Interpreting the N-Word Cont.

On today's episode we are wrapping up the conversation about interpreting the N-word. In this episode I address and share comments, conversations, and questions I had after posting the original episode. It's a great conversation. 

Transcript

 Welcome to, if I'm honest, on today's episode, we are gonna continue the conversation of interpreting the N-word. So for some of you who are just listening to the podcast and not engaged with the Instagram page, I encourage you to come on over cuz it's fun over here. Now what we talked about last week, interpreting the N-word and the implications of ramifications of interpreting that word.

And what happened is, You answered polls, you asked questions, you were fully engaged. I got comments, I had conversations, it was a really a great week of people engaging with the conversation. And so I think it would do a disservice have I just kept all of that to myself, right? Like I think what is more impactful is that I bring you into the room and I share some of the things that have been shared with me.

And while this conversation is a bit difficult and quite uncomfortable, for some, the foundation of growth is discomfort. So come on in the room. Let's talk about it. Welcome to, if I'm honest, a podcast where we address and discuss issues in the sign language interpreting profession using an anti-racist lens.

Here we intentionally take up space and we say the thing, we name the thing that previously hasn't been named in efforts to change, challenge and dismantle problematic narratives in our field. And we do this because an anti-racist interpreter is just a better interpreter period. I'm your host, keisha osborne, and I've been having these conversations.

For over a decade on an individual level, I think it's high time that we expand the conversation to include you. Let's talk about it. All right, so let's jump right into it. The first thing I wanna say is, I'm sorry I'm late. When I set out to do this podcast, I'd hope to release each episode on Wednesdays and get them out to you so that you could engage with the content.

But this week, I have been grappling with the emotions that I'm feeling from a topic that I broached, from a conversation that I started. And so in my humanity, I'm late. Here's the truth, I expected to be confronted with white people who have said, keisha, I have signed or voiced the N-word. I expected that I did not prepare for black interpreters to reach out and say, keisha, this has happened to me.

Right, because automatically it creates this shared experience cuz I've been there, I've seen it happened, I've felt the feeling, ? One interpreter said, I just shut down and I wasn't ready for that. I've said this before and I'll say it again. I do this work not because I'm altruistic and I just wanna give to the community.

I do this work because my life depends on it because I have a vested interest in this working. So I took a minute. To feel my feelings. And in this work, this thing, this gross, this ick, this pain, you're going to experience it and it behooves you to take a minute. All right, so in today's episode, what I'd like to do is I'd like to talk to you about the shame that I was confronted with and what that looks like.

And part of that came in. Who answered the polls, who made comments. Um, and I'm hoping that instead of shame, what will happen is you will find empathy. But empathy in effort to make change. Because one of the hallmarks of this work is that once you know better, that you do better. One of the reasons that I wanted to prioritize making sure that I share the comments and the questions and the conversations that I've had with people around this topic is because I want you to know that your

version of this anti-racism journey and the decisions you've made isn't special. In other words, it's not new, right? Like you're not the only one on the planet who has made the decision to voice interpret the N-word or to sign the N-word. You're not the only one who's done it. And I think in order to create an environment of empathy and anti- shame, people need to be able to quote unquote, look around the room

and see themselves reflected in other people. This is the work and hopefully the goal is that in recognizing that you aren't alone in this journey and that there are other people who look like you or are where you are, are also here, that together we can keep growing. We can find some momentum to keep moving forward so that we can make change that will positively impact black and brown interpreters and black and brown deaf people.

Now, here's my commitment to you. I am never going to out you without your permission. So if you send me a private message, it's gonna stay in the message and I will repackage what you said. Sometimes I might even directly quote you, but I will not name you. So the second thing I'd like to revisit is the anti- audist ally, right?

We talked about that in the interpreter Archetype episode and why it was problematic. And so today I'd like to revisit that conversation and show you how that archetype shows up here in this space in regards to interpreting the N-word. And then finally, I'd like to talk about the role of culture, language, identity, and in-group language.

