Let me begin by saying I do not have an answer to this question. The title of this blog is intentionally a question. I am a white woman, so I will never be able to provide an answer to this question. Understandably.
But I am interested in exploring the question and some of the complexity that surrounds it and in working through some of the conclusions I have come to.
Let me further say that I can absolutely declare without reservation that it is never okay to call someone or refer to someone as a nigger. And, unless you are black, in my opinion, you probably should also not be calling anyone or referring to anyone as your nigga. Although I have certainly been guilty of the last one in my past. I spent many years thinking I was a member of some "in crowd," thinking I was "down," and so of course it was acceptable for me to say "nigga please," or refer to my friend as my nigga, never a black person, of course. I never used this expression in front of the black people whose lives I spend so much time studying, fighting for, arguing for. Not my friends, not my boyfriends. And I never questioned why. Why didn't I feel free to call my black friends "my nigga?"
The answer is obviously because I knew deep down that there was something wrong with my use of the term.
As I grew older, the word evolved out of my language because it seemed like such a young, uneducated thing to do, silly.
I'll admit I still sing along to Jay Z on my headphones while I run, "If you feelin' like a pimp nigga go on brush ya shoulders off. Ladies is pimps too, go on brush ya shoulders off."
And I suppose I gave myself a pass using nigga so colloquially because I felt like I was part of the club, because black friends had told me I was an honorary member, because black scholars have argued that the word can be used by anyone depending on context.
Randal Kennedy, in his book Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word argues that white people can say the word nigger just as black people can, depending on context. He thinks the word is moving in the right direction in our language, that it is now, at least in the public arena, used more often positively than negatively.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/01/that-word/303059/
Neal A. Lester, a professor at Arizona State university, has an entire class on the word, exploring its complexities. Yet the website, tolerance.org, specifically states in its transcript of an interview with him that Tolerance will refer to it as "the n word."
http://www.tolerance.org/magazine/number-40-fall-2011/feature/straight-talk-about-n-word
Yet, with all that, I still no longer feel comfortable using the term "nigga," and I have never used the word nigger in a derogative way.
But I do have a problem with saying "the n word."
There was a whole movement led by the NAACP a decade ago to "symbolically bury the N word."
Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, among others, implored the rap industry and comedians to stop using the word. They argued that it has so much history and that use of it in songs and comedy skits empowers people to keep using it, many in the wrong way.
Yet Chris Rock, Jay Z, and many other rappers and comedians have refused to edit the word from their language. In an interview with Bill Maher on Real Time in 2011, Jay Z argues that the word "boy" said in the wrong context would be just as offensive to him as the word "nigger." He argues that we are the ones that give words power and that by taking the word away from white people, black people can reshape it.
I think the NAACP movement then led many people to edit the word from their language entirely, so that now we cannot even use it in a discussion about race relations or repeat some atrocity in the news. Newscasters everywhere appear on television to report the use of "the n word," like children afraid to say "fuck." Bill Maher is one of the exceptions to that rule.
So let's talk about Bill Maher; he is the reason I am writing this piece tonight.
On his most recent show, which aired on June 2, Bill Maher jokingly referred to himself as a house nigga. Now, we can discuss whether he referred to himself as a house "nigger" or a house "nigga," but the intention was the same regardless. Bill thinks he is a member of the club, that he's down, and so he should be allowed to use that language. Because he, and many, many people of all colors, would argue adamantly that Bill Maher is absolutely not a racist.
He's got plenty of credentials. He is not one to say "I'm not racist, but...." or "I have black friends! (so I can't possibly be racist)."
He's a comedian. He makes a point of being politically incorrect. And he has argued before that he, and everyone else, should be able to use the word nigger or nigga, obviously depending on the context.
I must confess I am a fan of Bill Maher. I watch his show regularly. And while there are plenty of neo liberals who will bring up the many radical things he has said about Islam, that is for another piece, which is in the works, I promise.
