“Inside the door just walked a nigger,” said Dr. Eddie Moore, director of diversity of the Bush School and featured speaker of “The ‘N’ Word” workshop. He had turned off all the lights in Bryan Jr. Auditorium and asked his audience to clear their minds. “What does he look like to you?” The audience gathered in the room on Sept. 23 was a diverse one. At Moore’s opening statement, students, teachers, African-Americans, whites, and Hispanics, all took in a sharp breath. The room was silent for a few seconds. Then, suddenly engaged, people began to call out words: “black,” “male,” “skinny,” “ignorant,” “baggy clothes,” “unkempt,” “uneducated,” “rude.”

Moore wrote down each word until the whiteboard was filled, and then gave everyone a moment to reflect on the image they had just created.

During the workshop, Moore acknowledged both the painful history and associations that come with the n-word, but he also admitted that chances were slim of the word dying out anytime soon.

“‘Nigger’s’ here to stay,” he said. “I’m not here to stop ‘nigger’ from existing. What I’m more concerned about is the psychological impact.”

The audience discussed the rapid spread of the word, examining its acceptance into the everyday vocabulary of many young African-Americans, and in popular music.

“Nine times out of ten, you see teens using the word in a seemingly friendly way,” said senior Jabari Sellars, who attended the workshop. “It’s becoming extremely colloquial. Pop culture uses it so much, it’s almost been completely desensitized.”

Its usage today, however, cannot escape the degrading history of the word, Moore pointed out. The history of the ‘N-word’ is entrenched in hierarchy and oppression, whether or not rap artists are willing to recognize it. In fact, according to Moore, the popular usage of the word in rap music may have stemmed from the inherent sense of superiority that it grants the listener.

“People believe you can take poison and turn it into kool-aid,” he said, discussing its seemingly harmless usage among teens and rap artists today. “It just doesn’t work that way.”

He explained that the ‘N-word’s’ acceptance into our culture is practically complete, due to the cultural effect of wildly popular artists like Dr. Dre, and to the thirst for the word that exists in society. People feed off of the negative reflection that the word has on people, because it puts one group of people down, and brings the listener up in the process, Moore explained.

“That’s the thirst for ‘nigger,'” Moore said, referring to the hungry way in which people listen to and seek out music that uses the ‘N-word.’

“The niggerization of America is complete,” Moore continued. “It’s got a pretty good chance to last through the next century.”

Having established its permanence in our culture the focus shifted to how we can minimize its impact on people today.

The group discussed the effects that the ‘N-word’ has on young African-Americans, often returning to the negative image constructed on the whiteboard.

“My main concern with ‘nigger’ is that, especially with young black men, when this becomes a point of identity, there’s something really wrong with that,” Moore explained. “That you can take something born for greatness and end up at the bottom–that is some serious ‘nigger’ success,” he said, referring to the ‘N-word’s’ ability to bind and oppress the people it’s applied to.

The workshop emphasized the word’s remarkable power. The associations that went along with it–that of being uneducated, especially–were real. The word’s presence alone, in common conversation and music, has drawn many young people towards achieving the image that comes with the ‘N-word.’

“We need to teach young blacks how to disconnect from this ‘nigger’ picture,” said Moore, pointing back at the whiteboard.

By the end of the workshop, after Moore’s exhaustive coverage of the topic, the group still had come to few conclusions.

“The extinction of that word, at least in my lifetime, is not going to happen,” said Sellars.

Still, it has the power to inflict damage on our society.

“The ‘N-word’ has been and continues to be pejorative,” said Dana Professor of English, Carolyn Whitlow, in an interview. “It’s painful, it’s hurtful, and it ought to die out in usage. Period.”

When asked for some simple steps that we can take to curb the usage of the word in our community, Moore listed three:

“We have to continue to build and establish multicultural relationships,” he said. “There has to be ongoing effort to talk about difficult topics, and we need to lead by example. There need to be more positive role models in our communities.