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this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2024
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Perhaps it depends on the audience. It was quite difficult for me to read before I mentally made the replacement, and I don't think I would have gotten nearly as much from it without.
Why?
Is it because the slur applies to you and makes you uncomfortable? That's fair enough.
Or is it because it is a slur that was and is used by people like you, and having to face it makes you uncomfortable? In which case by prioritising your own feelings over acknowledging history and hearing Malcolm X's words as he intended them, you are contributing to the erasure of his experience and that of those like him, and this is something for you to work on within yourself, not project on to the text by changing it.
It's because the word doesn't mean the same thing it meant when he said it.
It was difficult for me to fully parse, not so much that it made me uncomfortable.
I tried a number of words as replacements, but none made as much sense as the word slave, at least in my lexicon. Clearly there would be no issue changing the word in a translation, so why not in this case? I'm not suggesting we remove the original, merely that it can be presented in different ways for different audiences.
Yeah, it does.
Still a "you" issue, not an issue with the text, no matter what you call it.
But you're not translating, you say it yourself - you're very deliberately trying to replace in order to make yourself comfortable, not because the text actually needs any adjusting (E: because he definitely isn't talking only about slaves).
Saying history needs to be presented differently because it makes you uncomfortable is a wildly privileged thing to say, your feelings are not a priority in the fight against racism (or other bigotry), and being uncomfortable (aka facing reality, unsoftened for your delicate self) is necessary to unlearning.
Instead of getting defensive, check that privilege, learn to deal with such unbelievably mild discomfort (sorry, "difficulty to fully parse" 🙄), and have some respect for the words and experiences of others, especially when they talk about actual struggles people face in this world.
What I said myself is that it's not about comfort. I am translating, just like you might have to translate a poem by Robert Burns. I live closer (culturally and temporally) to Malcolm X than most anyone today to Robert Burns, and the amount that needs to change for a translation is smaller too.
I agree, if it was about it making me uncomfortable it wouldn't be reasonable to make the change. But it's not. Please do not put words into my mouth, especially after I have explicitly told you they are not true.