The "N" word

 

If someone were to whisper to you at a party about someone nearby, "You know, she's a dyke," (a mildly derogatory reference to a masculine lesbian), almost always one would let it pass except maybe change the subject or maybe excuse oneself and find other company. Being offended by such things is like being offended when someone is disrespectful to us. It does no good and the only harm is to oneself. It's like when someone uses a harsh obscenity or commits a grammatical error or other faux pas -- our getting upset only raises our blood pressure, not theirs. Still, it also seems that one cannot let especially bad bits of racism and other such things go unremarked. This is tough. It may be a cultural blindness (as what happened to me once when I used the word "spastic" in central England -- it seems this word is taboo in Britain but of course frequently heard in the States without offense). The thing is, care is needed when protesting to such things, as one is more likely to reinforce the prejudice than anything else. It may also be deliberate crudity for humor or a thrill or just a bad habit. I tend to avoid associating with such people, especially if they rationalize or complain about political correctness. They aren't worth my time and I figure they say similar things about me when I'm not there.

You’re circling a real tension that most thoughtful people eventually run into: the difference between inner composure and outer responsibility.

On the first part, you’re quite right—and I’d even sharpen your point a bit. Taking offense in the moment is often a kind of reflex that hands control of your state of mind to someone who hasn’t earned it. The Stoics had a clean formulation: the insult itself isn’t the injury; our judgment about it is. In that sense, your instinct to let most things pass, or simply disengage, is not avoidance—it’s discipline.

But you’re also right that a blanket “let everything go” doesn’t sit comfortably. Because speech isn’t just noise; it shapes norms. If every crude or prejudiced remark is met with silence, the speaker can easily read that silence as consent—or at least as safety.

So you end up with a kind of practical triage, whether you articulate it or not:

Sometimes silence is the wiser move. A passing remark from someone you don’t know, in a setting where a response would create more heat than light—there, disengagement preserves your peace without costing much socially.

Sometimes a light touch works better than indignation. A raised eyebrow, a quiet “that’s a bit rough,” or even changing the tone of the conversation can signal disapproval without turning the moment into a contest. People are often more influenced by mild social friction than by direct confrontation.

And sometimes, yes, something should be said plainly—especially if the remark is directed at a vulnerable person, or if silence would make you complicit in a way you’d later regret. But even there, you’ve already put your finger on the key difficulty: a heavy-handed moral correction often hardens the very attitude it’s meant to soften.

Your point about cultural blindness is also important, and it cuts both ways. Words drift in meaning and weight across time and place. Someone can be genuinely unaware, or they can be testing boundaries, or signaling group identity. The tricky part is that the same sentence can arise from very different intentions, and the response that fits one case misfires in another.

I think your final instinct—quietly choosing your company—is underrated as a moral act. We tend to think only in terms of confrontation versus tolerance, but selection is a third option. Over time, who you spend time with shapes what becomes normal around you. That’s a slow but very real influence.

If I were to gently push back anywhere, it would be here: completely writing such people off as “not worth my time” can sometimes close off the possibility—however small—of influence or understanding. Not everyone who says something crude is fixed in that position; some are just unexamined, or performing for a perceived audience. That doesn’t obligate you to engage, of course, but it’s worth remembering that people are often less settled than they sound.

So you end up walking a narrow path: keep your own equilibrium, avoid unnecessary skirmishes, but don’t let everything slide when it truly matters to you. There isn’t a formula, only judgment—and you seem to be exercising that already.

Well, yes of course. A single offense might have been misunderstood or be unreflective or uttered in a moment of pique.

Exactly—and that distinction you’re making is doing a lot of quiet work.

A single remark is often just noise in the system: fatigue, drink, nerves, a clumsy attempt at humor, or simply a word someone hasn’t examined. Treating every such moment as a moral referendum tends to distort things. It over-weights the accidental and under-weights the pattern.

What really tells you who you’re dealing with is what happens over time. Do they repeat it? Do they double down when gently checked? Do they show any capacity to adjust, even slightly? Or do they retreat into that familiar posture of grievance and justification? That’s where a person’s settled character starts to show itself.

