ideas around race and blackness
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or whatever. People are walking away. and getting something else
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than what I'm trying to deliver from it. And I'm
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not sure how I feel standing in this orbit. And
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so my father in 1977, he had a TV show
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on um, NBC, it was like a, you know, a
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variety show, a special. And in that special, he has, uh,
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a skit, I guess, if you will. It's not funny.
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It's with Maya Angelou. It's like actually really heavy, um,
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about Maya Angelou as the wife of a drunkard husband
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who passes out in front of her. And she's trying
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to appeal to him and tell him, I love you. Like,
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why are you doing this? Not comedy on a comedy
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variety show. But in that conversation, she talks to him
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about the way he uses the N-word. And he says, no, no, no,
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this drunk man on the couch played by my father.
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You know, this word is just about affection. But then
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you use it against me and you use it against yourself.
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You use it against our community. And then you curse
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life itself with this word. That's 1977. That is before
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the trip that he takes, right, to Kenya. So I
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feel like although my father put it into words and
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was clearly moved by the trip that he took to Kenya,
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that he was already thinking through what it meant to
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be out of control of your own narrative, I guess
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you would say, and your own performance.
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Was he aware of how much his comedy mainstreamed that work?
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I mean, that's the kind of question that I wish
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I could ask him. My father was diagnosed with multiple
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sclerosis in 1986, and really, by 1995 or 96, his
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ability to talk was just... So at the end of
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his life in 2005, he really wasn't. And that's just
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about the time in my life where I'd want to
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be asking questions like this. But... One hint that I
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have is that in 1982, live in the Sunset Strip
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comes out and he does the performance on stage, which
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talks about the trip to Kenya. But in an audio
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version of that, which was recorded a different time, still
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live on the Sunset Strip, but the album, he really
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talks about how as an artist, he feels like he
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made a mistake in making the words as prevalent as
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it was. Yeah. I mean, I don't really know if
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it was his fault in the way that he seemed
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to be taking credit for it, but certainly he's very influential.
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Many hip hop artists cite Richard Pryor as one of
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their influences in kind of reclaiming the word in the
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way that they do.
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In the book, you describe college classrooms where you've discussed
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the N-word. What have your students taught you about the
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word and its usage?
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I mean, everything that I know about it, honestly, without
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my students. I mean, Smith students, I teach at Smith College. Historically,
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it's a women's college. The classroom is a really magical
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place where the students will go along for the ride.
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I mean, you can put a pile of, you know,
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stink in the middle of the classroom and they will
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turn it into, you know, bouquets of flowers. They're just
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absolutely gorgeous. brilliant and engaged. And one of, from the
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time the student said that word and I came back
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and started trying to grapple in the classroom, I've just
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been learning, learning, learning, learning, learning. And I continue to
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learn from my students in, in every subject, but it's
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particularly about the, the N word. Like I think the
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biggest takeaway that I had, which shocked me. Well, I mean,
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a couple of things. One is like, I was actually stunned.
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that deeper conversations at the junior high school and high
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school level were not happening before my students got to
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me at college. I think there might be more now, right?
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There's like more pedagogical opportunity for those conversations, but, um,
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they weren't having them when I, at least when I
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first got them and some of them haven't had them still,
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I mean, till this day. And that's like, I don't know,
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18 years later or something, 16 years later. Um, I
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also learned that nearly every one of my students, no
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matter their race, are impacted by this word. It's something
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that I call in the book points of encounter. They
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don't know how to interact. with the racism that it projects.
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They don't know what to do and they have no
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place to learn it. And it's so similar to me,
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to like sex before sex education, where students are literally
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learning in the back of the bus from their friends,
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like in whispers, that they don't actually get the opportunity
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to be educated in the way that they should be,
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the way they deserve about the deeper racial history of
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the United States and how we can have a word
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that warrants its own, you know, euphemism, the N-word. Like,
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how do we have a word in our language like that?
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Well, thanks so much, Elizabeth, for this important conversation.
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Sure.
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And to our audience, now back to your regularly scheduled lives.
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Amusing Jews is here to amuse you.
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If you like being amused, go ahead and click like
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and subscribe.
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How's that feel?
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Good?
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You look a little silly to me. Kind of foolish.
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You see, life ain't so complicated.
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Welcome to Amusing Jews, where we celebrate Jewish contributors and
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contributions to American popular culture. I'm Jonathan Friedman. And I'm
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Joey Angelfield. Producer-engineer Mike Tomrin is working somewhere behind the scenes.