All right, buckle up. Last week before I posted the episode, I sent out a poll. And the question that was asked was, if you were given permission and you had the opportunity to interpret the N-word, would you do it? And of the responses, there was about 50 people who responded to that particular poem. 94% of people said, Nope.

I wouldn't say it, but 6% said yes. And of those 6%, some of those people said, keisha, I've said it, I've said it, and I feel bad about it. Some people said, keisha, I've said it and I'll say it again, right? Like, that's my job. Some people said, I am the black team interpreter, and I watched my team sign it. And I froze, and I experienced the trauma of having this white body represent this word that historically has caused a lot of harm and damage.

And then there were people who said, you know what? I've never been in a position where I had to make that choice. And I think right now at face value, I'd say no, I wouldn't say it. There is a spectrum of people who responded to this. There are the nos and there are the yeses and of the yeses. The yeses that I received in comments and conversation in Marco Polo in the various ways that I've had conversations about this particular topic last week, most of them, the consensus is, I don't wanna take the power of a deaf person.

People don't want to be audist. Right? The concern is that if I don't say this word that I'm oppressing deaf people. If I do say this word, it was my job. And thinking about this in this way lacks nuance, and it also lacks care and compassion for people outside of that situation. In fact, one person said to me today, I wanna make sure that I help a student to maintain their autonomy and their autonomy of language use their autonomy to be in group with other peers at their age who are using that kind of language.

I wanna make sure that this work environment provides a space for them to do that. And maybe this is my own stuff, but it felt like this decision to say or not say, this word is simple and it's wrapped up in, this is my job. So this brings us to the anti audist ally. And so what I'd like to do in this section is to talk about and remind everyone of why the anti audist ally as problematic, address the two themes that I noticed in the questions and comments and conversations I had that fall under this umbrella of the anti audist ally.

And then finally talk about actual allyship. So what is the anti audist ally? This particular brand of allyship is something that people think they can just put on. They can say, I am an ally, and therefore it must be so. Instead, allyship really means that it is the work that we do and the fruit of our labor, right?

Like it's not, not an identity that we can just adopt or something that we can put on, or a badge of honor that we can wear. A tree is known by its fruit. So within these comments and questions, a common theme that I heard over and over and again was this kind of notion of, I don't wanna say it, it's my job.

And I'd like to challenge that. Now, maybe it's just me, but it kind of feels like the people who have this stance don't fully understand the gravity of the impact of this word, if I'm honest, you know what it reminds me of? It reminds me of a time in undergrad when, uh, my cohort and I, we would sit and talk about making sure that we honored deaf people's words, right?

Like, we wanted to make sure that we did not change what they said because most of us didn't cuss. And to be clear, no one is minimizing this word overtly, right? No one has said, oh, it's no big deal. No one has said, you know, I, I really don't understand the big deal anymore. But you can get on Beyonce's internet on today and find someone saying that very thing.

This hasn't happened here in this space. It just feels like that's what people are saying. And maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm hearing things, but let me address it anyway. Just for peace of mind and to minimize and miscategorize this word with cuss words. It's, it's as if the historical implications don't exist because they don't apply in this space.

And for this reason, I think it's probably important to provide some larger context to the N-word. So here in America, this word has been used over long periods of time to oppress and as a slur, to insult, to offend, to de base black people. It has historical and generational implications, and there is trauma that is built into the experiences of this word, but also it carries generational trauma.

So if I provide you some context for keisha's life, my grandmother was born in 1943. She turns 80 years old, November. This means she grew up in a time where the country was actively trying to make a cultural shift, and desegregation was an act of violence against white comfort and met with violence of the N word and sometimes actual physical violence.

To provide further context, my grandmother was 11 years old when the passing of Brown versus the Board of Education in 1954. She was 17 when Ruby Bridges became the first African-American  to desegregate school in Louisiana in 1960. She was 21 when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed. In other words, the climate

between race relations here in America of black people and white people and people of color was very different, and the culture and the impact of the N-word had a very different relationship back then than it does today. Her trauma, while she didn't directly pass it down to my mother, because she never talked about the traumas of being raised in Kentucky during this time period was still passed down, and how she responded to hearing the N-word in public by white people.

