The Dynamism of “Nigger.”

The decision by New South, an Alabama publisher, to excise “nigger” from its editions of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn — it’s being replaced with “slave” —  has been (rightly) knocked as a heavy-handed attempt to sanitize our history. It’s probably fitting that “nigger” is at  the center of this brouhaha, since no other word in American English embodies both our country’s racial psychosis or the inane public conversations surrounding it. Folks want to will “nigger” away,  as if that might also vanquish both historical and contemporary racism. Just in the past few years, “nigger” made the cover of  Ebony and was given a much-publicized funeral. (“Nigger” should be flattered, as these are the kind of honors usually reserved for luminaries like Michael Jackson.)

The implication of all this public hand-wringing is the belief that it’s some kind of quasi-mystical incantation whose mere utterance has the power offend black people and crush our souls, hence the popular and infantile surrogate “the n-word.” But language is volatile, and even words weighed down by ugly histories can remain slippery and nuanced. Listen to the way Chris Rock used it, and then the way Michael Richards used it. In both cases, it’s pejorative, but they’re giving voice to very different ideas. Then listen to Erykah Badu’s usage, which is sorta neutral, and consider Jay-Z’s use, which is mildly affectionate. In each case, the speaker is assuming a shared understanding of social relationships, and so the way they employ “nigger” tells us all sorts of important stuff about race and how it is and has been lived in America. By taking “nigger” out of Huck Finn, New South is actually muddying the world Twain was trying to describe, but  this is no less true for calls to scrub it from hip-hop.

G.D.

G.D.

Gene "G.D." Demby is the founder and editor of PostBourgie. In his day job, he blogs and reports on race and ethnicity for NPR's Code Switch team.
G.D.
  • Freddie

    I won’t say it; I’ll risk being infantile. Too many people are possessed of the opinion that they are capable of navigating the racial dialogue without hurting anyone, and I don’t want to risk it and fail. I’ve always been possessed of the opinion that Michael Richards thought exactly that, that he was so advanced that he could use it, hurl it in a crowded theater, without hitting anybody. I’m not so sure of my aim.

  • B. Adu

    mere utterance has the power offend black people and crush our souls, hence the popular and infantile surrogate “the n-word.”

    This attitude is especially prevalent among those who use it to insult.

    The “n” word euphemising seems more about displacement, it’s like a statment of intent. If we don’t use it, we are against racism and not using it will end what it conveys.

    • April

      “Not using it will end what it conveys.” Um, no. Racism existed before the word “nigger” was coined. And there are plenty of people who would never dare utter the term “nigger” out loud but harbor racist thoughts.

  • Naima

    And like the many ways rappers have used the n-word, so has Twain. Yea Twain saturates the novel with “nigger Jim” over and over again but juxtaposes that 6-letter word with pages and pages of compelling storytelling- unveiling the the falsehoods of the racist assumptions whites had of blacks during the days of slavery when probably more often than not, the word “nigger” was tacked on somewhere the beginning, middle or end of their name.

    That being said, I think Twain’s intent is slightly different from how most rappers/music artists use it– However I don’t think it’s anyone’s place to try and excoriate it from it’s current cultural use in rap. The word can be poisonous but I appreciate how we’ve tried to take it and morph it into some vaccine, something we can create an immunity to…I appreciate it, but I don’t think it has worked if all if we break into hives every time our paler friends use it.

    truly dynamic.

  • John Robinson

    Seems like there’s a certain reality that–however much we try–we will never get beyond: the meaning of the n-word varies with the context that it is used in. No amount of rhetoric or symbolic “funerals” of the word will ever get us out of that dilemma. That said, I really think its largely (though not exclusively) a generational divide that is at the root of this debate. The civil rights generation has a different relationship with the word than generations X and Y (or the hip hop generation, whatever you want to call it); their culture is one that needs to memorialize the end of Jim Crow racism and ours is one that needs to recognize the political realities of post- civil rights, such as housing projects, incarceration,and reaganomics (note: I understand that many younger people are also against using the word, but for reasons I wont go into I think it can still be seen as fundamentally generational). Anyway,we are descendants of civil rights and black power and–whether or not baby-boomers accept this as valid–our unique experiences have made us capable using the n-word very often as a term of endearment. Whatever ugliness is inherent in using that word is at least similar to the ugliness inherent in calling ourselves “black”; both reflect not only something we have in some sense elected to call ourselves but also a racial slander designed specifically to insult us by whites.

    I have two points. One is that we cannot purge our history of all that is derogatory or negative because not much else would left remaining; black american history is the history of being placed in the worst scenario and (almost miraculously) reorienting those very circumstances toward our own purposes. The other is that both generational viewpoints are valid and need to be respected; however because they are so directly opposed to one another makes this a very sensitive issue that people should discuss thoughtfully and with an open mind

    • April

      Totally agree. Also, thanks for pointing out that, indeed, “black” was once upon a time not polite to use. I suppose James Brown gets much of the credit for taking the stigma out of the term.

    • J

      I don’t really buy the generational divide–at least not as you characterize it. Black Americans have long used the term nigger to identify each other. Writers of the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts movement used it, as did comedians like Richard Pryor (see “Supernigger”). You will also hear it in blaxploitation films of the ’70s. My grandfather, who grew up in the South during the 1920s, uses it frequently. What, I think, boomers find problematic about the word today is that younger blacks and hip-hop performers use the word casually in the presence of whites and other ethnic groups. Now that we live in an “integrated” society this is unseemly. What was once a secret ritual enacted through folk art has now become an open ritual enacted through pop art like hip-hop. Well, that and boomers have a silly, romantic notion of black American culture prior to and during the civil rights movement. They conveniently forget that they opened the door for this sort of thing. Of course, younger blacks or the so-called hip-hop generation, are just as silly for thinking there is something subversive and novel about their use of the word.

      • John Robinson

        hmm I dont think your point and mines are very much at odds. Remember that the “civil rights generation” is not some undifferentiated mass of black people who share identical cultural and political beliefs. Many different factions had different ideas about how they wanted to change American society. But there is one narrative that trumped all the others, that became institutionalized, and that dominates much of how we remember that period: the one associated with racial integration, MLK, etc (it should be pointed out that this outlook is class-coded in that it has many middle class assumptions). By this way of looking at things, the n-word is a relic of a past that they have defeated. So the idea that the n-word is special enough that it brings its evil baggage into whatever context it is used in is actually a product of the civil rights period (so earlier uses of the word dont count) and therefore generational (in the sense that the baby boomers who lived through that period are presumably more likely to endorse that idea, even though there are many from the period–such as many who fit the ‘Black Power’ paradigm–who dont see history in that way). That baby boomers may also be likely to regard the use of the word in a context of racial integration as “unseemly” supports rather than refutes the idea of generational divide.

        Also, I disagree that many people who use the n-word on a regular basis think of themselves as being subversive or novel when using it; that sounds more like a straw man designed by people hell-bent on funeralizing the word.