A YouTuber who does sign language interpretations of popular songs responded Friday to people who accused her of doing the sign for the N-word in her performance of “WAP” by Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion.
“Clearly you don’t even know sign language because if you did you would have watched it and would know that I didn’t sign the N-word,” said Libbey Ketterer, whose channel The Daily Sign has more than 530,000 subscribers.
On Aug. 28, Ketterer posted a video of her interpreting the song’s explicit lyrics in American Sign Language (ASL) – but substituted other words for the N-word.
“Yes, there is a sign for the N-word. Am I going to show it to you? No,” Ketterer explained in a follow-up video. “It’s still inappropriate for me to sign the word, being a white woman. Me signing it would be the same as me saying it.”
She said she had to block someone who was filling the comments with the claim that there are no slurs in ASL. “I’m not going to have constant misinformation showing up on my channel,” said Ketterer. “Slurs exist in sign language and they are very common in the same way they are common in spoken languages.”
Ketterer said she generally does not censor the songs she signs on her channel. “If an artist is cussing, I want to cuss because that’s what they’re conveying… I want to include that,” she said.
“But [the N-word] sign can often be substituted out and you still get the same point across.”