In the movie White Men Can’t Jump, a white man and a
black man with a knife have a brief but heated conversation about
race.

White man: Hey, who are you calling a goofy white [guy who has
sex with mothers]?

Black man with a knife: You, you goofy white [guy who has sex
with mothers]!

The white man, despite this affront, is less concerned about
being insulted than he is about getting stabbed. Lesson: Words
hurt, but not as much as knives do.

The recent imbroglio over Riley Cooper has reaffirmed this
point. Cooper, a (white) wide receiver for the Philadelphia Eagles,
became famous and infamous late last month for having said, after
an altercation with a black security guard at a Kenny Chesney
concert, the N-word. More specifically, he said, “I will jump that
fence and fight every [N-word] here, bro.”

After a video of his comments went viral, Cooper
said he was “extremely sorry” for having behaved “extremely,
extremely poorly.” He
called his actions “inexcusable” and his words “repulsive.”

To no one’s surprise, everyone agreed. Even the mayor of
Philadelphia chimed in,
calling his remarks “repugnant, insensitive and ignorant.” He
wasn’t referring to Cooper’s words in toto but rather to
his use of the N-word in particular. (Thought experiment: What if,
instead of using the N-word, Cooper had said, “I will jump that
fence and fight every African-American here, bro”?)

Eagles owner Jeffrey Laurie
said, “His words may have been directed at one person, but they
hurt everyone.” The idea, widely promulgated in the press, is that
everyone is supposed to feel everyone else’s pain, so long as the
pain isn’t physical. As an act of contrition, Cooper
said he knew “how many people I’ve hurt, how many families I’ve
hurt, how many kids I’ve hurt.” In the interest of precision, one
should point out that, whether or not Cooper did indeed “hurt
everyone,” he did not commit genocide, fratricide, homicide or
infanticide. He hurt people’s feelings, not their bodies.

But most of all, he hurt himself. Words, like knives, can cut
both ways, hurting not only feelings but also reputations and
careers. One ESPN commentator said that Cooper showed “his true
colors” — white presumably foremost among them — when he
“unleashed” the N-word “out of the bottom of his heart.”

Rather than sending Cooper to a cardiologist, the Eagles sent
him to sensitivity training, the purpose of which, according to a

statement released by the team, was “to help him fully
understand the impact of his words and actions.” The evidence,
however, suggests that Cooper understood the impact of his words
even before his four days of sensitivity training. There were no
reports of his having blurted out racial epithets in the past,
around his teammates or to anyone else. That he said this
particular one at a country music concert — rather than at, say, a
Jay-Z concert — suggests he had at least a vague idea of the word’s
impact.

Harvard Professor Randall Kennedy, who has written a
book on the subject, has called the N-word “America’s
paradigmatic ethnic slur.” While it is doubtful that Cooper has
read Kennedy’s book or knows what “paradigmatic” means, he surely
knows by now that certain words have serious consequences, both for
those who hear them and for those who say them.

What else has he learned? He has learned that marginally famous
people can become infamous overnight; to watch what he says, not
because he might say something insensitive but because he might say
it to someone who is recording him; that professional athletes need
sensitivity trainers as well as personal trainers; that political
correctitude is a prerequisite for job security; and, lastly, that
he, as a white man, can’t jump — to race-based conclusions.