Niggas make dead niggas and hate black niggas, brown niggas hide yellow niggas and them red niggas. – Black Thought
There are a few things that are really hard to do. One is to find a beginning for myself, the starting sentence in my writing. The other is to defend equality of people and question racism, and most of all, to defend myself, especially with a title like that. And perhaps all is lost already. But hopefully, you have an open mind, and take the time to hear me out on this.
Let me start off by explaining why I chose to name this article so. It boggles me that this is one of the few words that is so fickle in its nature and its intent. Perhaps this should have been an expansion on my post on the nature of words. It could have easily been titled “Cunt,” or “Faggot,” or “Dyke,” or “Spic,” or any other “harmful” word out there in the English language. So why this word?
For starters, part of what interests me in the word is how it is used in two completely opposite ways. It can be used in a friendly manner, such as saying, “You are my nigga.” It can also be used derogatorily, such as saying, “You are a nigga.” What changes it, as George Carlin would argue is the context. However, that link also has a snippet of Richard Pryor, who claims that no one should say the word. Then there is Chris Rock who claims that white folks have to have fulfill certain criteria in order to say it.
So who is right? Well, what exactly is a “nigga” or “nigger” or “nigguh?” However you’d like to spell it. Personally, I prefer nigga, since being from New Yok, I sometimes have no concept of the letter ‘r.’ The cartoon show The Boondocks claims that a nigga is anyone who is ignorant. Chris Rock backs this up by making a distinction between black people and niggas on the basis of ignorance. So I suppose we could start from there. But if it were to be the popular definition of the word in its derogatory sense, then why is it that it’s usually white folks that are not “able” to use the word?
Black people of course can. After all, it was a word whose origin was derived from the color black. People of Spanish, or Latin American descent can too without repercussions, as can be seen for example with the hip-hop artist Fat Joe. In several of his songs, such as “We Takin Over” he says the word.
What I find fascinating about that for example was that part of the protest over people using the word was that it related back to the slavery era in America. Unfortunately, many people are only familiar with the traditional American/English historical background on the slave trade, which is to say, a narrow view on the whole subject. This view ignores the role that other groups of people, such as the Spanish and the Portugese had in the slave trade, which was, that they had started using African slaves before most of the other European countries did. The first slave market was in Portugal as early as 1447. So why is it that people of Spanish descent get away with using the word?
The counter argument to my own claim would be that many of the citizens from Cuba or Puerto Rico (such as Fat Joe) and other Latin American countries were mostly slaves themselves, so it would be difficult to validate their heritage as either being slaves or slave owners. And it’s an argument that is used to deter white folks from saying the word, because they have no concept of what it is to be a slave.
However, that argument has its own flaws. One is that the premise is historically untrue. Even the word slave derives from the word Slav. That is to say, white people were also subjected to slavery far earlier, and for far longer than other races were. That’s not to say that I’m justifying it numerically as if though this were a dick measuring contest, but this does tie into the second flaw of the argument, which is that of time.
Just as the word ‘slave’ isn’t offensive to those of Slavic descent due to the extreme passage of time, and the evolution of the word to encompass those of the entire human race, rather than just the Slavs, so too has the word ‘nigga’ progressively begun to change into a word that can describe all peoples of all colors. The 13th Amendment which was passed in 1865 abolished slavery. The Civil Rights Movement is trickier to pinpoint when it ended officially, as there are still outbreaks of racially charged protests up to this date. That is to say, there is no one alive who would actually know what it was like to be a slave during the mid-19th century. However, there are plenty of people who know what it is like to be treated differently due to their race. There are plenty of people who have been hurt by this word.
And it is not my intention to propagate its use just for the sake of free speech. We must all respect one another and respect each others wishes and love one another. Just as you hopefully wouldn’t bring up the subject of rape to a rape victim, you wouldn’t want to bring up a sensitive issue to those that have been personally affected by it. What I am saying, or suggesting, is that within the next few years, the constant desensitization of the word thanks in part to mass media will cause a drastic shift in how the word is used, much like all other words. And to ban the word would be silly. It is, after all, just a word. The original meaning will have been lost in time, and it will be used much more ignorantly with a blatant disregard of the past. This is a trend that has always been, and can only continue. And then one day, we will all be niggas, regardless of color.
