7th Blog Post

I was scrolling through a few Snapchat stories on my phone before going to bed a few nights ago when I stumbled upon a Snapchat episode called 'While Black'.  Since we were reading about the history of racism in America, I thought it would be helpful to watch the episode.  The episode revolved around the N-word and who can say it.  It's one of the most controversial words in the entire English language because of its history.  Thousands of black people used to be lynched to those words, yet some people are still confused about whether it's okay to say it and who can say it.  This word keeps being used and abused by everybody around the world.  If somebody who is black says the word then it means friend, however, if anybody else says the same word it means something different.  Many black people that were interviewed in the episode all had the same consensus that it's never okay to say the word because of its implications and how it makes certain people feel.  I learned to see the word as a type of relationship.  The type of relationship black people have with the word is vastly different than the relationship that white people have with the same word. 

 It was also interesting for me to see how some people not only thought it was okay to use the N-word but also to abuse its power.  In the episode, they brought up an incident from a high school in California.  There was a white girl at a high school who did blackface and posted a Snapchat story of herself saying the N-word.  The disturbing part of the incident was the lack of concern that other students and adults in that community had with the video.  Even though the video was reported to the authorities, nothing was done about the issue until the video went viral.  After watching that episode, I feel like there's a lot more for me to learn about the history of black culture.  I never really learned too much about the history of black culture due to the fact that I grew up in a city of over seven million people with only maybe three black people in the whole city.  I'm excited to learn more in class.