I’ve talked about the use of the word ‘nigga’ before, so I’m actually kinda hesitant to bring it up again, only because I think I was pretty thorough in my last explanation. But to recap, I think that ‘nigga’ is, in whatever use, highly contexualized. That is, to in order to state whether it is a positive or negative term depends mostly on the situation in which it is being used. Everybody knows the history of the word, but every usage is not necessarily using the word in that sense. I concede that there’s a discussion to be had on this point, however.
One argument that I hear sometimes when some “newsworthy” person jumps off his rocker and uses the word in public is the old standard, “Well if Black people say ‘nigga,’ then why shouldn’t other people be allowed to say it?” Which is a red herring, at best. A weak analogy would be for me to say that my grandmother can call me “Boo-Boo,” but she’s the only person on the face of this earth who can. Perhaps more substantially, but with even less logic is the Bruce Hornsby response: that’s just the way it is. But I think I wanna break it down a little more precisely than that.
As I said up top, I think that in almost every instance where the word is used, the “positivity” or “negativity” can be determined by the context. In other words, the fact that I may use ‘nigga’ as a term of endearment at times does not mean that I don’t use it as a pejorative elsewhen. It just means that you’d have to know what was going on in that specific situation.
Now one thing that I think is important to understand is that English usage is not as robust as it once was. American culture is very informal, which is something that I appreciate most of the time, but as a result of this informality, many of us don’t really develop our vocabularies enough to speak with precision. I remember reading a little exchange over at Booker about this very thing. At any rate, my point in bringing this up is that when you speak with your familiars, much of what you’re actually saying is coded in words that don’t literally mean what you’re talking about. I mean, we all know political examples like “quota” or “diversity,” but it goes on even more frequently with the people we know. And so it is with slang and vulgar terms. The gift and the curse of cuss words (no pun intended) is that they can operate as several parts of speech. One of the things I love about reading Zora Neale Hurston is looking at the kind of invective they were able to spit. Even though it’s not the strongest example, “Happier than a pig in slop” gives me a lot better idea of how happy a person is than “Happy as shit,” which I’ve heard not infrequently.
So to bring it back to ‘nigga,’ and this latest professional utterance, I think that what’s happened is that ‘nigga/nigger’ has become, for many people, a permanent sore spot. Not necessarily saying that it shouldn’t be, but I am saying that in some cases, it seems to me that there’s an inherent weakness in having such a sensitive button that’s so easily accessed. As Cobb says, “See I just can’t get that offended about it. I’m a college-educated sophisticated man. I read the Invisible Man a long long time ago, and I remember the part when it was said that if you thought you could insult a sophisticated man by calling him ‘nigger’ you really weren’t important enough to mind.” What that basically boils down to is that “nigga,” when uttered as a pejorative is shorthand for “the most hurtful thing I can say to you if you’re Black.” But it only works because we keep that sore out there and accessible.
For as much as we fight over “nigga,” I’m still not sure it’s really a battle worth fighting. Of course that doesn’t mean I don’t think there should repercussions when people use the word ad nauseam, but it does make me wonder whether by scratching that itch every time, we keep the infection going, or maybe even spread it.
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