Psychologist Tom Guarriello responds to criticism about language use, rejecting the idea that Black people using slurs in rap signals self-hatred. He argues language is contextual: the same word means different things depending on who says it, where, and why. Reclaiming derogatory terms can signal solidarity and group identity.
Hey guys, it's Tom, and especially hey Kayev, how you doing? Hey, thanks a lot, Kayev, for calling me out on this video that you made entitled— I can't even say the title. If I say the title, I'm already like screwed, right? Because the title of the video is the words that are at issue in this whole conversation, what we now call the N-word and the I Miss phrase for the Rutgers women's basketball team. And your video was a statement about your beliefs about the people who— about Black people who use those words themselves in rap, or in street conversation, and, um, your contention was that that was an indication of what you called self-hatred. Um, and you asked for me as a psychologist to give you my thoughts about that. So here we go. Um, no, I don't think that people who who use those words to describe themselves are engaging in self-hatred. I think that the use of language is an extremely subtle element of our lives. We use language in all sorts of ways, and in ways that while we're using it with one another, we often understand as having a tremendous variation and panoply of meaning. So, the same word can mean an enormously different— can have an enormously different meaning depending on a whole range of factors, including, you know, the whole— one of the reasons that video is so— it's such a powerful way to communicate is that we have more than just the words to go on when we're communicating with one another. So, when rappers or people on the street use these words to express some aspect of their experience of being together or being part of the group, that they're using the word to describe, it can mean a whole bunch of things. It can mean— often it means this notion of solidarity around being part of a group. I grew up in the Bronx as an Italian American along with a lot of other Italian Americans. We would often hear one another and describe one another as "guinnies," for example. Yeah, me and this other guinea went over to this place. Yeah, me and this greaseball went and we got some pizza over at the— using that phrase, those words, which are wop, you know, all of these derogatory terms that had been used to describe Italian Americans, we would use them ourselves ironically, comically, as a way of defending ourselves against the power of the words, because if we use them, they're not as impactful, they're not as shocking, they don't hurt as much. And it reflected our belonging to this group, this in-group that was described by those words. Now, if somebody else called us wops, guineas, greaseballs, whatever, it's not the same thing. I've seen many heads cracked over the use of words like this. So, you know, I think we have to be very careful about believing that we know the meaning of language as it's being spoken by people, particularly highly symbolic and emotionally charged language like the language you cite in your video, we have to be careful about thinking that we really understand exactly what it means to the person who's using it because I don't think we do understand it unless we really try to figure out what that person is trying to say by using that word. We do know, however, that people who are not part of the group cannot use that word, those words, in anything like the same fashion as the people who are inside the group. It's just like that. So anyway, thanks for— thanks a lot, Kaev, for pulling me into this. No, I appreciate it, and I hope you're— if you're watching this, it means your computer problem's probably been fixed. So take it easy, and I'll see you all soon. Bye.
