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After having a talk with a friend on a major relationship issue she was having, she shared with me that in a moment of desperation to get her boyfriend’s attention she called him “Nigga.” He took offense, she apologized, but once it’s out there it’s a scar and cannot be undone. She’s not Black and he is, so it took a man to woman relationship issue to a racial issue in that one utterance of such a vile word.
One thing that stuck out to me was her answer when I asked if she would be ok with me calling her a racial slur out of desperation. Her response was that her people don’t call each other racial slurs and that she said “Nigga” not “Nigger”. With that being said, non-black people rationalize the use of the word “Nigger” because they see/hear black people saying it to each other. It is not a term of endearment and to me Nigger and Nigga are the same. It is not ok for anyone to refer to someone as a Nigger or Nigga.
The history of the word nigger is often traced to the Latin word niger, meaning Black. No matter what its origins, by the early 1800s, it was firmly established as a derogative name. In the 21st century, it remains a principal term of White racism, regardless of who is using it. Social scientists agree that words like nigger, kike, spic, and wetback come from three categories: disparaging nicknames (chink, dago, nigger); explicit group devaluations (“Jew him down” or “niggering the land”); and irrelevant ethnic names used as a mild disparagement (“jewbird” for cuckoos having prominent beaks or “Irish confetti” for bricks thrown in a fight.)
Over time, racial slurs have victimized all racial and ethnic groups; but no American group has endured as many racial nicknames as Blacks: coon, tom, savage, pickaninny, mammy, buck, samba, jigaboo, and buckwheat are some. Many of these slurs became fully traditional pseudo-scientific, literary, cinematic, and everyday distortions of African Americans. These caricatures, whether spoken, written, or reproduced in media and material objects, reflect the extent, the vast network, of anti-Black prejudice.
The word, nigger, carries with it much of the hatred and disgust directed toward Black Africans and African Americans. Historically, nigger defined, limited, made fun of, and ridiculed all Blacks. It was a term of exclusion, a verbal reason for discrimination. Whether used as a noun, verb, or adjective, it strengthened the stereotype of the lazy, stupid, dirty, worthless nobody. No other American surname carries as much purposeful cruelty.
Let’s be more cognizant of the way we treat each other. I ask that my people curtail their use of the word as it devalues us in a world that already see’s us as inferior. How are we going to build if we can’t talk to each other with words of empowerment and love?
Sources:
http://www.aaregistry.org/historic_events/view/nigger-word-brief-history
http://oogeewoogee.com/has-the-term-nigger-been-redefined
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