Note: I'm not adding censorship stars. I'm not giving polite dashes. You and I both know which word we're talking about here.
"Cause I'm the nigga, the nigga nigga, like how you figure?
Getting figures and fuckin' bitches, she rolling Swishers
Brought her bitches, I brought my niggas, they getting bent up off the liquor
She love my licorice, I let her lick it
They say money make a nigga act nigger-ish
But least a nigga nigga-rich" A$AP Rocky- Fucking Problems
"Gold all in my chain, gold all in my ring
Gold all in my watch
Don't believe me, just watch
Nigga nigga nigga
Don't believe me, just watch
Don't believe me, just watch
Nigga nigga nigga" - Trinidad James (All Gold Everything)
"You little niggas ain't deep you dumb
You niggas ain't gangsta, you gum, I chew lil' niggas
Hock-too, spew lil' niggas
I can only view lil' niggas like lil' niggas
But in lieu of lil' niggas trying to play that boy
I *pew, pew* lil' niggas with the latest toy
Unlike you lil' nigga, I'm a grown ass man
Big shoes to fill nigga, grown ass pants" - Jay-Z (Trouble)
Last year, during the second semester of my 2L year (second-year of law school for the uninitiated) I wrote a lengthy seminar paper about the N-word. I called the paper "Acceptable Niggas". It involved a ton of research (easily the most time I've put into a law school assignment in any capacity) I went to Westlaw and looked up every case where the word nigger was used. I didn't find anything interesting and almost decided not to continue my paper. But then I decided to look up other variations of the word. I looked up “nigga”, and “nigg-ah” and found some incredibly interesting cases. Without boring you with the individual cases and results, I found something to be generally true. The courts don't know what the hell to do with the word. Mostly, because no one else really does.
The question I found myself asking repeatedly while doing the research was "Who can use the N-word and why" Hence, me calling my paper "Acceptable Niggas". Maybe I should have asked is it ever acceptable to use the N-word? (Note I'm using the "N-word" phrasing because I don't want to have to decide whether to spell it with an -er or an -a).
Here's what we know to be true about the N-word. At one point is was completely acceptable to by society to use the word nigger. There was really only one context for its use. It was a word used to subjugate, lessen and demean black people. It was a simpler time. When you heard a group of people using it to describe you, you knew that it wasn't meant in any other way. If you were black, there was a really good chance the use of the word was a signal that your safety was at risk.
Since then things have changed. People have been using it to describe people in a neutral way. People often use it in a sense that is no more intentionally inflammatory than the word "dude". However, people still use it in its original sense. As a 24-year old black guy, I'm not nearly old enough to remember it used before and during lynching. I'm not even old enough to remember the rapper Ice Cube introducing himself to the world as a "crazy motherfucker named Ice Cube / From the gang called Niggas Wit Attitudes" on Straight Outta Compton. (Straight outta Compton was released a year before I was born) But since being an adult, I've also been described using the word. I've heard it in the negative "I won't allow a nigger to date my daughter" sense and I've been congratulated on a law school accomplishment with a Denzel Washington style "My Nigga".
I listen to music that features the word prominently. I quote those lyrics uncensored when I talk to my New York friends. I censor those lyrics when I quote them anywhere near my law school friends in Colorado. I hear friends of all shades who use "nigga" casually. I have friends of all shades who censor it. And I have white friends who don't even look remotely comfortable saying the phrase "the N-word", much less actually using it, in any context. I'm occasionally appalled to hear it, I'm occasionally confused when I don't hear it. When I first moved to Boulder, I heard it so rarely that it's jarring. When I went back to visit New York, I heard it so often that it was jarring. I stopped using it in Colorado, period, after 2 of my classmates got on me for using it. I didn't really have a good reason to argue with them, other than the fact I was quoting the song "Niggas in Paris" which features the word prominently. I stopped getting on people for using it, because if they aren't using it in a racist way, and the N-Word is supposed to be a proxy for racism, then I don't have a particularly good reason to. (I could talk about the words brutal history, but it makes me sound like Justice Scalia with his originalist rants, and that makes me more uncomfortable than any use of the N-word).
It would be easy to separate by race if the world worked that way. Sure, if you do it that way, Jay Z (who’s black) can use the word. Eminem (who’s white) can't. Simple enough. Is Barack Obama (who's biracial) use the word? Is Blake Griffin (equally bi-racial, but lighter skinned) allowed to use it? What about Asian people, whose history in America has little to do with the history of the n-word directed at black people. What about Hispanic people? (You flow cold but Joe flow sicker/Even Reverend Al be like, "Joe's that nigga!"/John Gotti, Supreme Team show/These are the niggas you compare to Joe, HELLO! - Fat Joe (The Crackhouse)). That doesn't work, at all. Especially because there are a lot of people who aren’t racist and use the word as “in-crowd” slang and with absolutely no malice intended.
The courts (in many cases) tried to separate the N-word between Nigger (the older word with the awful history) and Nigga (the word which, may be profane, but that black people use, and is totally not racist). Even if you get past the bizarre differentiation (If I say the way that black people say it, then it's okay), this separation is problematic. There's a lot of times where I here black people say it with a distinct "-er" and no intention of being racist. There are a lot of people who don't pronounce the -er in any word ("lawyas", "doctas", and "plumbas") and say nigga with all the intentional malice that the word “nigger” would connote. It also doesn't get to the distinctions in context that are created by how the word is used. It also doesn't address that for some people there is absolutely no context where calling them a "nigga" or "nigger" would ever be acceptable. And given the word’s history, it feels outright insulting to tell black people that they shouldn’t be offended by THAT word.
Maybe one day this will all be figured out. I know that I have very few privileges that result from me being black, but that one of them is that I can use the word without people presuming that I'm racist. I don't know what society will decide to do with the word. I don't know what the courts will decide to do with the word. I don't even know whether I will continue to use the word in any context. Maybe it will be like gay slurs, which I don't use at all. Maybe it will be like other profane terms like "fuck", which I use often, but would never use in court, church or within earshot of my mom (or any other places where the rationale "But, I'm an adult" holds no weight). But until then, we'll have to decide (individually and collectively) if and when the use of the nigga is acceptable.
Until then I have to decide whether a crowd of people saying nigga makes me cringe or whether it's preferable to a censored version. (One of my favorite songs from Kendrick Lamar’s album being performed… in Salt Lake City, Utah).
"Man down, where you from, nigga?"
"Fuck who you know, where you from, my nigga?"
"Where your grandma stay, huh, my nigga?"
"This m.A.A.d city I run, my nigga" - Kendrick Lamar (M.a.a.d. City)
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