( CNN ) -- The Obama administration has not always been great at selling its agenda , but the president 's adoption of the right-wing slur `` Obamacare '' as a prideful new name for the Affordable Care Act has been a notable exception . We often think the proper response to being called a dirty name is to object . That 's a good first step , but in the long term , the judo approach is constructive -- hurl the power being used against you back to your opponent . For example , in 1968 William F. Buckley could offend Gore Vidal by calling him a `` queer '' on television . Today , the line would feel antique and impotent , in large part because gay men adopted the term for themselves and denatured its sting . Women today are doing the same with b -- -h. Black people long ago adopted the N-word as a raffish term of in-group affection , and if you ask me as a black person , we 'd do better to stop going to pieces when white people say it . If the word did n't do the job , people would be less likely to use it . Kanye West understands the technique . His idea of emblazoning the Confederate flag on T-shirts to take possession of it in the name of black America is inspired . The good ole boy hangs a Confederate flag out his window and black people are walking by under it in T-shirts with the same flag on it -- that 's how you get a new world started . Yet on Obamacare , we face the awkward fact that the right wing has not been completely vanquished in its quest to vilify the program with a name . We hear of quite a few out people out there who confidently espouse the tenets that the Affordable Care Act is based on and yet lustily declare themselves opposed to Obamacare , which they think is something separate . ( Watch this Jimmy Kimmel video to see people do that very thing . ) But this does n't mean we 'd be better off if Obama had n't adopted the term Obamacare . For one , for those in favor of the program , the term stands as a useful reminder of one of the few large-scale triumphs of this administration on the domestic policy front . Health care policy is n't as inherently dramatic as battles over education , the environment or the culture wars . In the grand scheme of things , Obama 's legacy in the popular consciousness is better served by a term as memory friendly as Obamacare , just as the Johnson administration is better served by its association with Medicare rather than `` Social Security Act Title XVIII . '' But what about those Obamacare opponents who think companies should be required to enroll people despite pre-existing conditions and that young people should be able to stay on their parents ' policies until age 26 , while unaware that this makes hating Obamacare about as logical as seeking to breathe while disapproving of respiration ? Well , we can assume that in a massive , poorly educated nation such as this one , a healthy segment will display this `` keep your government hands off my Medicare '' level of political sophistication . We assume , however , that in a modern democracy , change comes from ongoing disputation , as `` conversations '' move in certain directions . It will be hard for such people not to notice , as time goes by , that the provisions they espouse came into being under `` Obamacare , '' whatever their take on Tea Party ideology . Even sooner than this , the prevalence of the meme holding these Affordable-Care-Act-loving Obamacare opponents front and center as national jokes will have a certain effect . Oh , we wo n't see many contrite admissions of ignorance . But that 's not how ideological battles are won . As often as not , people admit the truth to themselves , but they 'd have no way to do even that if Obama had n't picked up the Obamacare term and lobbed it back . Kanye West 's idea with the Confederate flag T-shirts is `` Now , whaddya gon na do about it ? '' For those who want universal health care but hate Obamacare , the ignorance so deep that there 's nowhere to go but up . What are they gon na do about it ? Learn , apparently -- they could n't avoid it if they tried . That 's progress . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of John McWhorter .
Obamacare : Adopting a slur cancels its sting : women did it with b-word , blacks with N-word . McWhorter : Should Obama use `` anti-Obama , '' the GOP slur for the Affordable Care Act ? He says Obamacare people support GOP , hate Obamacare , think they are different . McWhorter : Obama did the right thing to link his name with far-reaching health care reform .