My grandmother was raised in an era where overt racism was the norm, and my mom, the next generation was raised in a time where it was still pretty rampant, but less so. So you can imagine the accumulation of trauma that was passed down to me through generations so that when I got to the playground at six years old in the very first grade, and I was called a nigger on the playground, that the impact of that sticks with me today.

Having never had the conversation at home, not having been warned about it, not having heard about it. It sticks. It sticks. This is the history of the word and interpreters are saying, it's my job. And in so doing, they said their stance is, if they said it, I'm going to sign it. This reminds me of the story.

 A black interpreter reach out and shared with me this week. She said in 2014, I graduated from my I T P, and at that time I was a staff interpreter to deaf school, but I was placed in a local public school in a high school. She describes working in a school setting where she was the only African-American adult in the building.

And that the student body was comprised of only a handful of students of color. One day at this predominantly white school that she was working at. She and her white team was interpreting an English class, which was comprised of a white teacher, one black student, and the rest of the students were white.

This day, they were reading To Kill a Mockingbird, and in this environment, the teacher allowed the students. To popcorn read during class sometimes. She describes how students would stand up. The N-word would come up and most of the students would just skip over the word and it bothered the teach her so much that she'd stood up one day in class and said, it's just English.

You can say the word in this space. This is something that happened in my high school as well, but I digress. Some of the students challenged the teacher on this move, right? They said, you know, I'm not comfortable, I don't care if it's literature or not. Or we still should not use or say this word, but when the word did come up a few times, the white interpreter signed it.

And when I asked the black interpreter how she felt about it, she described herself as being numb and having to zone out. I think the teacher's reduction of the word to literature is something that happens all across the country, and I think is happening in this space with this word, and, if they say it, I must sign it.

If they sign it, I must say it. Another black interpreter reached out and shared her story about how she had to defend the non-use of this word in her I T P. She describes being in a space surrounded by white peers in a program filled with predominantly white professors, where she is having to challenge an interpreter who says, I have been interpreting for decades, and it's okay for you to use the N word.

This interpreter's identity and lived experience came second to this professor's professional experience. That math ain't math. This is the kind of thing that is being taught in ITPs and black students have no recourse. Both stories are traumatic and it seems like the stands to interpret this word for the sake of not oppressing deaf people doesn't take that into consideration.

It doesn't take into consideration  the labor black people have to do in order to negotiate the impact of this word, and we never come out unscathed. While it did have conversations that get comments and questions from people who I felt like were not accurately weighing the gravity and the impact of this word, I also got people who said, I don't really wanna say it right, like, I don't wanna say it.

In fact, one interpreter said, I admit. This is one of my biggest struggles as a V R S interpreter. I feel like when I say it, I shouldn't, and then if I don't say it, I'm not following what the consumers are saying. But as a white person, my soul tells me I shouldn't say it. One interpreter said, I've never had to interpret it before, but I've been told by Black Death to sign N-word.

It still makes me feel really uncomfortable hearing that word. Another interpreter said, as an interpreter, I also recognize the power and privilege I have. To alter language use. It's not a situation I hope to find myself in as a non-black interpreter. I need to be prepared with a strategy if or when I do.

And what I find in common about this stance and the stance of these interpreters is I don't wanna do it. I have to do it. And the problem with this stance is this brand of allyship lacks intersectionality. In other words, your anti audism is racist. I was talking to a good friend about this today and he said something to the effect of, you wanna fight for

anti-audism so much that negate anti-racism, and that's the issue. It's like anti-audism is the only thing that matters. And the question is, why are you so willing to die for this word? Another friend said, this is how we know we are fighting for our racism. We're looking for the opportunity to say it and we're willing to hang our hats on,

I have so much power, and I don't wanna change the message, but not recognizing that we also have the power to impact the people who are hearing the message that we are delivering. She said what it's going to do is impact the person who is receiving the message. It can be as accurate as it needs to be, but simply because it's coming out of a white mouth, it's going to have a different impact period.

