It’s a difficult word to type, let alone the difficulty in saying it or hearing it out loud.
Nigger.
And while rappers with any self-respect use it instead of pro-nouns, verbs, or qualifiers; I would argue the word should no longer have the same place in the English language that it has enjoyed.
That said, it has its uses, especially as ignitor of frank conversation about its origins and race relations in the 21st century.
This not-so-light topic is sponsored by a small film called “Django Unchained.”
The spaghetti-western is a Quentin Tarantino’s remake of the 1966 version.
It follows a freed slave, played by the very well-hung Jamie Fox (you’ll understand that comment when you see it,) who treks across the US with a German born bounty hunter on a mission to rescue his German-speaking slave wife from a cruel and charismatic plantation owner–that’s Leo DiCaprio.
In Tarantino-style restraint the movie has a lot of guns, a lot of blood, a lot of violence and a lot of use of the N-word. Of the 3-hours it took to get to the end of the movie, I’d say with all scientific certainly that 50-70 percent of the dialogue had the word in it. And, as an African American woman (spoiler alert!) I was a little offended.
That offense, however, carried into a conversation about the N-word’s use in the modern world.
When is it okay to use it? Can African Americans really reclaim the word for their own? Should they? Why does the very sound of the full word evoke a feeling or anger, sadness, apathy? Why?
Should the words be cast away forever in place of a more hate-neutral version that will both address its meaning and be sensitive to the victims of 400-plus years of the African slave trade?
I know this: to ignore the fact that racial inequality still exists on every level in society is to say there aren’t toothless idiots that call the American Civil War, “the Northern aggression.”
I jest. They all aren’t toothless. And I’m not going to try to explain “the Black experience” to you. I’ll let Soliedad O’Brien do that. What I would say is use this as an opportunity to have an open conversation about race and maybe, in doing so, we can eliminate the need to use a word like nigger.