Schools Make Effort to Ban the 'N-Word'

High school senior Quantel Bazemore of Ossining, NY, was sick of hearing kids use the “N-word”—whether they were angry or just goofing around.

So during Black History Month in February, he and three dozen students from Ossining High School's Project Earthquake—a mentoring program for young black males in grades nine to 12—initiated a campaign to “eliminate the N-word.” They showed a documentary, sold T-shirts, and collected student signatures. Although kids haven't stopped saying the word, they definitely think twice before using it.

At LBJ High School in Austin, TX, academic director Kenneth Karrer says teens created a billboard protesting the N-word and administrators wear T-shirts that say “Abolish the 'N' word,” courtesy of www.AbolishtheNword.com, a group whose goal is to discontinue use of the word in art, culture, and everyday language.

In New York City, Democratic Councilman Leroy Comrie of Queens recently spearheaded legislation that symbolically bans the N-word throughout the five boroughs. Other places such as Nyack and Westchester County in New York, Irvington, NJ, and communities in Massachusetts and Texas have also passed nonbinding resolutions prohibiting use of the word.

Comrie, who discounts claims that the N-word “empowers” blacks, says, “It's a major slap in the face that people are still using this word.”

Bazemore, the Ossining student, agrees. “I don't think you can be empowered by the word,” he says. “If any black person tells you that, I would ask them, 'Do they call their mother the N-word? Do they call their father the N-word?' When you're using this word, you're subconsciously degrading yourself as well as others.”