Racial+passing

Kennedy, Randall. “Racial Passing.” Passing into the Present, 2010 [Vol. 62: 1145 (2001].

The use the N-word can only be used by African Americans to describe other African Americans because it is thought to be a word that belongs to that specific race. Which is saying that a race can take ownership of a word; inhibits a citizen’s right freedom of speech because of their race. This inhibition is justifiable because if reverted to technical terms the word really belongs to people of the Caucasians race, because the connotation it is used correlates to the 1800s use, the noun form of N-word. By trying to take this word away from Caucasians, is similar to accepting the insults embedded in this word. African-Americans justify their use of the word amongst themselves because they are using it to describe what they are to each other similar to using the word bro or bishop, but the difference between the n-word and bro or bishop is that those words do not have a racist barrier to them. This word act as yet another barrier from the equalization of races to each other by prohibiting certain Caucasians from using the word. African Americans give Caucasian with what they deem African American traits a black pass to use the n-word. Theses Caucasians must’ve dated a member of the African American society, dress like an African American or have listened to popular African American music. By allowing theses select few Caucasians to use the word African Americans make it hard to regulate the use of the N-word. The academic term for this is “racial passing”, “Passing is a deception that enables a person to adopt certain roles or identities from which he would be barred by prevailing social standards in the absence of his misleading conduct…. the individual whose physical appearance allows him to present himself as “white” but whose “black” lineage (typically only a very partial black lineage) makes him a Negro according to dominant racial rules”( Kennedy 1). Commonly known as the Black Pass, the black pass can be used negatively because it not only mobilizes a Caucasian to use the N-word among a private group of companions, but, also against any group of African Americans they might encounter.