Can we ever really buy the 'N' word?

By Kwame Opoku-DukuThe Guardsman

I’ve used the word “nigger” in my everyday speech since I first listened to Dr. Dre’s landmark album “The Chronic.” I was maybe 12 years old. It didn’t happen right away. First I rapped along. Then I began using Snoop Dogg and Dre’s speech and mannerisms, to the chagrin of my parents. Born in the ‘40s and ‘50s, they still remember where they were when they learned Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Their wounds were still fresh from the injustices they suffered at the hands of racist tormentors.

My argument for the word’s usage was one of cultural re-appropriation, which I had no real concept of at the time. The word “nigger,” I argued, had become a political tool for African-Americans to throw back into the face of our oppressors, a reminder of the racist culture that bore us. It felt edgy, or at least that’s how I remember it.

Rappers continued to use the word. Soon, it became ubiquitous in hip-hop culture, losing its political edge in the process. Your friends were “your niggas.” Your enemies were “niggas you hated.” And as hip-hop culture became synonymous with African-American culture, we all eventually became “niggas.”

So where does that leave us? With its use by grade-school children—to whom it’s been passed down like brown eyes or male pattern baldness—there are three generations of African-Americans who self-identify as the very slur shouted at our forefathers as they were being lynched.

The word has gained even more notoriety in the past few years, most famously during former “Seinfeld” cast-member Michael Richards’ tirade, which was caught on video. It proved how sensitive about the word we still are at heart, which I’ve come to regard as a positive. But had it been Chris Rock on stage screaming the exact same words with the exact same inflection, would we have been laughing instead of becoming seized with rage?

I believe this is a double-standard we need to explore.

Anyone who was born in this country, speaks English or has any concept of American culture knows inherently that it is not okay for whites to use the word, at least in public. Such a faux pas, as Mr. Richards could attest to, would thrust one into the no-man’s land of social pariah. It would take months of apologizing on late-night talk shows to stop receiving death threats.

And yet, when it rolls off my tongue while I talk to my brother on the phone, I find comfort in it, and I know he does too.

Or at least I did.

Now, I feel like someone who’s taken one of those smoking cures and lights up a cigarette only to find the smooth flavor he loved replaced with some unfamiliar feeling of dissatisfaction. But I am just one man.

Since “Kramergate,” many prominent African-American comedians have vowed to stop using the word, at least in their routines. And many prominent African-American leaders have called for its disuse.

Some U.S. cities have even banned the word, but without the support of the people, it is purely a symbolic gesture. The burden lies on our shoulders to decide for ourselves how much longer we’ll be niggers or any of its slang derivatives. It’s up to us to answer our generation’s call.

More than 100 years ago, W.E.B. Du Bois wrote, “The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land. Whatever of good may have come in these years of change, the shadow of a deep disappointment rests upon the Negro people.” If he only knew how true his words have remained.

I know I’m no W.E.B. Du Bois, and I would never profess to be. I don’t know if the promised land is any more real than a black Santa Claus. But I have the vision that one day my future son or daughter will come up to me while I’m writing at my desk and say, “Dad, someone told me that there was a word called ‘nigger’ that people used to use.”

And I’ll say, “Whoever told you was right. Go grab that history book off the shelf, and I’ll tell you all about it.”