A coworker asked me today how I felt about the use of the n’word. The conversation was inspired by an article in Ebony magazine that promised at the end of the piece, the n’word would receive its long overdue burial at Ebony and Jet magazines without fanfare or ceremony.
Based on the opinions of my coworker who I consider to be quite intelligent, the word has seeded a shifting landscape plowed and tilled primarily by African Americans. Her question is this: ‘why, if the word evokes such negative connotations and represents such a painful period in our history, do so many of us use it without compunction and often as a term of endearment even, then lose our minds when someone else not of African American descent uses it?’ Of course, the question these days has all but had the bite taken out of it. But for a waning population of those who lived through ‘it’ it still bears fangs that drip the blood of our forefathers and of those whose shoulders we now stand on. For them, the word picks at sores not quite scabbed over in our own culture and in American society at large the sores will be raw in perpetuity.
Some of our own brothers and sisters, rappers, comedians and other entertainers have desensitized themselves to the word. Society views this self-desensitization as a license to use a word commonized by the very people it was designed to denigrate and has been filed into the book of socially accepted vernacular. Of course the n’word is protected under the 1st Amendment as a right of free speech and will always be a part of the American experience, however bad. But who’s free to use it? Just us? White kids desperate to prove their street cred? The Klan? Michael Richards? A white coworker in his or her bliss ignorance trying to fit in at the water cooler? For those who feel it’s not ok, who has the authority to revoke the license? Should it be considered a congruous term in the lexicon of modern American language, or is this the carriage pulling the horse?
We fall on the floor laughing when we are in the comfort of our circle of friends and talk about the stupid n’word that acted a fool at the doctor’s office/drugstore/grocery store/McDonald’s. Our entertainers stand before audiences the world over rapping or singing about n’words, our brothers use it as a greeting for their closest of friends ‘hey n’guh, my n’guh. But, the moment someone who is not African American utters the word, we’re forming torch bearing mobs running for the nearest lynching tree. WTF? WE opened Pandora’s box, the n’word has escaped and it cannot be reclaimed.
I have to admit, I see my coworker’s point to a degree. Though, in my opinion, it’s not that simple, not so black and white so in part of my friend’s justification of why this question is moot, I’ll have to agree to disagree. In my own humble opinion, there are n’words or as my husband calls them n’double gars. African American ones, White ones, Arab ones, Jewish ones, Hispanic ones, and maybe even some Hindu ones. Anyone who can kill without conscience, those who lay in wait and watch hard working men and women leave their homes to go to work only to clean out the contents of their house once they turn the corner , those who entice our babies with the drug du jour, those who snatch children off the street and pimp them. Do I need to continue? For those I can reserve the use of the word without apology.
Would it rub my skin raw if someone outside the African American society used the n’word as a characterization of these, the lowest type of degenerates? Yes, probably. Its paradoxical, I know, and would take a volume to explain why I feel the way I do, but this is my truth as contradictory as it is and it is so for others, too. At the end of the day, it’s my opinion, protected by the Constitution. She doesn’t necessarily agree, and that’s ok, that’s her right.
So, let me ask you, has the use of the n’word had the sting taken out of it and has become innocuous and non-threatening when used by someone outside of your culture?
