The N-Word Would Work Differently for Trump

By John McWhorter

Opinion Writer

Rumors have long circulated that Donald Trump used the N-word while taping “The Apprentice.” Last week one of the show’s producers, his nondisclosure agreement having expired, recounted one instance in extensive detail. His account seems highly credible and is rather nauseating. The hunt is once again on to find the audio.

We have concrete evidence of Franklin Roosevelt using the N-word in marginalia before his presidency; Harry Truman used the word freely in his letters to his wife. There are a lot of anecdotes of Lyndon Johnson using the word. As for Mr. Trump, he has denied that the N-word was even in his vocabulary. A recording, should one ever emerge, would reveal that as one more of his lies.

But it wouldn’t actually change anything. Nor does the recent round of details. For one thing, we have already heard Mr. Trump say a great many racially dismissive things — about Mexican rapists and immigrants from “shithole countries,” among others. This word burns, but so do all the others. For another, polling has already suggested that even video evidence would have little impact on Trump’s chances of being elected. His acolytes have stayed loyal through his vulgar comments about women, his impeachments and now his conviction as a felon. “I’m not hiring him to date my daughter,” a voter told The Indianapolis Star back in 2016. “I’m hiring him to run the country.” Anyway, if a videotape did emerge, his supporters would almost inevitably dismiss it as having been generated by A.I.

This all goes for Black fans, too, a group whose considerable growth is making Democratic Party strategists nervous. As I have written, Mr. Trump’s racial attitudes are not the deal breaker for many Black people that they are for what we might call the Blue American consensus. Black people are perfectly capable of distinguishing between someone they personally like (or who seems as if he would like them) and someone they think should lead the country.

Nor would the use of that word, even by a president, produce a racial reckoning in any real way. America may have needed the recent reckoning on the nature of structural racism or the relationship between Black people and the police. It does not need a lesson on the ugliness of the N-word.

The term’s inflection has changed so many times in American history that you could write a book about it. I have gotten close.