The N word

This weekend I encountered the word nigger twice. I have not heard a person say that in conversation (except in the media) in years. It is an ugly hateful word. It is much on my mind right now. I cannot bring myself to type it again. So ironically I am writing about it while tap dancing around the word itself.

J insists that N is a word that was first used to refer to Irish immigrants in this country and that the term was used in reference to black people later. It seems unlikely. In the dictionary the primary definition refers to black people or dark skinned people. There is a dictionary entry where N is "Used as a disparaging term for a member of any socially, economically, or politically deprived group of people." Which at one time the Irish in the U.S. were. Still, I'm pretty sure that it's been decades since the last time an Irish American was called a N.

But for the most part N refers to black people.

Chuck D had a rant in which he insists that N is not a term of love. It is a word whose meaning and history is tied to slavery and hatred. A few hip-hop albums are not going to change that so quickly. He thinks it will never be a word of love.

His whole rant on this got me thinking about the scene in "Pulp Fiction" in which Ving Rhames character asks Bruce Willis' character "Are you my N-----?" It is a scene in which a white man is expected to tell his black boss that he is. It is not a term used by equals. In this scene the colors of the roles are reversed. And it is still a word of subjugation. Like the concept of being someone's bitch as opposed to being a bitch.

As a child when I heard white kids refer to a black person as a N, I got angry and confronted them about it. They would always insist that they were not referring to all black people. There were nice black people who they liked and there were others that behaved like N's and should be referred to in such a matter. Interestingly, Chuck D used the word cracker to refer to a particular white person in the same way. He said that here were some white people who behaved in a certain way and that was best described as being a cracker.

This is a race trap. Cracker and N are two words that are deeply steeped in racial identification and a racist history. If a person is ignorant, or rude, or despicable, or racist, or insulting these are decisions that he/she has made as an individual about what to think, what to say, and how to act. If a person is rude what matters more the color or the behavior?

Skin color you cannot change. Behavior and point of view you can. This is the hope of humanity.