And there’s another subtlety you seem to be alive to: intent and effect aren’t the same, but neither can be ignored. Someone may mean no harm and still cause it; someone else may mean to provoke but hide behind “just joking.” Your response doesn’t have to perfectly diagnose which is which in the moment—you can let the pattern reveal it.

What I like about your approach is that it preserves proportion. You’re not letting every passing irritation become a crusade, but you’re also not numbing yourself into indifference. That middle ground is harder than either extreme.

If anything, the art here is almost social rather than moral: a kind of light-touch calibration. A small signal here, a quiet withdrawal there, a firmer word on rarer occasions. Over time, that tends to shape your immediate environment without costing you your peace of mind.

And, perhaps most importantly, it keeps you from becoming the mirror image of what you dislike—someone who reacts automatically rather than choosing when and how to respond.

What maybe I'm getting at is to avoid pedantry or being "holier than thou." The attempt doesn't work, may backfire on you, and at the very least only disturbs oneself.

Yes—that’s very well put, and it gets to the social reality of it rather than just the moral theory.

Pedantry and the “holier-than-thou” tone fail not because the underlying concern is wrong, but because they change the frame of the interaction. The moment you sound like you’re correcting from a position of superiority, the other person stops hearing the substance and starts reacting to the posture. What might have been a small moment of reflection turns into a small contest of status. And people almost never concede status in public.

So you get exactly the effects you describe: resistance, rationalization, sometimes even escalation—and meanwhile your own equilibrium is disturbed for very little gain.

There’s a kind of paradox here. If the real aim is to nudge behavior or signal standards, the most effective approaches tend to be the least self-dramatizing. A quiet “that’s a bit harsh,” or even just a shift in tone, can land without putting the other person on the defensive. It leaves them room to adjust without losing face—which, in practice, matters more than being right.

And sometimes the most honest response is simply disengagement, as you’ve said. Not as a moral judgment delivered aloud, but as a private decision: this isn’t a circle I want to spend time in. That avoids both complicity and self-righteousness.

If I were to refine your idea slightly, I’d say the goal isn’t to suppress judgment—it’s to separate judgment from display. You can see clearly that something is crude, unkind, or foolish without needing to perform that clarity in a way that elevates yourself. When you do choose to speak, it’s then more likely to come across as grounded rather than corrective.

And as you’ve already noticed, preserving your own composure isn’t just self-protection—it’s what keeps your responses proportionate. Once you’re agitated, even a justified point tends to come out in a way that defeats itself.

So yes: avoid pedantry not because standards don’t matter, but because the way they’re expressed determines whether they have any effect at all.

I teach my Cambodian monks the "N" word as a word they must recognize when they hear it and never use themselves and that the one using it is probably best avoided. I know compassion is called for, but one cannot hope to change an ingrained closed personality with a smile. Think of it, though, if I were to say, I'm sorry to hear you say that, I had thought you better.

What you’re doing with the monks strikes me as quite sensible: you’re not just teaching vocabulary, you’re giving them social context and self-protection. With a word like that—so heavily loaded, especially in American history—recognition matters more than cleverness. “Know it, don’t use it, and be cautious around those who do” is a practical rule of thumb.

Your instinct about not being able to change a closed personality is also grounded. People don’t revise deep attitudes because of a single polite correction; if anything, a direct challenge can harden them. Compassion doesn’t require naïveté about that. Sometimes the most realistic form of compassion is simply not escalating things and not entangling yourself.

As for the line you suggest—“I’m sorry to hear you say that, I had thought you better”—it’s interesting, because it sits right on the border between restraint and rebuke. It’s controlled, not angry, but it does carry a note of disappointment that can land as moral judgment. In some contexts that’s appropriate; in others it may trigger exactly the defensiveness you’re trying to avoid.

A softer variant often travels further, something like: “That surprises me,” or “That’s a bit rough.” It signals a standard without explicitly lowering theirs. It gives the other person a way to step back without losing face—which, in practice, is often what determines whether anything shifts at all.

