Gina Rodriguez’s Use of the N-Word Highlights That Antiblack Racism Isn’t Just a White Thing

{snip} Gina Rodriguez, known for the titular role on the CW’s beloved “Jane the Virgin,” has a history of, shall we say, missing the point when it comes to conversations about race despite the fact that she is of Puerto Rican heritage. Given this context, it took me all of three minutes to locate the now-deleted Instagram video where Rodriguez raps along (I’m being generous) to the Fugees’ iconic “Ready or Not” and — stop me if you heard this one before — says the N-word.

I am not interested in litigating who is “allowed” to use the N-word; it’s a conversation we have had for years, and I honestly don’t understand how anyone could still be confused right here in 2019. But I am a little shocked that Rodriguez posted the video with her singing the word and didn’t have a friend who texted her immediately with, “Oh no, baby, what is you doing?” (The video stayed up for what felt like days, though it was only a few hours.)

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{snip} The irritation only intensified after her initial apology: “I am sorry if I offended anyone by singing along to The Fugees, to a song I love that I grew up on,” she said in a video that has also now been deleted. It was a classic “I’m sorry you were offended” apology, the kind where you can feel the shaping hand of a publicist.

A few hours later, Rodriguez made a slightly better effort that still didn’t hit the mark. A new text post on her Instagram read in part: “I thoughtlessly sang along to the lyrics of a favorite song, and even worse, I posted it.” She goes on to say that the word she said “carries a legacy of hurt and pain” and assures readers that she feels “deeply protective and responsible to the community of color,” vowing to do better.

The phrase “Community of color” is simultaneously the silliest thing I have ever heard and exactly the problem with Gina Rodriguez’s understanding of race. Refusing to say “black people” or “the black community” when apologizing for using the N-word is, at best, an inability to understand what she is apologizing for and, at worst, a deliberately misleading tactic to brush aside the hurt she caused. Unfortunately, it is also not uncommon. While it can be tempting to want people of color to work together against white supremacy and racism, antiblack racism is persistent in all communities, not just white ones.

The phrase “the community of color” is funny because it is so perfectly meaningless. “The community” leads the reader to believe there is one supercommunity that Gina is referencing and is herself a part of. But the follow-up “of color” leads one to ask: What color? It is her inability to specifically name the people who were hurt by her thoughtless use of the N-word — black people — that makes the second apology ring so hollow. There is only one “community of color” that was historically labeled that way, that had the word hurled at them for centuries as they were enslaved, beaten and killed.

There is a danger in assuming all minorities are the same, in assuming the struggles of someone who is Latino are similar to the struggles of a black person. {snip}

When you are talking about a group of people who are of various races, saying “people of color” makes sense. To refer to one specific black person as a “person of color,” however, means that the speaker has effectively erased the distinct struggles of the individual in front of them. It’s a phrase that white folks use to feel more comfortable in conversations about race; as Rachelle Hampton wrote in Slate earlier this year, “Suggesting that newsrooms or corporate boards need to hire more people of color when there are specifically no Latino people or Southeast Asians on the payroll suggests that any nonwhite person will do, that we are all the same and bring the same experience to the table.” The lack of specificity is the problem.

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{snip} I don’t think her thoughtless video is the cause of antiblack sentiment among communities of color. But I do think that her inability to specifically name the community she has offended comes from an eagerness to assume all “communities of color” are the same. After all, it would be much easier to undo the work of white supremacy if that were true. But we aren’t there yet, and to erase the blackness of the people to whom she meant to apologize is to erase the legacy of the N-word.

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