So when my brother came in Saturday morning and said, "Bill Maher said nigger on his show last night," I thought he used it the way I use it, to repeat something someone else said, or to discuss the use of the word in history or in society today.
Then I heard the whole story, and I was so sure he would not apologize.
It's just not like him.
But then HBO apologized, and cut the scene from future tapings.
And then Bill apologized.
So, I say, good for him. Because, in the end, we're not members of the club. Our job, as white people, is to change the minds of other white people, and using the word nigga or nigger colloquially is not going to do that. If anything, it will encourage people who are not so adamantly in the fight for Black Lives Matter and an end to police brutality, for equality in education and in the economic system, to use the word, and then, oops, slip and use it as a slur, and then, oops, feel free to show their racist true colors. If he uses it, why can't we? They would argue. And they have a point.
The word has too much pain, too much history, too much blood, too much death behind it.
We cannot use it colloquially.
And if black people want to use it, that is a decision for them to make.
And if black people want to give us permission to use it, we say, thank you, but no thank you.
Because our fight is a different one from theirs. Our fight is to change minds within our own communities, minds that equate black men with violence, black women with sexuality, and black people in general with crime or sports or rap. Sure, they'll admit to a few exceptions, but that is just what Henry Louis Gates Jr and Barack Obama are, exceptions to the rule that white society has written down in concrete and blood. Casual use of the word nigga or nigger by white people will only help further engrave that rule.
My concern here is for the use of the word educationally and in open discussions about race. I just cannot bring myself to say "the n word." There is too much about that expression that worries me. It is far too reminiscent of the saying "those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." Also, I can't help but think of Voldemort, "he who must not be named," in Harry Potter.
There was a controversy a few years back over whether the word nigger should be removed from Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn. The argument was that it would offend readers sensibilities, that children were not mature enough to handle the content. And here is where the problem lies. Usually, in these arguments, over whether Bill Maher is a bigot for speaking out against extreme Islam, over whether Huck Finn offends people, over whether something is racist or offensive, the outcry comes from white neo liberals, not the muslim community, not the black community. White. Neo. Liberals.
Those same neo liberals who think Colin Kaepernick is using the wrong venue for his protest, that Kobe Bryant shouldn't be wearing a Black Lives Matter T shirt at a basketball game, that Martin Luther King Jr would be spinning in his grave over the Rodney King riots or the current Black Lives Matter protests when they reach violent levels.
The idea is that if we just don't talk about it, if we dance around the subject, if we politely avert our eyes or walk away when others have this discussion, when someone else brings up the subject, then everything will be okay. We will not make any waves in society. But everything is not okay. Society is more segregated than ever. And I would posit that part of the problem with our failure to find equality, to, in fact, go backward, is that we do not address our racial issues in this country. We must identify a cancer, speak freely about it, and cut it out.
I appreciate the move to bury the words nigga and nigger in music and comedy. I understand where the NAACP is coming from, but I think that the move to ban all use of the word entirely from discussion is largely a white one, and it is yet another half measure: "see?" they seem to be saying. "I can't be racist. I don't say nigger."
The power of language is mighty, and we must be careful with our words. To abolish the word from the language while black bodies are being brutalized on live television, while black men have to put their hands in the air simply upon encountering a police officer, where black women cry after they've been pulled over by the police because they are so relieved that they escaped unscathed, seems trite and token. Nigger is a word that holds so many of the evils of slavery and Jim Crow and Civil Rights and post Civil Rights and the prison industrial complex and the issues with the 13th and 15th amendments. We worry so much about whether a newscaster says "n word" or nigger, but we are not having an open discussion about the blatant segregation of our schools, the underfunding of schools that are predominantly black, or the prison to school pipeline. We don't address the way teachers deal with, or fail to deal with, racial issues in school, when school is the place where we can make real change.
A couple of years ago a teacher in Chicago was suspended for five days for discussing the word nigger with his classroom of sixth graders. Lincoln Brown was white. The students were primarily black and latino. It was an educational discussion, what the teacher called, a "teachable moment," and by all accounts the students not only didn't complain about the discussion, but instead they said they appreciated the teacher's candor and that he treated them like mature beings capable of having this discussion.
