Why do Filipinos still think it’s all right to say the N-word?


By Sarah Meier

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I’d been volleying with the idea of writing a Black History Month article in the weeks leading up to February, wondering if it was something that had any relevance to the Filipino reader. Black History Month is an inherently non-Asian celebration, after all, and while our cosmopolitan cities are becoming more diverse, there still isn’t a large enough population to warrant any locally staged events to mark this time to honor African American history and culture. As a matter of fact, the disconnection between our two worlds is still significant.

Then it dawned on me. That was exactly why I needed to write this article. But not necessarily about either the accolades or atrocities that pepper the history (and current story) of the black community. The current Black Lives Matter as a movement is, in itself, at least a month worth of articles. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks, Malcolm X and Harriet Tubman, are just some of the names behind incredible stories of sacrifice and advancement for the Civil Rights movement. I invite you to please dig deeper in that direction on your own, should you feel moved to. Because the piece I had in mind for today was about something much more specific. A little educating that I’d been wanting to do for some time.

I was thumbing through Twitter years ago, halted suddenly, appalled to see a retweet of a Filipino politician’s young son using the n-word. That same hour, Filipino-American radio hosts were discussing the post on air, echoing my shock. The gravity was not understood by many local listeners. I vaguely remember looping some of my half-black friends into the conversation, hoping they could help communicate the impropriety of using the term, but for one reason or another, things fell silent.

In Issue 40 of Teaching Tolerance, managing editor Sean Price interviews professor Neal A. Lester of Arizona State University, who helmed college courses on the n-word. When asked how the n-word became such a “scathing insult” during their interview, Professor Lester replied:

“We know, at least in the history I’ve looked at, that the word started off as just a descriptor, ‘negro’ with no value attached to it. … We know that as early as the 17th century, ‘negro’ evolved to ‘nigger’ as intentionally derogatory, and it has never been able to shed that baggage since then—even when black people talk about appropriating and re-appropriating it. The poison is still there. The word is inextricably linked with violence and brutality on black psyches and derogatory aspersions cast on black bodies. No degree of appropriating can rid it of that blood-soaked history.”

Black culture, for the most part, came to the Philippines by way of the American troops stationed on our islands. In my research some time ago on the history of hip hop music in the Philippines, it was revealed that cassette tapes passed on from these troops to locals were the primary means of an early education in the art of rhyming over beats. Filipinos, adept at copying cadence, rhythm, intonation, and the dance moves that accompanied this genre of music, soon propagated hip hop into their arsenal. Identifying with both the soulful and rhythmic form of expression, as well as the topics of broad oppression, the daily struggles of life, and just wanting to have a good time; a local movement was born.

But like so many other countries, we fell in love with and embraced the cultural products of a community with little to no understanding of context. Sure, lyrics lent some insight to what it meant to be young and black in America, but in many circumstances, kids were more concerned with mastering the ability to repeat the words, not taking the time to understand them. Stories of slavery never made it to our shores. And so, hearing rappers use the n-word loosely via music, sometimes with fondness and in friendship, other times with hostility, only taught Filipinos that the word had layers in terms of delivery. Not that it was the most complex case of a racial slur, a derogatory term that was only acceptable to use if you were, yourself, black.

In the early 2000s during my own stint as radio DJ at a fledgling hip hop station in Metro Manila, we played music off of our personal CDs, having to manually bleep out curse words live on air. It was laborious, exacting, and required acute knowledge of the lyrics of every song on our set. It also made me hypersensitive to profanity in music, no matter where I was listening to it. Tuning into other local radio stations, I realized that while they had actual radio edits on their roster (devoid of the standard fare of profane language), the n-word still floated on through, crisp and clear. That wouldn’t happen in America, I remember thinking. It must have been locally bleeped.

So this is a very belated, but still very necessary use of my platform—a heads up for my friends in media, and our readers both young and old—in the event that nobody has ever spelled this out for you, it is not okay to use the n-word if you are not black. It ought to be bleeped out in songs on the radio, lest unknowing kids continue to think it is acceptable. It is not okay to use it, even if you’re using it in a friendly manner. It is never okay to use it, even if you’re singing along to a song. Just hold a beat on that part and pick up on the next word. Because with an act that simple, in that small moment, you’re doing more that just not saying a “bad” word. You’re acknowledging the massive suffering of an entire diaspora, and giving them a nod of basic respect. And heaven knows we could all use a little more of that these days.