New York City has joined several municipalities that are considering measures asking its citizens to voluntarily stop using the word “nigger.”
On Wednesday, Queens Councilman Leroy Comrie urged his colleagues to approve a symbolic resolution calling for New Yorkers to voluntarily stop using the N-word. The effort began weeks ago at the start of Black History Month, and has gradually gained nationwide notice and support.
Comrie and other backers of the nonbinding measure say its purpose is to call attention to what they say is a troubling trend among entertainers and youths to try to repackage the N-word as a term of endearment and camaraderie.
Of greater concern, some say, is the ease with which whites and other non-black people use the term when speaking about, or to, black people.
Last November, comedian Michael Richards went on a racially charged rant in a Los Angeles comedy club after, he said, he was heckled by black audience members.
Just two weeks later, comedian Andy Dick reportedly hopped onstage to join a fellow comedian at L.A.'s Improv comedy club and then dropped the n-bomb on a room full of stunned clubgoers as he exited the stage.
About a month ago, socialite Paris Hilton, dancing at a nightclub with her sister to Biggie Small’s “Hypnotize,” invites a camera guy to film them. In the video clip, she goes up to the camera and says, “We’re like two niggers!”
The rash of ill-considered remarks have led some black artists and entertainers, including comedian Paul Mooney, to say they are dropping the n-word from their acts.
Some pundits have challenged hip-hop artists and rappers to do likewise.
Others say the word belongs to black folks and they shouldn’t be ashamed about using it. Still others see the whole discussion as little more than a tempest in a teapot.
“It all depends on how you use it,” Matthew Green, a 20-year-old writer in Landover, Md., told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “If you’re using it just to say ‘hi’ or talk to a friend that’s okay. If you’re using it as a racial slur then that’s not cool.”
Green said he and his buddies haven’t spent much time thinking about the celebrity rants or the ensuing debate. Richards, et al, aren’t big enough stars in their circle isn’t to have much influence on the way they think, Green said.
Asked if a white friend coming up to him, giving him a soul shake and saying ‘what up, nigga?” would be acceptable, Green said, “Yeah. It’s about the relationship and the intent.”
Eugene Kane, a columnist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, recently wrote a column that stopped short of calling for a ban on the word. He suggested, instead, that the word be banned in Milwaukee public schools and that a lesson plan be developed to teach students about the importance and weight of words, how they are used and the judgment that ought to accompany their use.
“I’m not really expecting any real ban on the N-word,” Kane told BlackAmericaWeb.com, “but I think all the attention served to focus more attention on the obvious double-standard that exists which allows black folks to say it all the time in public, but can end the career of any white person caught using it.
“I do think the double-standard has become almost absurd in that (the N-word) is all over popular culture, in music, so that you can’t rightfully start telling white people I don’t want you to use the word.”
Kane said he would like to see an entertainer, like Kanye West, give up the word. He said he confirmed that at a couple of concerts West told white people in the audience that he would “give them permission to use the word so they could sing along” when he performed his hit “Gold Digger.”
“I just see a public pulling back from the public use of the word,” Kane said.
Roy Miller, an attorney who succeeded in 1994 in persuading Funk & Wagnall to remove the word nigger from its dictionary and who testified Monday at a hearing on the New York City resolution, wants a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to the word.
Miller, who appeals on his Web site (www.attorneyroymiller.com) to black organizations, fraternities and sororities to agree to a resolution discouraging the use of the N-word, told BlackAmericaWeb.com that he was surprised that there wasn’t an even greater hue and cry from the black community about the Richards incident and the everyday use of the word.
“If you can allow the most disrespectful word to be used about you, you are sealing your fate,” Miller said. “Every other race draws a line you dare not cross.”
Miller said no matter how some black people try to embrace the N-word and take the sting out of it by using it regularly, the stigma doesn’t go away. The word was used to hurt black Americans for generations and the best way to salute the ancestors, Miller said, is to get rid of the word.
“I know that our ancestors fought too hard to give up an opportunity to have respect,” Miller said. “The only thing that’s important when you say the N-word is what the listener hears.”
He said when he hears the word he thinks of slaves, their descendants who endured Jim Crow laws and segregation, black men who struggled to raise their families and make ends meet and were denied the wages and the opportunities for advancement that they deserved, all of whom “were called the N-word all their lives.”
As a lawyer, Miller said, he believes “when you contribute to the same wrong you accuse others of you compromise your argument.”
Don’t believe the hype, said Jimi Izrael, a hip-hop culture commentator and assistant to the editorial board at the Lexington Herald-Leader in Lexington, Ky., said in a recent interview.
“I use nigga like 50 times a day,” Izrael told BlackAmericaWeb.com, adding that the debate over the use of the word was a bourgeois luxury.
“Only people playing pinochle and bid whist have time to pontificate over this stuff,” Izrael said. “Nigga is a word I’ve earned the right to use. I come from niggas. That’s my experience.”
Izrael said too many black people worry about how they are perceived by others, particularly whites, when there are bigger fish to fry.
“What’s steppin’ off in Sudan? While we’re trying to figure out whether we are niggers, Negroes, colored or whatever, there are more important things to worry about than whether somebody likes us”
Izrael said when he thinks of the word he doesn’t think of people who are criminal, lazy or uneducated. “I don’t know who those niggas are. The niggas I know, they’re in college trying to get their PhD. They are not trying to live in the hood their whole lives.”
He said the debate over the word is largely a class struggle. “The whole conversation is another way for the have to separate themselves from the have nots.”
What most people are missing in the debate, said David Campt, is the opportunity to deal with the way all of us look at race.
“The problem we have is how we’re dealing collectively with the Michael Richards situation and we’re dealing with the wrong issue,” Campt, a race relations expert and senior policy associate with the Clinton administration’s Initiative on Race, told BlackAmericaWeb.com.
“Within all of us is this simmering resentment of other people,” Campt said. “We all have to deal with racial resentment. Bias and racism are the real issues. Focusing on the word perpetuates distractions.
“Having that word that has so many different meanings on so many levels is collectively useful, “ Campt added. “We never see evidence that people have all this resentment. We have to work hard to look beneath the surface.”
Now that the issue is out there, the real question, Campt said, is what are black folks going to learn from it?
Campt who says he doesn’t support hate or violent speech also said he doesn’t necessarily advocate a ban on the word.
He said Kane’s suggestion that children be taught about the N-word and the power of words makes sense.
“I think that is exactly correct,” Campt said. “We need to train our children to be deliberate about all words they use, but especially words that hold that kind of power.”
Parents can then discuss their values and rules about using the word.
As for the double-standard argument, Campt said, “Black folks have been using that word with each other for a hundred years and there’s an understanding that white people aren’t supposed to use that word. It’s not fair, but so what? Life is not fair.
“White people should be able to handle the experience of that. We handled the complexities of things we didn’t like that they imposed on us.”
That said, Campt added, he wasn’t necessarily in favor of using the word, but he thinks people should realize “there’s a history and there’s a culture” and a racial context that surrounds the use of the word.
One thing black people should take away from the debate, Campt said, is that it is “a positive that this is a national outrage. We’ve come very far in terms of national value around degrading language and behavior. Even white people were outraged and that wouldn’t have been true 30 years ago. …This incident is a reminder we need to upgrade our conversation about race.”