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Amusing Jews is a project of Adad Chavarim, Congregation for
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Humanistic Judaism, the Jewish Museum of the American West, and
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Atheist United Studios. Hey, Joey. Words are symbols that stand
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for ideas, objects, and actions. Some words are harmless, others
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are not. Today's guest has written about her relationship with
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an especially fraught word and the man who brought that
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word into mainstream comedy.
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We're honored to chat with Elizabeth Storder Pryor, a professor
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of history at Smith College and author of the new book,
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Something We Said, Richard Pryor, A Notorious Word, and Me. Elizabeth,
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welcome to Amusing Jews.
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Hi, everybody. Thanks for having me.
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You didn't intend this book to be a memoir, correct?
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Yeah, I did not want to write about myself or
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my father when I started out. I mean, I knew
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that I wanted to talk about the N-word. That's what
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my scholarship was on. And I knew that I wanted
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to give examples from my own life. And that intersected
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with my father, but I had no idea how deep
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I was going to end up going.
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What has your scholarship on the N-word been?
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Well, back in 2010, I had an incident in my
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classroom where a white student quoted the word during a
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history lesson I was giving on the Fugitive Slave Act.
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And the student wasn't calling anyone a name or anything
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like that. They were actually quoting a film, Blazing Saddles,
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that my father co-wrote. And now I think about it
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more as a haunting, honestly. But at the time I
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froze and I became really confused. I didn't know what
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to do. Like, was I supposed to redirect her? Would
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that be an attack on free speech? Was I supposed to,
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how was I supposed to protect the black students in
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the classroom? Like, what was I supposed to do? And
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I thought really hard about whether or not I was
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going to say the word in class, but I had
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not thought about what to do when that, the racism
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that I taught came into the classroom uninvited.
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It took you a long time to get around to
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watching Blazing Saddles. What was that experience like?
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I mean, the movie's funny. I mean, it took me
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a long time to see it. I hadn't seen a
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lot of my father's works because I was a child when,
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you know, he was most prolific. And so I... you know,
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didn't watch things that were inappropriate. I mean, I watched
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a lot of stuff that was inappropriate, actually, but I
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didn't watch a lot of stuff that was that inappropriate.
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And so I, you know, I hadn't seen it. And
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I think there was a part of me that felt like,
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if I saw his work, I was going to know
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him like everybody else knew him. And I wanted to
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know him in a special personal way. So I held back,
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but then when I watched it, I mean, it was,
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it was a good movie. There were some things that, uh,
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there were some things that had me rolling and other
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things that I was like, you know, kind of, you know,
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but it was a great movie, some classic, um, things
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in there. And I was glad that I watched it
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because that was sort of embarrassing.
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Yeah.
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Any possibility of using that film in any of your courses?
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You know, I hadn't really thought about it, but I
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just taught a course called Richard Pryor's America last semester.
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And it was really wonderful. But I didn't show any
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of my dad's like live action movies. I only showed
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his standup and his comedy albums and stuff like that.
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I have such a conflicted feeling about the movies that
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he was in, but my students were like, no, we
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have to see that in order to get the context
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of what it meant for him to have his own
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voice in one context, like his stand-up, and then be
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forced to mold himself into a Hollywood voice on the other.
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And so I will be teaching in the future, but
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I hadn't really thought about Blazing Saddles until now.
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You were raised by your Ashkenazi Jewish mother and spent
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memorable time with your famous black father, which you detail
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in the book. I was struck by your admission that, quote,
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he struggled to show up as a parent, and I
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never felt funny enough or creative enough or black enough
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to be his daughter. When did you begin sorting all
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this out?
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Part of me is like, have I? I mean, actually,
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I think I have, but not really until the book
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was published. And I got to be more publicly his daughter,
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you know, and felt closer and closer to him in
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every single talk that I gave, every question that someone
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asked me about the book. Even when they weren't asking
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directly about him, there was this feeling of connection that
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I had. have felt. And so many kind people have
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said to me, he'd be so proud of you. And that,
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I don't know, that kind of bolstered that feeling of
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connection as well.
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Your half-sister, Rain, explores her own upbringing with a Jewish
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mother and Richard Pryor in her one-woman show, Fried Chicken
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and Latkes.
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How do your stories compare?
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I mean, I don't think our stories are really comparable
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because of what my father knew about us, which is
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that we are so different. But I was always sort of,
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you know, shaped as like a bookish person who, you know,
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was into books. And she was more, she's brilliant, but
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her brilliance, it comes out in her writing and on
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stage more. And so, I mean, our stories, we both
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had Jewish moms, white Jewish moms who were in their
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own right, you know, troubled and confusing people. But one
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thing about Rain is like she had, her grandparents were
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both very observant and So she like, you know, she
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knew all the prayers, you know, she every Friday night
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would get together with her grandmother and, you know, observe Shabbat.
