Last year, I was compelled to write my first editorial comment (see Volume 91, Number 5, 2020) in my capacity as the Editor-In-Chief of The Journal of Higher Education (JHE). In it, I considered the impact of the combination of anti-black violence and the international health crisis on JHE specifically and the study of higher education more broadly. I did not expect to write another comment this year as I prefer to use the limited pages available in JHE to report empirical research. However, I am compelled again to go on record to help readers understand better my role in the publication process, which may also provide guidance for addressing an issue that is not limited to just JHE or the study of higher education.
This issue is about the spelling out of the n-word with a “hard r,” which concerns the article by Nolan Cabrera and Dee Hill-Zuganelli, titled “If Lil’ Wayne Can Say It, Why Can’t I?: White Male Undergraduates Using the N-Word” published in this issue. The study, as the title implies, examines white men’s usage of the n-word. It was accepted for publication through the regular blind peer-review process. In this case, the two experts who reviewed the original submission recommended a revision. The author submitted a revised manuscript that addressed the reviewers concerns and upon further review, it was recommended for publication. The spelling out of the n-word with a “hard r” was not raised in the review process. Based on the reviews, recommendations, and my own reading of the manuscript, the authors were invited to publish their manuscript with JHE.
Concerns about the usage of the n-word, however, were brought later to my attention. Although the manuscript had already been accepted, I considered the issues raised to be noteworthy, especially in light of what I addressed in my editorial comment last year. To help guide me in thinking through this matter, I turned to the extraordinary team of dedicated JHE Associate Editors that includes Amalia Dache, Denisa Gándara, Liliana Garces, Julie Posselt, Awilda Rodriguez, and Greg Wolniak. We had the authors further elaborate on their choice to spell out the n-word with a “hard r” and considered seriously the trade-offs associated with doing this.
In deliberating this case, we fully recognized that this word is associated with a long history of triggering racial violence as covered by Lanier Holt’s 2018 article titled “Dropping the ‘N-Word’: Examining How a Victim-Centered Approach Could Curtail the Use of America’s Most Opprobrious Term” published in the Journal of Black Studies [49(5), pp. 411–426]. We also took into account that the authors carefully considered the use of this word, being especially mindful of contextualizing and interpreting its usage. They also provide a trigger warning up front to warn readers about the uncensored language in the article. Still, we considered further whether the authors had overlooked potential “harm” or “pain,” which could further reinforce the long history of racial subjugation, anti-blackness, and white supremacy.
Given the above concerns, we also discussed whether using asterisks to alter the “hard r” expressions would “sanitize” the article and undermine the integrity of the findings. Here, we returned to the James Baldwin quote in the article, and considered whether manifestations of white supremacy should be softened with asterisks, altering the ugliness and insidiousness of everyday racism.
We also raised concerns about who is actually being protected when we soften the blow of the n-word given the historical familiarity with and resilience to this blow endured by multiple generations of Blacks in the US. Those concerns raised related issues about “racial paternalism,” “infantilization,” and “white fragility.”
With this helpful discussion and guidance from the Editorial Team in mind, I returned back to the article. I would likewise highly recommend readers to do the same and to engage with it carefully before drawing any conclusions. For me, the intent of the article, namely to call attention to the problematic everyday use of the n-word, matters a great deal. The findings show us that the level of comfort and ease by which the study’s subjects regularly voiced the word contribute to normalizing white privilege and masking anti-blackness. By not “sanitizing” the n-word in the subjects’ expressions, it made me even more uncomfortable with and compelled to confront the privileges that accompany whiteness, which enabled these men to ignore their part in addressing racism. In this way, I think the usage serves the authors’ intent to disrupt our own comfort zone and subsequently take up what they referred to as our “moral responsibility amidst oppressive circumstances.”
Taken all together, I decided that further edits to the accepted manuscript were unwarranted. Still, I recognize that my decision here may be based on my own limited reading and thinking. So, as noted in the article’s preface, an alternative version that alters the n-word and other obscenities with asterisks is available upon request (contact [email protected]).
In closing, I decided to comment on this matter not to defend the resolution but to share how this particular case was handled. Sometimes, journal editors are confronted with difficult cases with no clear answers to assist in making a suitable decision. From the outside, the whole process may seem arbitrary because it is not entirely transparent. Through this comment, I hope that it will at least make clear that JHE does not treat difficult cases lightly nor arrive at a decision casually. Since our approach is imperfect, we are in no position to provide broader editorial guidance on the n-word after dealing with only a sample size of one. I am grateful to the JHE Associate Editors and others with whom I consulted for their insights. Engaging with those who are invested in the best interest of JHE yet have different perspectives and opinions, greatly enhanced my own capacity to think through this case. Moving forward, I invite our readers to engage their research communities to further advance our thinking and treatment of such matters.