I’ve heard the “N” Word almost all my life. I can’t remember the first time I heard it. Maybe it was from my mother or some other relative hollering at me when I did something wrong or asked to do something stupid. I suppose; I remember my mom responding to a request I made asking her permission to get a Process (that hair style Malcolm wrote about in his autobiography: “fried, dyed, and laid on the side”), screaming: “nigger are you crazy?”
The N-Word was as common in my life as my ebony skin. It was as common as listening to Motown while playing touch football in the street. Furthermore, it was as common as hearing Jimmy Smith‘s organ groove' outside of the Pine Grill on Jefferson avenue in Buffalo, NY, where I grew up.
The funny thing about it -- is hearing and being called the “N”-Word never really bothered me until my mother moved from the “hood” to the “burbs” and a white boy used it to welcome me to the neighborhood. I’m glad he ran away from me and I didn’t catch him. I was very upset!
The Jesse Jackson controversy over his use of the ‘N’-Word on Barack Obama has engendered a heated discussion on the proper or improper use of this word and who has permission to use it. For example, the Whoppie Goldberg and Elizabeth Hasselbeck debate which took place on The View shows us how tumultuous this subject can be. Things got so hot that—well, let’s say you won’t see them singing together in the next We Are the World video.
Perhaps a history lesson is needed in order for us to understand the pain behind, what can be called? “The most damning word in the history of language.”
According to the African American Registry (www.aaregistry.com), the following gives an etymology of the “N”-Word:
" The history of the word nigger is often traced to the Latin word niger, meaning Black. This word became the noun, Negro (Black person) in English, and simply the color Black in Spanish and Portuguese. In early modern French, Niger became negre and, later Negress (Black woman) was unmistakably a part of language history…
It is probable that nigger is a phonetic spelling of the White Southern mispronunciation of Negro."
The African American Registry notifies us that by the early 1800s, it was firmly established as a derogative name.
The funny thing about it (or the not so funny thing about it), is the “N”-Word is one of many words used over the years to victimize black people. No American group has endured as many racial nicknames as American-Americans.
That is the result of the pathology of America’s continuing history of racism.
But, this racial sickness has been internalized among blacks when we sanction the use of this most hateful word.
How crazy can you be to argue that “it’s all right for black people to use the “N”-word among ourselves,” but we’ll go Nat Turner on a white man if he uses it on us?
Jackson’s use of the ”N”-Word on Obama is quite telling about how much progress we have made in this country, and how much is left to heal.
Here is a black man who might be the next president of the United States of America—the highest political office in the world—who is still called one of the most evil words in the history of etymology.
I suspect that some in the Black community have an addiction to the “N”-Word like an addict enslaved to drugs. No matter what measures are used to detoxify or rehab from this word, some folk can’t quit saying it.
It’s like that song by Blues singer-songwriter: Willie Dixon: “I Can’t Quit You Baby:
We-ell, I can’t quit you baby, but I got to put you down a little while.
We-ell, I can’t quit you baby, but I got to put you down a little while.
We-ell, you done made me mess up my happy home, made me mistreat my.
Only child…
I was riding the Long Island Railroad sometime ago, and some young brothers got on the train talking loudly. The “N”-Word was shooting from their mouths like bullets flying from an AK-47. What was so sick about the conversation is these brothers start complaining about how racist the drunken white construction workers were who was also riding the train?
Personally, I don’t suppose America will never get over using the “N”-Word. Furthermore, for black people to insist on using it, themselves only mean we have become accepting of our own pathology. Perhaps, some of us need a revelation like Richard Pryor. Richard
Pryor traveled to Kenya; and it was there in Kenya, (Pryor profusely used the “N”-Word in his comedy routines), received a revelation like Malcolm X did about Islam when he traveled to Mecca. Pryor began to understand the interconnectedness of African’s in the Diaspora. He said to himself that he would never use this hateful word again.
Actor Samuel L. Jackson I believe said it best in the movie: Coach Carter. When one of the basketball players started using the N-Word, Carter immediately pulled the reigns on it saying these memorable words:
" Don’t you ever use that word again! It defames your
Ancestors and gives white people permission to use it."
To that I say” Amen.”
In The house, KJ
