I grew up in a town, and a time, with a great deal of racial and ethnic tension, and I heard hateful slurs constantly at school. African-Americans, then politely called Negroes, were disparaged as niggers, and Italian-Americans, as wops or guineas. The Puerto Ricans in the neighboring communities were spics.
Perhaps because of this, I was taught early and forcefully never to use these cruel labels. And that included any stigmatizing label -- queer, bitch, kike -- all of which I heard a lot. This rule was an absolute in my family, no exceptions, and it worked. I don't even like writing these words right now.
So I was definitely among those who were surprised and puzzled when Dick Gregory, the popular African-American comedian and activist, published an autobiography in the '60s called Nigger. Why would this progressive thinker disparage his own race, and himself personally, in that way? I was further confused when black hip-hop musicians later appropriated the same derogatory epithet to label themselves, and when gay activists started referring to themselves as queer. What was this all about?
Well, now we have a psychological explanation for this counterintuitive phenomenon of self-labeling. Columbia University psychological scientist Adam Galinsky and his colleagues have come up with an elaborate model to illuminate self-disparagement -- its origins, intentions, and consequences. The scientists ran ten experiments to begin documenting this novel theory.
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