I think this line was clearly drawn last week, but let's talk about impact for a minute. One of the comments I made last week and still stand on today, is that black deaf people may not fully understand the impact of a white interpreter using the word. Their intent is to create community, to build comradery, to create connection in communicating with another black person.

They may not be fully aware that trying to accomplish this, using this word that has these historical implications, is not going to be effective, but you should be aware that it may not be effective and you should be aware that you're potentially creating more labor for the black people that are in the conversation and they're trying to negotiate the harm.

Actually, this makes me think of culture and cultural mediation. You know, one of the reasons that the Bi- Bi model of interpreting failed is because it implies that there are two cultures, hearing and deaf. The subtext of this implication is it's white hearing culture and white deaf culture. It doesn't give any credence or respect to the reality that each culture hearing culture has a dropdown menu, as well as deaf culture has a dropdown menu, right?

So what we find is, is that anti-audism allyship that we were taught and exposed to is white centric in that it lacks diversity and intersectionality, and our job is to mediate all of this. That to have the appropriate and intended impact. I was talking to an interpreter earlier this week who shared a story about a time that she interpreted at a hospital with a CDI.

The story goes that she's in this hospital with a cdi and the doctor comes in to give the patient news that they have terminal cancer. And when the CDI interprets it to the patient, she finger spells cancer. After the job was finished, the hearing interpreter asked the c d i, why did you finger spell cancer?

There's a sign for it. And the c d I says, she was already getting this horrible news. I did not want the sign to also give a visual and worsening impact because the sign iconically illustrates what cancer does to the body. The CDI said, I didn't want the news to be exacerbated by my sign choice. We navigate having the appropriate impact all the time.

We do this in our work. We can do this with this. One of the black interpreters that I talked to this week who shared their story, told me a story about a time where they had just switched with their team but when the kids started signing the N-word, he quickly took it because he considered the impact of everyone in the room.

He said, I knew what would happen if this black teacher and these other black students heard this white interpreter voice this word. I didn't want that impact. I think about a time that I didn't navigate impact well, I was interpreting for a conference for a black deaf presenter and he has a tendency to use RH questions.

He wanna ask a rhetorical question and then provide an answer emphatically. And so this was one of those situations where the answer was no. He asked a question, uh, and I set it up perfectly. And he said his emphatic no. And I said, absolutely not. The audience explodes. It's what he said. It's what he meant.

It is not the impact he hoped for. My interpretation wasn't wrong, but the choices I made were both intrusive and disruptive and it made him lose his train of thought. And now he's asking me what happened? What did he miss? We navigate and should navigate the impact of our messages all the time, and we should absolutely keep doing it with this white centric allyship.

Is not allyship. It has to be intersectional to be effective. In other words, you can't trade anti for anti-racism or anti-racism. For anti, it has to be both. And this leads me to the what abouts? There were a million and one questions about keisha, what about this? What about this? What about this? What happened to it depends.

After listening to the episode last week, one of the interpreters asked her black deaf friends what they preferred, and they asked her to ask me, what about theater and scripts? Uh, and they conveyed this experience of language deprivation and the lack of incidental learning, and they want to see the character performed on screen.

So what is the recommendation for this? Another interpreter said, you know, I've never signed it. I typically sign N word, but I'm wondering, should I expand to include an R or an A to show the difference in the intent? So let me say this, I don't give out invites to the cookout, and I'm not giving you permission on this.

So if you're looking for an answer, there's your answer. However, there is a space where the answer is, it depends, and for those situations, it's well above my pay grade. What I think my job is in this space is to challenge you to think about and make sure you're checking all the boxes. Is your allyship intersectional or is it one dimensional?

In other words, is the decision that you're making, does it show care and compassion to every person with intersectional identities, or does it just show care and compassion for one type of deaf person's access? I just wanna challenge you to think about your brand of allyship. If you decide to do it, are you taking responsibility for that decision or are you using responsibility denying language by saying, It's my job.

If you've answered all these questions, then sure if you need it to be said, there are absolutely radical situations where the auditory and the visual impact of that word filtered through a white person is the intention. So again, is your allyship intersectional or is it performative? Have you considered the impact of filtering that message through you?

