Don’t Cancel People For What They Didn’t Say
No, Rich Lowry did not mean to say the N-word.
“The editor of the National Review casually said the N-word in an interview with Megyn Kelly.” Um—right. As the kids would say, “But did he, though?”
Headlines aside, the allegations don’t stand up to scrutiny, and how we deal with assessing what (on closer inspection) turns out to be a slip-of-the-tongue says a great deal about who we are as a civil society and how fair we are towards even those we may disagree with on substantive matters.
In the episode in question, Rich Lowry, editor of the National Review and prominent conservative, gave an interview to Megyn Kelly in which he discussed Donald Trump and JD Vance’s claim that Haitian immigrants are eating local pets in Springfield, Ohio. Lowry appeared to say “Haitian [N-word]” but quickly fixed it to “migrants.”
Social media has been alight—and with an alarming patina of victory—with the idea that Lowry really did start to say the N-word but thought better of it and switched to “migrant.” As a result, Lowry has already lost a speaking gig from Indiana State University and been, he writes, “canceled” by Wisconsin’s Badger Institute. The Internet is awash in accusations that Lowry proved himself a racist.
To be sure, what Lowry said does, formally, sound like he was saying the word. With professional phonetic analysis, it is undeniable that Lowry uttered the two syllables that constitute the N-word and then immediately said “migrant.”
The question is whether Lowry actually did start to use that word in terms of its meaning. I find the case for that hopeless.
What I hear is what psycholinguists call a speech error. They happen all the time, often because the brain ends up mixing features from a word coming up into one they are saying. In an interview about the ‘70s British sitcom she starred in, Are You Being Served?, Mollie Sugden recalled a blooper when for her line “Captain Peacock, are you free?” she said “Captain Freecock, are you pee?” Sugden had anticipated the coming f in “free.”
In Lowry’s mind, two words of the same meaning fired off at the same time—“immigrant” and “migrant”—and he was anticipating saying the latter while having halfway said the former. He seems to have been preparing to say “Haitian migrant,” but then as he was coming off of “Haitian,” an equally frequent collocation crept into his consciousness for a bit: “Haitian immigrant.” The n at the end of “Haitian” stretched out a bit—unremarkable in how we string words together—and thus came “Haitian-nih...” But what Lowry had actually planned to say was “migrant” and he started to reach for that.
But by chance, the immigrant-migrant collision yielded a most unfortunate homonymy. Lowry had the accent pattern of “migrant” in his head—MI-grant—and had already uttered an accented first syllable “NIH” from “IH-migrant.” Subconsciously anticipating—à la “Captain Freecock”—the word “migrant” but having already pronounced a first accented syllable “NIH,” he grabbed “migrant” on its second, unaccented syllable. That meant adding “gr” to NIH.
Whoops. Instantly aware that this was a flub, he said “migrant” in full.
“Oh, come on,” some readers are sure to say, “he just wanted to say the N-word!”
No. My explanation is not special pleading, despite its detail. In terms of how sounds and speech errors work, this was a perfectly natural and understandable bit of linguistic static in a mere two seconds of running speech.
Let’s assess the other possible explanation. Why would an educated, poised, intelligent and experienced media commentator even start to say the N-word in front of the whole world? Many think they have an answer. Whites of all walks are supposedly popping off with the word all the time when black people aren’t listening.
Now, many whites do find it frustrating that our treatment of the N-word has gotten to the point of regarding it as a magic taboo word. The fact that we are now taught to not use it even in any form of scare quotes is a newer development than many might suppose. Only after the 1990s did the idea settle in that the sequence of sounds in the N-word must not be uttered for any reason whatsoever, somewhat like the V-word in Harry Potter.
However, whites’ impatience with this non-negotiable embargo on the word does not mean that whites are secretly yearning to go about using the word in contempt. To think so is to fail to realize that change does happen. As a black person I cannot know definitively whether, when I am not around, white people are using the N-word the way their grandparents did. However, I suspect at least a white person or two—including the one I was once married to and her family—would have informed me by now. Lowry, at 56, came of age in the 1980s, as I did. White people in their formative years then, especially of his educated background, were vastly unlikely to use the N-word so casually as to “pop off” with it by accident in a public statement.
Yet so many seem to be almost lying in wait for the word to emerge, as if this reveals an underlying reality to grapple with. But that is atavistic. The idea that, in private, whites are all still Archie Bunkers on the N-word is recreational pessimism. Ah yes—the point may be that we expect Lowry to be this troglodytic on the word because he is a conservative? That too qualifies, in 2024, as little but apocalyptic fantasy, dehumanizing a man for his political philosophy.
The N-word is sometimes used abusively, and it shouldn’t be. But is it on the tip of the tongue of a nationally prominent commentator who edits a leading journal of opinion? That notion comes not from insight but from something close to paranoia.
The Lowrygate flare-up may seem like just another made-for-media event, but it was symptomatic of something larger—of the ever more acrid partisan contempt from both sides of the political aisle. The online reaction to Lowry’s flub had almost nothing to do with what actually happened and was all about an opportunity to score one against the conservatives. The culture should be better than that—and capable of giving Lowry the benefit of the doubt. To acknowledge this is not giving a pass to racism, but engaging with, and welcoming, reality.
John McWhorter is an associate professor of linguistics at Columbia University, a columnist for The New York Times, and a member of Persuasion's Board of Advisors. He is the author of, most recently, Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America.
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A similar situation occurred when a conservative broadcaster criticizing Kamala Harris for not attending Netanuyahu's address complained that instead she was attending a reunion of her "college" sorority which sounded an awful lot like "colored" sorority to some, because of his Northeast accent.
Meanwhile, rappers use the word incessantly. We really need to lighten up.
And for those who still retain a sense of humor, Blazing Saddles (Fifty this year) still has some of the most outrageous and laugh-out-loud funny parodies of racism about almost slipping and using the n-word.
In one scene, a mumble-mouthed lookout keeping an eye out for the new sheriff spots him and announces to the waiting crowd that the new sheriff is a "Nih. . .," when a church bell rings to cover up the next syllable. That scene goes on to have the new sheriff use the N-word himself as if he, were one of the racist crowd. Hard to describe, but still hilarious.
In another scene, Mel Brooks as the Governor needs to point out to Harvey Korman, his factotum, that the sheriff, Cleavon Little (who's in the office), is black, thinking perhaps that Korman might not have noticed. Except the Gov unknowingly grabs the new sheriff, ushers him toward the camera and stage-whispers to him, "He's a Nih. . . " at which point he sees who's he's talking to, brings the sheriff back, grabs Korman and repeats the line exactly.
Maybe today's exaggerated, cultural censorship of any parody of racism is the problem. Maybe we need that space and the ability to laugh at our own bad traits, and taking that space away makes things worse.