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My grandmother did it alone. And I don't know if
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that's like more, her grandparents were, you know, very wealthy.
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Her grandfather was in the business. He was like the
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manager of Danny K. And, and my grandmother, My grandmother
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worked in a department store and my grandfather drove a
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cab and they were fairly recent, second generation immigrants. Well, no,
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actually my grandfather immigrated here. My grandmother was born here
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to people who had just come. And I don't know why,
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but they observed like Shabbat on Friday nights, but they
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did it privately. Like I had to ask later, like,
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why are you lighting those candles? Right. She just did
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it by herself. And so the outcome of that was
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that I did not have a lot of confidence. You know,
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I'd say at the beginning that I wasn't, you know,
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this enough, that enough or black enough to be my
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father's daughter. But I also didn't feel Jewish enough.
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You're joining the show?
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Click like and subscribe.
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Do you think you would have had an easier time
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growing up now when being mixed is much more common?
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I mean, 100%. There's so many great content creators on
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TikTok and, I mean, mostly on TikTok who are like,
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I am Black, I am Jewish, do not tell me
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I'm not either. I can occupy these spaces 100%. I
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don't have to give up who I am. I don't
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have to deny that identity. I felt like I had
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to sort of be one or the other. Um, growing up,
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I mean, I was like in second grade at Wilshire
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Boulevard temple in Los Angeles and having people tell me
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I wasn't really Jewish. So, you know, I couldn't be
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Jewish cause I was black. So, um, I don't think,
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I mean, maybe people are hearing those things, but they're
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like sticking up for themselves when they do. And I, yeah,
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I didn't, I didn't really have that, um, you know,
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that role model. Right.
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And even the term Jews of color is very recent.
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Totally. Like, I love it. I just, I love the
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whole thing of it because it's so, there's something so
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ferocious about it. It's like, you know, I would cower
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in some ways around Black people who felt like, you know,
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that being Jewish was sort of like at the crosshairs
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of blackness, this is of course not in terms of
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civil rights, but in, you know, in terms of urban
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renewal and development, you know? And so a lot of
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the people I met in college were black people from
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cities and, you know, their ideas of what it meant
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to be Jewish was a particular framework. Right. And so
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to say that I was Jewish in those contexts felt
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like a little like, and then, you know, as I
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explained already, like, you know, my my blackness was sort
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of rejected in the Jewish circles I traveled in. And
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so I love that they can be all who they
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are unapologetically.
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If you're in an argument, with another man, he may
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be white, but it's man on man for a minute
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and the shit.
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Get rough, he end up calling you.
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You gotta go, oh, shit.
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Fuck.
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Now I ain't no man no more. Now I got
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to argue with that shit.
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It's interesting that your father made the N-word a prominent
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part of his comedy, and you've made that word a
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prominent part of your scholarship.
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Do you see this as a family inheritance?
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I mean, there was a moment when I wanted to
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call the book inheritance. And there's... Let me tell you,
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I was the very last one to know that my
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deep dive into... the n-word and its history and you
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know the pedagogy how to teach it and in my
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own life had anything to do with my father's work
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now i knew that i had these stories as a
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child like you know where my father told me don't
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let nobody ever call you that but the idea that
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it had to do like he was a scholar of
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the word and so was i like that was like
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a very recent development in the process of the.
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Book Richard Pryor eventually distanced himself from the N-word. How
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did that change come about?
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My father, for people who don't know, Richard Pryor was
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a groundbreaking stand-up comedian from the 1970s. And part of
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what he did is in 1967, he famously walked off
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stage and refused to do this kind of more sticky
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humor that was popular in the Las Vegas stages. And
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et cetera. And he was like, I am not going
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to perform in crowds where they wouldn't have my grandmother
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as sitting next to them in these audiences. And so
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I want to start developing my own voice. And that
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included being authentic to the impoverished middle America, Peoria, Illinois
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world that he grew up with. He grew up in
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a brothel. His grandmother owned it. My great-grandmother. And he started...
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Speaking from that authentic voice and that voice included the black,
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the particularly black, subversive, resistant use of the N-word and
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his two Grammy award winning albums with that. And then
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at the end of the 70s, so that's at the
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beginning of the 70s. At the end of the 70s,
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he takes a trip to Kenya, sort of following the
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Alex Haley roots sort of model. And he gets there
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and he takes stock. And he's like, you know, I'm
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looking around. I see Black people running the country. I
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see Black people doing menial jobs. I see Black people
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doing everything in between. In this context, the N-word doesn't
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mean anything. This is a word that only has resonance
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in the way that I'm using it in the U.S. context.
