“Nigger”

The word conjures pictures of downtrodden, degraded, broken -spirited dark skinned people, or like a friend says sarcastically, “darkies”.

Coined during slavery, it was the only consistent word used to describe African Americans for centuries by their white slave owners and then later fellow citizens during Reconstruction and subsequently “Jim Crow”.

Fast forward to 2008 and Rev. Jackson’s comments on Fox News. Chastising the Reverend is useless and counterproductive. Imus and others in the media use it, rappers use it, racists and non -racists alike use it. It is in the lexicon. The question is or should be, why? Unconsciously we are not rid of the connotation it implies.

It is easy to understand the stance the young people who use it take, they are using it and by doing so they are removing the power to hurt that it causes, if only in their own minds. It is understandable in the black male community, “My nigga” can be a term of endearment. The rappers use it to incite and make money. The black diaspora in general uses it.

Rev. Jackson when calling for the end of the word knew that the call was for white people but as usual instead of honest dialogue, the integrationist in him won out and he emphasized everyone should cease to use it. That was his first mistake. Specificity at that point would have brought clarity to the call , but this is about power or the lack of it.

White people want it to go away, after all, slave traders invented it to describe and hold power over their black chattel. Somehow along the way it was changed to the N-Word , as if that is somehow less offensive when written or referred to. One must think it in order to write it, this N-word, without actually writing it.

The discussion needs to be what it means then and now. Is it strictly a taboo description as some whites bleet, “Why can they use it “? See Michele Malkin.

The answer can be found in decades of dehumanization and systematic genocide. That quite simply is why whites can not use the word. It is offensive when used by whites. To pretend anything else is dishonest and quite frankly tedious and tiresome.

It may be debatable and grist for the mill in the Black communities across America, it is hard for whites to believe there is a word they cant say in public , anymore. White privilege dictates there is nothing that can’t be said by those who are in the majority.  Once the word was deemed not politically correct,  it became “unacceptable”.

Whites are simply entitled to say anything blacks say and therein lies the problem. When you think this word are you thinking of an upstanding hard-working black American or a “thug” ghetto -type, rapper, etc. ? The word is racially charged and despite heroic efforts to the contrary, is still around. Even after its symbolic burial by the NAACP, in a casket.

Behind closed doors in the black community the word is used without thought. Behind closed doors in the white community the word is used without thought. The fact that this even got air time , is typical of a racially charged and largely unresolved problem in our country. Jackson believed he was speaking to another black man off mic. It proves two things only. He didn’t think, and he has become largely irrelevant in the current political dialogue. Why he said it knowing he was in enemy camp, shows poor judgement at best, by design at worst, neither of which is worth the effort to explore.

A Talk show host, young ,white, and female reduced to tears because she was so offended by the mere mention and debate of the word, smacks of a disingenuous stance, novice acting or dangerous naivete of what has been reality in this country since before she was born.

Curious this word is so hated and feared. It is a powerful word. It described the citizens of this country for decades. Citizens who fought for and died for and slaved for this Country. Recipients of this word, however onerous its perception is proclaimed to be, helped build the very country we now enjoy on the backs of their free labor.

Now a black person uses this pejorative, “niggas” , subsequently apologizes for it, although it is very commonplace in our language, everyone denies ever having uttered the word nigger, but Jackson.

That is hypocrisy.