I remember looking out the window of my mom’s car on the way to school at miles of trees and farm land. The South was so different from New York City. I wouldn’t find a crowded subway anywhere near here. After twenty minutes, we arrived at St. James Prep, a private all-male Catholic school. My mom always preferred private schools to public: better education and morals, she said. I left the car without saying goodbye, my mind too focused on the day before me.
The brick porch leading to the entrance was bare; we must have misjudged the starting time. Late for my first day of high school, what a way to start the school year, I thought. Entering the building, I searched my pockets for my class schedule. I walked through the empty halls until I found my homeroom, cracking open the door and poking my head in.
“Ah, you must be Mr. Williams,” the teacher motioned towards me. “Please, have a seat.”
As I took my seat in the front, the only spot left, I looked at my fellow classmates. There were only three other kids the same color as me. My middle school had been much more diverse. I wondered if this was how the population of the entire school broke down. I snapped out of my thoughts as the teacher introduced herself and told us that high school would be much harder than middle school. We were let out at the bell’s ring. I didn’t bother looking for my locker just yet since I had nothing to put in it. Besides, I felt stares from other students while walking in the hall. Was it that obvious that I was a city boy?
The same was true for my following three classes. In Algebra, there were two the same race as me; in U.S. History, there were four of us; in English, I was on my own. It wasn’t until lunch that I saw more than ten of us at a time. My people were all sitting together at a table in the corner. I was tempted to join them, but I refused to segregate myself. As I expected, the other tables were completely made up of the majority. I tried to put my anxiety aside as I walked over to a table in the middle of the cafeteria.
“Hi,” I said as I placed my tray down. “My name is Taylor.”
I was greeted warmly by a boy directly across from me. “Nigga, why don’t you just sit with da rest of da crackas in da corner? You know you want to.”
I froze upon hearing “the word.” I had never heard it much at my old school. Maybe once or twice while walking around the city but never in school. I couldn’t believe he had called me one. I thought that was something black people reserved for themselves. “You’re talking to me?” I asked.
“Yeah you, nigga. You see anyone else without pigment in their skin at dis table?”
“N-no.”
“Then get ya ass to da table in da corner, then!”
I walked in shame to the table in the corner. I wasn’t aware that integration was a crime in the South. I took my place at the White table in silence.
“Don’t let him get to you. I hear it’s like this with every freshman class. They’ll warm up to us as the school year goes on,” a red-haired kid explained. “My name is Rufus, but you can just call me Ruff.”
“…Are you trying to make your name sound less white?”
“If you want to put it so bluntly, yes. I’m attempting not to get picked on for my name. Do you know how corny and white Rufus sounds?”
“I’m Lenny,” the kid next to me interjected. “You know, I heard that once we get to be seniors, we’ll gain enough respect from the black kids to actually start using the word ourselves.”
“You must have heard a lie,” I told him. “No self-respecting black person would let you call him the N-Word.”
“No, it’s true.” Ruff agreed. “My older brother graduated from here last year. He said it starts with us making fun of the black stereotypes anytime they joke about a white stereotype. Then we begin to call ourselves the word, first while no blacks are around so we can get use to hearing and saying it without cringing. Finally, our senior year, one of us has to be brave enough to try it out on one of them. Someone in the middle, no one too popular or unpopular. Once that’s done, we can come together as a whole class and use the word as a term of endearment.”
“Oh, so the kid at the table called me the word as a term of endearment?”
“No, he was disrespecting you,” Lenny clarified. “Blacks use it both ways. We can only use it in its positive sense.”
“Right, using it negatively like they do will only end in a fight,” added Ruff.
“God, I thought remembering math equations would be hard.”
“Well, it’s kinda like math,” Lenny said. “The things you learn one day will be implemented for the entirety of your stay here at St. James. “
“Oh, that reminds me,” Ruff leaned in close and stared right into my eyes. “Don’t use big words around some of them. They’ll think you’re trying to embarrass them.”
I sat down at the table and peered directly into the eyes of the kid who told me to leave the table prior. “What do you want now?”
“I want to be accepted for who I am, not the color of my skin” I paused for dramatic effect, realizing how lame and cliché I must have sounded. Then I finished, “nigger.” They called me the word, so why couldn’t I call them the same? However, it took every fiber in my body to keep me from running out of the cafeteria.
I should have ran, because just as the word left my mouth, the two kids sitting next to me grabbed my arms as the other lunged across the table. I don’t think I had ever been beaten so badly in my life. It was two minutes before anyone tried to break it up. The black teacher supervising the lunch wanted me to learn my lesson. I thought about telling the principal about his lack of intervention, but I didn’t want to get in bad with the faculty too.
Apparently, I had stopped listening to Ruff and Lenny just as they were explaining the difference between the –a and –er forms of the word. It made a world of a difference, I realized now. Damn my proper grammar. As I laid in the nurse’s room, waiting for my mother to come in, ice on my right eye, I doubted that even if I had used the –a version of the word I would have broke down the racial barrier in the school. I would have to approach the issue with more subtlety next time. Maybe I could joke how the black kids had made me black and blue, that I was one of them now. I think I’ll wait until this whole mess blows over though. Enough insult and injury had been exchanged to last the week.
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