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And it's there, he says, like kind of to describe
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his own wretchedness, you know, that blackness is degraded. And
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he's like, I don't feel like it makes sense for
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me to ever call another Black man the N-word. And
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he was so moved by that, he like broke down
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in the lobby of the Nairobi Hilton. That's the story
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he tells on stage and live on the Sunset Strip
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in 1982. And I believe it. But I also see
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in earlier moments of his work that he's starting to
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question He's starting to be in conversation with what does
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it mean, much in the way that Dave Chappelle did
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when he did the Chappelle show and kind of was like, okay,
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I'm making fun of certain ideas around race and blackness
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or whatever. People are walking away. and getting something else
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than what I'm trying to deliver from it. And I'm
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not sure how I feel standing in this orbit. And
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so my father in 1977, he had a TV show
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on um, NBC, it was like a, you know, a
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variety show, a special. And in that special, he has, uh,
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a skit, I guess, if you will. It's not funny.
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It's with Maya Angelou. It's like actually really heavy, um,
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about Maya Angelou as the wife of a drunkard husband
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who passes out in front of her. And she's trying
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to appeal to him and tell him, I love you. Like,
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why are you doing this? Not comedy on a comedy
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variety show. But in that conversation, she talks to him
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about the way he uses the N-word. And he says, no, no, no,
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this drunk man on the couch played by my father.
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You know, this word is just about affection. But then
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you use it against me and you use it against yourself.
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You use it against our community. And then you curse
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life itself with this word. That's 1977. That is before
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the trip that he takes, right, to Kenya. So I
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feel like although my father put it into words and
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was clearly moved by the trip that he took to Kenya,
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that he was already thinking through what it meant to
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be out of control of your own narrative, I guess
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you would say, and your own performance.
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Was he aware of how much his comedy mainstreamed that work?
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I mean, that's the kind of question that I wish
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I could ask him. My father was diagnosed with multiple
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sclerosis in 1986, and really, by 1995 or 96, his
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ability to talk was just... So at the end of
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his life in 2005, he really wasn't. And that's just
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about the time in my life where I'd want to
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be asking questions like this. But... One hint that I
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have is that in 1982, live in the Sunset Strip
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comes out and he does the performance on stage, which
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talks about the trip to Kenya. But in an audio
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version of that, which was recorded a different time, still
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live on the Sunset Strip, but the album, he really
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talks about how as an artist, he feels like he
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made a mistake in making the words as prevalent as
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it was. Yeah. I mean, I don't really know if
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it was his fault in the way that he seemed
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to be taking credit for it, but certainly he's very influential.
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Many hip hop artists cite Richard Pryor as one of
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their influences in kind of reclaiming the word in the
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way that they do.
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In the book, you describe college classrooms where you've discussed
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the N-word. What have your students taught you about the
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word and its usage?
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I mean, everything that I know about it, honestly, without
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my students. I mean, Smith students, I teach at Smith College. Historically,
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it's a women's college. The classroom is a really magical
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place where the students will go along for the ride.
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I mean, you can put a pile of, you know,
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stink in the middle of the classroom and they will
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turn it into, you know, bouquets of flowers. They're just
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absolutely gorgeous. brilliant and engaged. And one of, from the
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time the student said that word and I came back
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and started trying to grapple in the classroom, I've just
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been learning, learning, learning, learning, learning. And I continue to
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learn from my students in, in every subject, but it's
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particularly about the, the N word. Like I think the
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biggest takeaway that I had, which shocked me. Well, I mean,
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a couple of things. One is like, I was actually stunned.
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that deeper conversations at the junior high school and high
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school level were not happening before my students got to
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me at college. I think there might be more now, right?
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There's like more pedagogical opportunity for those conversations, but, um,
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they weren't having them when I, at least when I
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first got them and some of them haven't had them still,
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I mean, till this day. And that's like, I don't know,
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18 years later or something, 16 years later. Um, I
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also learned that nearly every one of my students, no
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matter their race, are impacted by this word. It's something
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that I call in the book points of encounter. They
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don't know how to interact. with the racism that it projects.
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They don't know what to do and they have no
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place to learn it. And it's so similar to me,
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to like sex before sex education, where students are literally
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learning in the back of the bus from their friends,
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like in whispers, that they don't actually get the opportunity
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to be educated in the way that they should be,
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the way they deserve about the deeper racial history of
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the United States and how we can have a word
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that warrants its own, you know, euphemism, the N-word. Like,
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how do we have a word in our language like that?
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Well, thanks so much, Elizabeth, for this important conversation.
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Sure.
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And to our audience, now back to your regularly scheduled lives.
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Amusing Jews is here to amuse you.
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