Now there is a redaction, an editor’s note, and an author’s apology. But for roughly 24 hours between Wednesday and Thursday this week, in a theatre review in the Chicago Reader, the racially incendiary “n-word” was part of the text online.
The review, by Justin Hayford, was of the Court Theatre’s current production of the stage adaptation of the 1967 film Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner. The slur is spoken, once, during the play itself, by a black father to his black son. When the word first appeared in the Reader, it wasn’t presented as a quote, but rather as Hayford’s paraphrase of that moment in the play.
Within hours of the review going online, outrage flared, with multiple advocates conferring and venting on social media with one another and sharing the communications they had begun to share with the Reader. Their efforts led to a fairly quick reaction from the publication, or rather reactions, because at first, the piece was altered to place the entire phrase containing the word in quotes, suggesting that Hayford was citing a line in the text. Subsequently, in a second edit, the quotes were shifted to only include the word itself in quotes. Finally, on Thursday afternoon, the word was wholly redacted, appearing as “[vile racial epithet]”, with the actual snippet of a quote – different than what Hayford had previously written – from the play appearing in the text, marked off with quotation marks.
Hayford’s apology began:
“I included the N-word in my review of Court Theatre’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. A lot of people let me know I shouldn’t have.
You’re right. I agree. I apologize.”
He went on to write, in part:
“Although the character in the play uses the N-word, I could have conveyed the horror of the stage moment without quoting the word at all, as many of you rightly pointed out. I might have used “vile racial epithet” instead. I clearly underestimated the hateful and hurtful nature of that word’s appearance in print, even when citing a character’s use of it.”
The editor’s note on the piece itself now reads:
“During the play, one of the characters uses a racial slur. Although the offensive language came directly from the script, we should have not printed it. We have removed the offensive word. We apologize.”
Given the relatively rapid time lapse from offense to apology, some might feel that the issue has been put to rest. But that fails to recognize the significance of the initial insult and the ham-fisted way in which the Reader tried, twice, to rationalize and qualify the primary word choice.
With any professional publication, even though the ranks of editors and copy editors have been reduced in recent years throughout the field, it’s simply not possible that Hayford’s review appeared online without at least one other person at the Reader having read it and approved it. The backtracking and ultimate contrition only began when the furious reaction set in.
When quotation marks went up around Hayford’s original clause containing the slur, it was ostensibly to make clear that the word was part of the text. But Hayford’s failure to provide an accurate quotation from the script completely undermined the effort, and in a review of some 440 words, was a phrase of less than 10 sufficient context to justify that particular quote, with that word, the only quote in the review? As it came clear that Hayford was not citing the script, the quotes were shifted to only the word in question, stripping it of any context and making impossible to acknowledge it as coming from the script. On that basis, quotes could have also surrounded Hayford’s use of the word “and.”
Having learned of the online upset during this period of multiple revisions, but prior to the final version, Edwin Eisendrath, CEO of the Chicago-Sun Times, which owns the Reader, reached out to Richard Costes, an active advocate in the Chicago theatre community, who had been posting about the review on Facebook and e-mailing the leadership at the publication. Eisendrath wrote, in part:
“The concerns, later summarized in in the e-mail you sent, are disturbing, and prompted some digging. In fact, we have confirmed that the awful racial epithet quoted in the review is in the script and was part of the performance. The reviewer felt the scene was a powerful part of the play, and included it in the write-up. . .
You are also right that the word and the subject are painful. Theatre, as all arts do, treats in painful subjects [sic]. Sometimes artists are more successful and sometimes less successful in their efforts. Reviewing these efforts can be tricky when the reviewer wants to convey the experience of the performance.”
Leaving aside the condescension of the CEO explaining the purpose and effect of theatre to someone in the theatre, it is clear that the initial plan at the Reader was to justify each successive choice – until they reached a point when they realized the position wasn’t defensible. As a matter of free speech, they had the right to print what they did, but it took a lot of voices crying out to bring the Reader to the point where the powers that be understood that in this case was a serious ethical lapse to deploy the slur.
Why “in this case”? If, in an essay-length review, a critic writing about this piece, or perhaps one of August Wilson’s plays, included a sustained quotation, or several, in which the word was fully contextualized, then it might be seen as part of a comprehensive critique and clear part of the author’s voice. It does appear – just once – in Todd Kreidler’s stage adaptation, but the brief quotation strips the word of the context of a scene or the speaker, let alone a two-hour anti-racism work.
Only weeks ago, the Reader was engulfed in controversy when this same racial slur was used in the headline of an article about gubernatorial candidate J.B. Pritzker. The Reader, appropriately, backtracked there as well; in fact, it fired the editor responsible. So it’s impossible to think that anyone working for the Reader hadn’t already been made aware of the incendiary nature of the n-word, even if they had never encountered it and its ugly history before (which is, of course, highly doubtful).
The Chicago Reader gave extraordinary service to the theatre community with its groundbreaking expose of Profiles Theatre in June 2016. In fact, their sensitivity there only throws the pain and anger prompted by the Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner review into higher relief. They have absolutely done better in the past and, if their writers, their editors and their publisher have actually learned something from making the same gaffe twice in two months, they will do better in the future. But they have to prove it.
Another Chicago voice heard clearly during the immediate outrage over the review was that of playwright Ike Holter, whose Facebook page became a rallying point against the use of the slur. Among his many posts was this thought, which might serve as a guide to all future editors and writers considering the use of the n-word and its impact:
“If a black person is mad at the word, assume it is on a level of hurt, pain and fear that you will never understand. Do not tell them to “Calm Down” or “Be Quiet”. either support them or leave them alone. When we hear that word from a non black person, it hits an invisible bone in our body. You don’t want to know what it feels like, so don’t act like you do.”
One last note: Hayford’s review, with the slur intact, sans apology, appears in print in this week’s Chicago Reader. Even if there’s an editor’s note next week, nothing can take that back.
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