Alexander Johnson
Contributor
Nigga.
You’ve heard it before from your friends, on the street, and in the media. If you’re paying attention, you’ll be able to find that word almost anywhere. Yet even though the word is so pervasive, people still struggle with discussing its relevance. Who can and cannot use “nigga,” and why do those who use it, use it altogether?
I was curious, so I decided to sit at a porter station in a residence and ask passing black people this controversial question, “Do you say nigga? Yes, no, and why?”
One woman said “I don’t use it because of slavery and stuff,” while another said, “I use it because everybody is saying it. It’s everywhere.”
It may be everywhere, and it may have originated from Colonial slavery, but let’s take a look at the historical context of the word after the abolishment of slavery in the United States. In 1865, after the 13th Amendment abolished slavery in the United States, white people grew concerned with the possible consequences of emancipation. According to The N Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn’t, and Whyby Jabari Asim, some opposers went as far as to say, “if blacks cannot be confined to chains and treated like animals, they could at least be kept in their place.” Usage of the word n*gger was the way to do it. “Scientifically proven” inferiorities such as lack of intelligence, willpower, nor ethical senses were attached to the term to hold the newly freed slaves to a societal disadvantage.
But of course, “scientific inferiorities” were not the only negative connotations attached to the word. The sense of white empowerment that came from the word “nigger” led to 23 years of major riots in the early 1900s. Some riots left entire black neighbourhoods burned to the ground and left many people killed, lynched, injured, or homeless.
The word “nigger” continued to carry a negative meaning decades afterwards. The term “nigga” did not enter mainstream culture until 1988 when the gangsta rap group N.W.A. (Niggaz Wit Attitudes) became popular. The word nigga came from the phrase “Bad N*gger.” The phrase “bad nigger” described black people who did not follow authority and had survived since the times of enslavement. N.W.A.’s goal was to take back the word “nigga” and make it their own. They wanted to take the sting out of the word, ultimately removing any form of dehumanization that the word nigger harboured. Whether their attempt has been successful is questionable. While a lot of people may be familiar with the word, the word carries different meanings in different contexts for different people.
To me, nigga represents a temporary fix, a piece of duct tape that was placed on a leaking pipe from the ‘80s. Everybody likes to think that they are better than the generation before them and that they have evolved. So if we have evolved, why haven’t we fixed the pipe? Why do black people walk around saying nigga like it’s a cultural rite of passage and a word with no traumatic history? Many words have been “banished” from public usage and demoted to the garbage bin that is associated with the Oxford English Dictionary’s archaic and offensive labels. I think it’s time that both nigga and nigger face the same fate.
