The Power of a Word

I want to thank everyone for their comments on the last post.  I want to thank you all for your thoughtful and intelligent consideration of what I was saying, and for your own insightful input.  Mostly, I want to thank you all for not jumping ship on me.  I know how touchy a subject race can be.  I woke up today and realized that it was Martin Luther King jr. Day, and I thought, whoops.  Perhaps my timing wasn't the best, but I had no intention of coinciding with the holiday.  Quite honestly, I had forgotten all about it.  I meant no offense by what I said, and I sincerely hope none was taken.  I hope you understand; I couldn't very well argue for a word's right to remain in Huck Finn if I wasn't willing to write the word myself.  If I danced around it and only made oblique references to it, that would have undermined the point of the post, as well as compromised my own integrity.  However, I want to be perfectly clear that I absolutely do not advocate casually throwing racial epithets around.  I just don't believe a dead writer's words should be tampered with, just to make us all more comfortable with our own history.  I could only hope that no one tampers with my own words long after I'm gone, assuming anyone even remembers that I was alive.

I believe that if there's any hope of us all getting along and putting these painful chapters of the past behind us, then we all need to learn to calm down, relax, and speak openly about these things.  I think that acting like someone has violated some sort of restraining order if they get within fifty feet of the subject of race is counter-productive.  We need to put our cards on the table.  We need to embrace the awkwardness and push our way through, rather than running away.  I don't believe in sugar-coated social tranquillizers that put us all to sleep and allow us to go on living in denial.  I believe in the smoke alarm that wakes us up so that we can put out the fire before it's too late.  That alarm might be painful and disturbing to the ears, but it's far better than letting the house burn to the ground.  

People ofter say, "We'll look back on this and laugh someday."  I truly hope that day comes on the subject of race.  I hope the day will come when the lexicon of hatred will hold nothing but blank pages, and the words that sting and hurt today will finally become demystified and robbed of their power.  I hope the day will come where we'll be able to sit down and talk comfortably about the people we all once were, but are no longer. That day may be a long way off, but it'll never come until the tension in the air is diffused.  If we go on hiding everything behind painful smiles and we walk on egg-shells around each other, if we jump to conclusions and fly into anger at each other at the mere mention of a word, then we'll never be able to reveal the warmth of our true smiles and welcome each other in as part of the larger family of the human race.

Am I defending the word?  No.  I'm saying that the word gains power if you lock it away in a vault.  It becomes the "forbidden Word" with a capital "n", and it grows to mystical proportions.  It draws attention to itself in that void of silence where you censor it.  It becomes the undiagnosed cancer festering beneath the skin.  It becomes almost sacred and revered by virtue of being forbidden.  I say let it go.  Let them scream it from the rooftops until their voice is gone.  Don't give them the satisfaction.  Who cares?  It's just sad, angry men cursing the world.  They hold no real power over you.  They hold no power over any of us, beyond the power we give them.  Don't give them the power.  Let the vault stand empty and leave them with no weapons in their arsenal.  I hope we can forgive and be forgiven and all move on together.  There's a universe of incredible possibilities out there if we can set aside our petty differences between each other.