The N-word might be part of pop culture, but it still makes me cringe

The president used it – to uproar – but Chris Rock and Lupe Fiasco are shying away from the word, for fear it gives racists a license to say it.

It makes me wince. The N-word, nigga, nigger; whatever the definition or pronunciation may be, it’s always uncomfortable. I am a black woman and grew up in a home where it simply wasn’t used.

On Monday, Barack Obama became the most high-profile guest on comedian Marc Maron’s WTF with Marc Maron podcast. On the show, the president used the word to reiterate the fact that the country still has work to do to combat its rampant racism. “Racism, we are not cured of it,” Obama began. “And it’s not just a matter of it not being polite to say nigger in public. That’s not the measure of whether racism still exists or not. It’s not just a matter of overt discrimination. Societies don’t, overnight, completely erase everything that happened 200 to 300 years prior.”

As Obama implied: the word is part of American history. But my apprehension does not change clear facts: that word that will never truly go away so long as we don’t learn from it, that nigga is cultural reappropriation and is necessary for generations to overcome the atrocities of this country, and that “confusing” the two is willfully ignorant.

Barack Obama invokes N-word during interview on racism in America

It is a word that can’t be forgotten and that is OK. We study history to learn from it and the N-word, in all that it represents, is the darkest period in the history of the United States. In his book, Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word, author Randall Kennedy wrote: “Nigger is a key word in the lexicon of race relations and thus an important term in American politics. To be ignorant of its meanings and effects is to make oneself vulnerable to all manner of perils, including the loss of a job, a reputation, a friend, even one’s life.” It can never disappear or be forgotten in the same way that slavery, or Jim Crow, or the civil war can never truly disappear. They are symbols of where we have been, but they are also symbols of what we’ve yet to achieve.

Obama’s use of the word shocked many, but this was not the first time he used the word. In his book Dreams from my Father, the president used it “about a dozen times”, said the White House deputy press secretary, Eric Schultz. In reality, Obama’s use of the word was shocking because it is something most acting presidents would never say (at least not in public), but also because the weight of it still matters in 2015.

Reappropriation has made it a point of contention again. Chet Haze – Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson’s obnoxious son – using nigga as a term of endearment as a privileged white man smacks of wilful ignorance and a blatant erasure of its etymological history. Consider the word “thug”, which has largely grown out of its previous understanding as a violent criminal to a racially coded way of using the N-word. A quick look at the comments sections of news articles or in even in public descriptions of members of the hip-hop community confirm this theory. The word was also used to describe the personality of Richard Sherman, the charismatic cornerback for the Seattle Seahawks.

During a press conference, Sherman responded, saying: “It’s like everybody else said the N-word and then they say ‘thug’ and that’s fine. It kind of takes me aback and it’s kind of disappointing because they know.” For self-aware racists, they understand the severity of the N-word, but refuse to truly give it up, instead resorting to coded language to make their point fuelled by hatred.
Richard Sherman with Seattle Seahawks’ mascot Blitz Richard Sherman with Seattle Seahawks’ mascot Blitz. Photograph: Otto Greule Jr/Getty Images

Language matters because we have the ability to change it at any given second. This is not just about incorporating ever-changing slang into our vocabulary. Rather, we as human beings, have the power to radicalise and revolutionise language, stripping words of their power, eliminating them all together, or finding new and better ones to lift us up in society.

In marginalised communities, we see this forever in action. I am an ally to, but not an exclusive member of the LGBTQI community, so I would never use the words “tranny” or “dyke” in my everyday speech. But I have friends within those communities who use them freely, who have reclaimed their previously negative usage. They are theirs now, as they should be. It is the power we can hold over language and society in play and it matters.

In the black community, we also see this in action. Nigga, a reappropriated eye-dialect word, is so widely used as to be innocuous for my generation. It is a word of endearment, of neutrality, or negativity. It is everything and nothing. We’ve heard it in everything from stand up routines and routinely in the rap and hip-hop world. It is not just, as Chris Rock explained in his brilliant and controversial comedy routine, Niggas v Black People, a distinguisher.

Instead, its use is a powerful form of reappropriation in action. If the N-word won’t go away, then we will reclaim it, make it our own. Like Tupac once informed Tabitha Soren of MTV News: “Niggers was the ones on the rope, hanging off the thing; niggas is the ones with gold ropes, hanging out at clubs.” Soren said everyone might not be aware of the differentiation between the two words, to which Tupac replied: “They don’t have to be. Everyone … if you’re not a nigga, then you don’t use that word, you don’t have to understand.”
Chris Rock stopped performing his n-word routine Chris Rock says he has stopped performing his N-word routine. Photograph: Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP

In the end, nigga is not just another word. It can’t be, and perhaps people are taking notice because of how its in-culture usage has spread to those who are not black and will never understand the black community. Chris Rock has eliminated the Niggas v Black People set. “By the way, I’ve never done that joke again, ever, and I probably never will. ’Cos some people that were racist thought they had license to say nigger. So, I’m done with that routine,” Rock said in a 2005 interview with 60 Minutes. After using the word in previous albums, Lupe Fiasco said: “Now white people, you can’t say nigga so I gotta take it back/ Now black people, we’re not niggas cause God made us better than that.” on the track Audubon Ballroom from 2012’s Food & Liquor II: The Great American Rap Album, Part 1. Like before, language is changing because it has to change.

Language, our ownership and understanding of it, must evolve in order for us to survive. But also, we must address it and acknowledge its history. To hide and ignore is to sweep the very real everyday experiences of many people in the country. Like the dysfunctional belief in colourblind race relations, ignoring it will not make it “go away”. We must understand language and history and the past to insure we never repeat it again. But as we wait for change to come, we in marginalised communities also have the power to reclaim things for ourselves, to make this destructive, damaging world, more palatable so long as we live in. Language fits that marker. It must.

(The Guardian)