Black voices not heard in N-word debate, students say
Rebecca Joachim was in class at Concordia University when her professor said the Nword.
The teacher was reading a narrative by a former slave to the students.
When she got to the word, she decided to say it out loud, “just so we could understand the power of the word,” said Joachim, 25, co-host of the podcast Woke or Whateva.
“It was really, really uncomfortable,” she said.
At the end of the class, Joachim and another Black student approached the professor to express their distress over hearing the N-word. The professor apologized. At the next class, she raised the issue with all the students and said she was sorry again.
Joachim said the apology helped defuse the tense atmosphere the word had created.
“I think it was even uncomfortable for the non-Black students. The following class, they were kind of relieved that the teacher said sorry,” she said.
Like many other Quebecers, Joachim has been closely following the debate over the University of Ottawa professor who was suspended for using the N-word in class.
On Tuesday, Premier François Legault defended the professor, Verushka Lieutenant-Duval, and said there should be no “banned words” in universities. Leading Quebec columnists have decried what they claim is an infringement of academic freedom.
But for Joachim, hearing white people discount her wish not to endure a term she finds deeply hurtful is discouraging.
“Everything reminds you that you’re less than when you’re Black. And this word is about you being less than,” said Joachim, who is taking a break from her studies in women’s issues this semester but plans to return in January.
For Quebec politicians and opinion-makers defending the use of the N-word in the name of freedom of speech, the debate is abstract, she said.
“It’s all theory. But for me, it’s a lived experience.”
Hearing prominent Quebecers say that the Nword should be allowed in classrooms if it’s not used as an insult “is just very disheartening,” said Isaiah Tyrrell-Joyner, 23, general coordinator of the Concordia Student Union.
“I don’t care if it’s in Huckleberry Finn. I don’t care if it’s in Catcher in the Rye. It shouldn’t be used, period,” he said.