Have you considered it on everybody who might overhear or, or oversee that interpreting exchange? Have you considered all the angles? And if you've done that and you get into a situation where the black deaf person wants you to say it, Or you're in a space where it is appropriate to say it like theater, then whether or not you make that decision is above my pay grade.

I am not advocating that we decide or make decisions for deaf people. I'm, I'm not advocating that. I'm saying that the ways that we have been thinking about it hasn't considered enough of the factors that I've talked about in this episode. In terms of how to represent a sign, that is also a conversation for deaf people.

I can only fully talk about the auditory experience of the word because of personal human experience, right? Because I have this shared trauma with black people in this country. But what I can't do is talk about the ASL one, I'm an L 2. Okay? So that's the first thing, but two, I don't. Actually know if adding an R or adding an A has an impact.

And I think that's an important question for deaf people. So if you find yourself in a situation where you're just unsure, The last thing I wanna talk about in terms of the use of this word is oftentimes it shows up contextually within the use of A A V E. That means there is culture and there is language, and there is identity, and all of it is happening together at the same time.

A good friend of mine tells a story about how she's working for this black deaf woman, and the black deaf woman wants to say to another black woman. Hey boo. What the black deaf woman is attempting to do is create this kind of comradery and connection with this black woman. So you see black woman to black woman, there's connection trying to happen that is identity, and then there's language, right?

Right. Hey Boo, which can sound a myriad of different ways. And then you have this white woman who's trying to mediate this message and her language and culture and identity conflict. With how this is going to be delivered. Right? So it's clear it's not gonna sound coming out of the interpreter's mouth the way the black deaf woman wants it to sound.

Right. So now apply this to nigga. Can you say it like it should be said, or does it sound like some menstral, or does it sound like a slur? One interpreter last week wrote and said, I don't think I could say it and not sound like a 12 year old cussing for the first time. Right, exactly. And sometimes the N-word is surrounded by language that you don't have access to because you're not an in-group member, you're not culturally aware.

You're filtering the language that you're hearing through English and not a a v e. And if I'm honest, there are real significant ways that keisha cannot effectively capture the spirit  of the message because I don't speak that version of a A V E. If I go to Baltimore or Philly and they talk about, this is a good luck jawn.

I'm not capturing that like I am going to keisha wash that. Like what do you think you're going to do? And so this is like just a language in general. Can we effectively capture the spirit of the message that is surrounding this word? And if we cant, why we hold on so tight to a word that has caused so much damage.

Speaking of damage, last week, I was challenged about my use of the F word, right? Uh, and, and the person who asked me, I think had really great intentions and, uh, was very purehearted, but she said, why did you use this word and so frequently, right? Like, you are not an in-group member. This word is reserved for

gay men, and I think it's important to address. Um, so I am. So one of the reasons that I felt okay using it is because, unlike the n-word, it seems like it can be extracted from context.  I also felt comfortable using it because I felt like that's how Ta'Nahesi Coates was using it. The second reason is because the example that Ta'Nahesi Coates gave, which was Dan Savage wanting to call a TV show by that name, and to me, That speaks to the progress of the reclamation movement for this particular word.

I think people have reclaimed it enough that they've taken the sting out. Could it still be used as a slur, I'm sure. Right, but largely they've taken the sting out of it, or  they have disempowered this word and so that's why I used it. It could still be wrong. Right? Like I am still not a gay man.

That is absolutely a fact. And, and if I have offended anyone, I'm sorry. All right. The question I wanna leave you with is what do you do if a black deaf person asked you to say the word? One interpreter reached out to me and told a story about a time that they were in v r s, and a black deaf person comes on the screen who is calling a black hearing person and asked the non-black person of color to say the word. In this situation, that interpreter said, I saw hesitance, and he didn't expect me to say it, so I said it, but my question is, What would you do?

Do you tell him that this ain't gonna hit like you want it to hit? Or in other words, this is not going to land in the way that you hope. What do you do? Thanks so much for listening. I'll see you next time. This has been, if I'm honest, I'm your host, keisha osborne, and this is a place where we have hard conversations Until next time.