Brown's situation is very different from the teacher who told his student "sit down nigga."
Brown treated the children like rational, thinking beings. He opened up a discussion and asked for their input. He did not dance around the subject or condescend to the kids. We can only hope more teachers out approach race in this way, especially white ones, especially white males. Brown has the opportunity to change the dynamic between white and black in his classroom. He can be one less white devil, one less condescending hero out to save the savage beasts. He treated the kids like real people who deal with real issues in the real world that they have to live in every day.
From all accounts he's a good teacher whose students respect him. And I would venture to say they respect him because he's open and honest.
And he was penalized for it. So what does that say to him, to the students, and to every other teacher who may want to have open dialogue about the very touchy issues around race in this country with the children who have to live it?
I tutor mostly white students in a very affluent neighborhood. Many of them haven't been told much about Civil Rights, even less about slavery except that "it happened," and they know nothing about Jim Crow or the school to prison pipeline we live with today. What they do know they have learned through rote memorization on a study guide to prepare for a test. I, as a white face, can teach them things they would not otherwise hear, and they listen to me, a white face, in a way they may not listen to a person of color. This is what Malcolm X meant when he said white people needed to work within our own communities to change minds. Often my students tell me they wish I was their teacher. Why? Because I tell them the truth. I engage them. We discuss.
When we talk about slavery I tell them how slave children were fed from pig troughs, babies were ripped from mothers' arms, and mothers threw themselves with their babies off of slave ships escape the atrocities of slavery. Because death was preferable. When we discuss the holocaust I tell them that Nazi soldiers put Jewish babies in burlap sacks and threw them off cliffs, shooting at them for target practice.
And yes, when we are discussing media and politics I ask them if they heard the controversy around Rick Perry's family home previously being called Nigger Head Rock. I ask them if they heard about the teacher who told his student to "sit down nigga." We discuss. We draw connections. We move forward.
So, why am I not a history teacher? Because, as I tell my students, I'm sure I would get fired. Someone would complain that I had a discussion about how our president said he grabs women by the pussy. No, I don't say "the p word." Someone would complain that I ask my students what they think about Bill Maher calling himself a "house nigga." And I would be fired. Well, first I would be suspended, a lot, and then finally fired, I'm sure, like Brown, for "psychologically traumatizing" my students.
I look at these newscasters trying to figure out how to report on things when they say "genitals," or "n head rock" or "house n," and it just makes me shake my head.
If we are incapable of having an open dialogue about reality, how can we hope to move forward? Dancing around language only gives it more power, and not the good kind. It becomes a taboo, a mystery, a joke.
Yes, you should cringe when you say the word nigger. It is arguably the most cringe worthy word in the English language. I cringe every time I say it or write it. But we have to deal with our cringes. We have to face our violent past and present. We have to talk, and we have to use real words, all of them.
On my refrigerator is a quote by Martin Luther King Jr. that says:
"One day youngsters will learn words they will not understand.
Children from India will ask:
What is hunger?
Children from Alabama will ask:
What is racial segregation?
Children from Hiroshima will ask:
What is the atomic bomb?
Children at school will ask:
What is war?
You will answer them.
You will tell them:
Those words are not used any more,
Like stagecoaches, galleys, or slavery.
Words no longer meaningful.
That is why they have been removed from dictionaries."
I believe him. I believe this day will come, one day. And my hope is that one day children will ask the same about the word nigger. What is that? Why would someone use it? What does it mean? Because it is so far from our vocabulary that it not longer holds meaning, or pain.
But now, when children ask that question it is typically because they have heard it used in a derogatory way, and many of those children have heard it used against them.
So we must continue to discuss it the same way we discuss hunger and racial segregation and the atomic bomb and war. We talk about it, in real words, in order to move through it.
And move through it we will.
Right now, I'm looking forward to seeing how Ice Cube handles Bill Maher on the next show.
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