Racist terminology in the classroom
So I'm about to teach an article about a sort of institutionalized hierarchy of racism in a North Carolina slaughterhouse, and I was wondering how it would be best to proceed regarding some of the racist terminology in the article. It's got some pretty incendiary language, including the n-word among many others. The student who I'll be teaching is very mature--he's a high schooler, obviously pretty fluent in English, and he's actually the one who first brought up race relations in the U.S. to me, so I thought the article was appropriate. Still, I'm concerned about bringing words like these into class, partially just because I think it might be hard to convey to someone who did not grow up in the U.S., where racist slang has so much history behind it, how serious it is to use them.
When I was in college I took an African American lit course, and the professor told us he wanted us to say the n-word and any other offensive terms when reading out loud, provided we felt comfortable doing so, because it was important to the context of the work and really brought the importance of the text home. Right now I'm leaning toward taking a similar approach with my student--first by going over what the terminology is and what it means, and then by telling him that as long as he feels comfortable saying it, he should read it within the context of the article--but I'm looking for outside opinions. I would especially like to hear what you have to say if you are/were once a teacher, and especially especially if you've had experience teaching texts with racist terminology within them, but honestly I'd love to hear anyone's opinions on the matter.
I'm going to leave this post open just in case someone feels like linking a very experienced teacher friend to it, haha.
ETA: Probably should've made this clearer since I made this open to the public: I'm living in Japan teaching English as a second language, so not in the U.S. However, the student in question has an extremely high English speaking and comprehension ability.
When I was in college I took an African American lit course, and the professor told us he wanted us to say the n-word and any other offensive terms when reading out loud, provided we felt comfortable doing so, because it was important to the context of the work and really brought the importance of the text home. Right now I'm leaning toward taking a similar approach with my student--first by going over what the terminology is and what it means, and then by telling him that as long as he feels comfortable saying it, he should read it within the context of the article--but I'm looking for outside opinions. I would especially like to hear what you have to say if you are/were once a teacher, and especially especially if you've had experience teaching texts with racist terminology within them, but honestly I'd love to hear anyone's opinions on the matter.
I'm going to leave this post open just in case someone feels like linking a very experienced teacher friend to it, haha.
ETA: Probably should've made this clearer since I made this open to the public: I'm living in Japan teaching English as a second language, so not in the U.S. However, the student in question has an extremely high English speaking and comprehension ability.