Rumors have long circulated that Donald Trump used the N-word during a taping of “The Apprentice.” Last week, one of the show’s producers detailed one incident after his non-disclosure agreement expired. His story was so credible, it was rather sickening. The hunt to find the audio has begun again.
There is concrete evidence that Franklin Roosevelt used the N-word in the margins before he became president. Harry Truman used the word liberally in letters to his wife. Anecdotes abound of Lyndon Johnson using the word. As for Trump, he denies that the N-word was even in his vocabulary. If a recording were ever found, it would be revealed as another of his lies.
But that doesn’t really change anything. Neither do the details that have recently come to light. For one, we’ve already heard Trump make a number of racist remarks, including about Mexican rapists and immigrants from “shithole countries.” This line is scathing, but so are others. And polls have already shown that even video evidence would have little impact on Trump’s chances of winning. His supporters have remained loyal through his vulgar remarks about women, his impeachment, and now his conviction as a felon. “You don’t hire him to date your daughter,” one voter told the Indianapolis Star in 2016. “You hire him to run the country.” Either way, if the videotape ever comes out, his supporters will almost certainly dismiss it as generated by an AI.
The same is true for black fans, whose massive growth has worried Democratic strategists. As I’ve written, Trump’s racial attitudes are not the defining issue for many blacks who subscribe to the so-called “Blue American” consensus. Black people can perfectly well distinguish between the people they personally like (or think will like them) and the people they think should lead the country.
Nor is the use of the word by a president likely to produce any real racial reckoning. America may have needed some reckoning recently about the nature of structural racism and the relationship between black people and the police. There is no need for a lesson in the ugliness of the N-word.
This word has been inflected so many times in American history that a book could be written about it. That’s what I’ve done.
In Frank Norris’ 1914 novel Vandover and the Savage, set in late 19th-century San Francisco, the word is used to describe a kindly young teacher’s observation of one of his black students, and in the context of the story it is understood as a term of endearment. By the late 20th century, the word had taken on a completely different ring to it, and was forbidden from casual use by white people in “polite society.” But the change over the last 25 years or so has been dramatic. As recently as the 1990s, the word was as derogatory as it is today, but it was still not considered something that should be uttered. I was interviewed about my use of the word, and I used it several times in the discussion. It was used by white people who were interviewing me, by friends (black and white) who had heard the conversation, and by people who wanted to share their own thoughts on the topic. This was normal.
In 2003, I first felt a big shift when NAACP president Julian Bond publicly denounced a man who said that the name of the Redskins football team was “as much an insult to Indians as the team name is to black people.” The man used the N-word. The consensus among blue Americans had reached a stage where anyone who was not black should not utter this six-letter insult for any reason, like Voldemort’s name. But since then, the consensus has shifted. I was comfortable writing the word out for reference purposes well into the 2010s, feeling that a black writer might have a little more flexibility. In an essay I wrote in 2021 about the evolution of the word, I decided to use it with caution. But since then, I’ve come to feel that doing so would be so offensive to so many people that it would not be polite or effective.
The N-word is unique in this respect in the English language: There are still some contexts in which it is acceptable for men to say the vilest slurs against women, and for straight people to refer to derogatory terms against gay people. The word serves different functions, as the poet Laurie Scheck learned when she used it in a discussion of James Baldwin.
For this reason, some say a videotape of a former president, and possibly the next president, using the word could be extremely powerful.
But black people are not strong enough to crumble at the sound or sight or even the sight of an old man snapping his locker room towel. We already know who Trump is. If he used that word, he would do so with the assumption that he is superior to us. We would hear it as evidence to the contrary.
