Editorial: Language a moving feast, but the N-word’s a no, Nobby

Invercargill Mayor Nobby Clark. Photo / Otago Daily Times, File

EDITORIAL:

Just what point Invercargill Mayor Nobby Clark was trying to make this week by repeatedly uttering the N-word has now been lost in the outrage it generated.

Having originated from the Latin for the colour black, the word resolutely remains a deplorable slur despite efforts by some African Americans to claim it and repudiate its offence.

Rehabilitation has worked for other words, particularly the successful ownership of homosexual insults such as “gay” and “queer” but the N-word, it seems, is too firmly mired in the taint of slavery and the Jim Crow regime to be sanitised. Perhaps after overhearing a rap lyric or two, it does appear that Clark misread the room.

Etymology can be difficult to keep up with. The meaning and impact of words can shift without warning and what was rawly inappropriate can become acceptable and common vernacular or vice versa. Some were stunned when Toyota launched an advertising campaign with the word “bugger” and then defended complaints.

As an example of the fast-morphing climate of locution we now inhabit - even the word “climate” can be triggering - a term conjured up to insult those who rush to be offended has already been appropriated in an unexpected way.

A recent USA Today/Ipsos poll found that Americans consider the word “woke” to be a positive thing. By a margin of 56 per cent to 39 per cent, those polled say the term means an awareness of social injustices, rather than excessive political correctness.

Call us woke then but, as the Southland mayor discovered to his chagrin, some things are more resistant to change.