Nigger

Nigger.

Let's get to the bottom of this. As a matter of fact, let's not.

I don't want this blog to be about what's right and just. No solid opinions. No pretentious intellectual verbosity here. Granted, we all rant and rave and ramble on sometimes, but really, I would like to see this place be a departure from all the college ejumacated "literature" mess that you tend to get dealing with race issues, especially the N word. Which is why I think it's a good place to start, because it's probably one of the biggest racial issues that is entirely complex, and somewhat ambiguous. You can never really know what people really feel about the word nigger, but let's give it a try.


Personally, I struggle with using it everyday. I grew up listening to Big, Jay, Nas, Kim, Foxy, you name it. Hot 97 in New York was a big part of my musical education back then. In school, I learned that saying nigger was something to condemn, yet at home, it was something to use freely.

Well, maybe not freely freely. My mother never said nigger. Never. I would imagine for the most part, growing up in the heat of the civil rights movement, that you wouldn't, actually. So it was never a question of it being something passed down from parents or relatives. However, I will say that more than anything, one of the things I always considered to be family was the radio.

Initially, when I started out singing along to Gimme The Loot- a Biggie song that's heavy on the N word- I just wouldn't say it. No need. I could usually replace it, or just shut up when he said nigga. But over time, I came to feel that in order to respect an artist, you must respect his or her poetic license, and it was sort of a crime of censorship to not say nigga or whatever in a song if it's there. So after that, I would just say it. Fuck it- that's how the song goes, so that's how it will be sung.

But I think there is one thing that, especially amongst older and younger black people, that is not understood. To defend one end of the argument, most young people don't see "nigger" and "nigga" as the same word. We just don't. Nigger is venomous, wholly racist. Nigga is slang, endearment, a way of greeting. Now don't get me wrong- I find it to be SO unappealling to see other people my age on the train going "Niggaaaaa!" in every sentence. As a person of words, I can't help but to wonder how can you say it so many times? It seems so unintelligent to me, because there's no context behind it, no content within it. Nigga's not being said for any particular reason other than to just say it. Which, could actually be a good thing- after all, sticks and stones, no? Perhaps saying it would take away its meaning, it's connotation? You would think so, which obviously isn't the case because, as a black person, if someone who is not black says "Niggaaa" to you is certain to catch, at minimum, a verbal beatdown.

That could be the argument for the older generation. Obviously the N word still has sting, regardless of how you try to desensitize it, so why say it at all? It's like making fun of yourself, except no one is in on the joke- not even you, in a sense. You think it's cool, but you jsut look stupid. From this view of it, I think to myself that for the most part, I generally dislike what 99 percent of rappers today are doing with the "music", so wouldn't the N word be right along with it? You would think so, but for some reason, I jsut can't fully agree with that.

Advocates for abolishing the N word view their standpoint as a way to move on from that part of history. You can't change the meaning, no matter what derivatives you take from it. Yet, abolishing any part of history has not done anything good for anyone. History textbooks today, hundreds of years of progression later, STILL fail to accurately detail the history of the Native Americans who owned this land(and in my opinion, still do to an extent) before much of the atrocity that built America began. Has that helped anyone? Do Holocaust deniers positively impact that part of history? Or what of the many countries today who still censure journalism and abuse human rights, like China, the Ukraine, Burma(Myanmar), Iran? The answer is no. History is not about definitive answers, nor everything that we got "right." It's about exploring the complexity of the things we do, the reason we do it, and reflecting on its positive and negative consequences. Don't get me wrong- we ALL know that using words as racial slurs is NEVER ACCEPTABLE. But words can be used in many ways to make a point. So, the next time you use The N word- say something meaningful!