But there are also moments when clarity matters more than tact—especially if someone else is being targeted or made uncomfortable. Then a firmer tone can be justified, even if it costs you a bit of social ease.

Your broader point still holds, though: you’re choosing where to spend your energy. Not every remark deserves engagement, and not every person is open to it. Quietly steering your company, keeping your composure, and intervening selectively—that’s not moral timidity; it’s proportion.

There is a reasonable chance the word was chosen for no purpose other than to stir your goat, and if you let it, they have succeeded. Still on cannot help but be disturbed unless one is mindful about it.

Yes—that’s exactly the trap, and you’ve described it cleanly.

There are people who use charged language not out of conviction but as a kind of social lever: can I get a rise out of this person? If you react strongly, you’ve confirmed the tactic works. In that sense, your composure isn’t just self-protection—it’s a refusal to participate in the game they’re trying to start.

But you’re also right about the second half: the disturbance arises anyway. That’s the part people often gloss over. You don’t choose the first flicker of reaction; you choose what you do with it. Without some degree of mindfulness, the irritation carries you along before you’ve had a chance to decide.

The skill, if one can call it that, is to let the initial reaction be just that—an event, not a command. A brief internal pause, even a second or two, is often enough to restore choice. Then you can decide: ignore, deflect, signal lightly, or disengage. The important thing is that the response is yours, not something pulled out of you.

And there’s a quiet satisfaction in that, I think. Not in suppressing feeling, but in not being steered by someone else’s provocation. You remain aware—perhaps even a bit saddened or put off—but not captured.

It’s a bit like dealing with a barking dog in the distance. You hear it, you register it, but you don’t feel obliged to bark back.

So yes: they may be trying to “stir your goat.” Mindfulness is simply the way of keeping the goat from bolting.

There is something about a closed door keeping a cat from an area of the house where it is normally allowed. It has leaned to throw its body against the door over and over communicating the desire that it be opened. I have learned to not really hear it and sooner or later it desists.

That’s a wonderfully concrete example—and it maps almost perfectly.

The cat isn’t making a reasoned argument; it’s running a learned loop: pressure → noise → maybe the door opens. If, even occasionally, the door does open, the behavior gets reinforced and becomes more persistent. If it never works, it eventually fades. You’ve trained yourself not to “reward” the signal, and the signal loses its force.

A lot of provocative or crude remarks function the same way. They’re not always about belief; sometimes they’re bids for reaction—attention, irritation, a bit of social leverage. If they reliably get a rise, they persist. If they meet with calm non-engagement, they tend to die off, at least in your presence.

Where your analogy is especially apt is the internal side. At first, the noise is hard to ignore. It pulls at your attention. But with a bit of practice, it becomes background—noticed but not compelling. That’s the mindfulness piece you mentioned: not pretending the sound isn’t there, but not letting it dictate your response.

The only place I’d add a small caveat is this: with the cat, extinction is straightforward because the goal is simple (open door). With people, there are moments when silence doesn’t just fail to reinforce—it can be read as acceptance, especially if someone else is being targeted. In those cases, a quiet signal—like a glance, a change of tone, or a brief comment—can serve as a kind of “closed door” too, without turning it into a full confrontation.

But your basic instinct holds. Not every noise deserves a response, and in many cases, not responding is precisely what drains it of power. Over time, both the cat—and the human equivalent—learn where the doors actually are.

Your caveat is right. It can't be left alone. A certain expression and angle of the head is needed.

Exactly—and that’s a very fine instrument you’re describing.

A look, a slight tilt of the head, a pause before continuing—those things carry meaning without turning the moment into a duel. They say, “I’ve heard that, and it doesn’t land well here,” but they don’t pin the other person to the wall. Most people are surprisingly sensitive to that kind of signal; it gives them just enough friction to reconsider, without forcing them to defend themselves.

It’s almost like good chamber music—no one overplays, but everyone hears the shift.

And importantly, it lets you keep your balance. You’re neither endorsing nor escalating. Just… setting the tone of your own little patch of ground.