Ours is a society that strives to be politically correct. We avoid certain words or come up with new ways to describe things so as not to offend anyone anywhere ever. The question then becomes: How correct is correct enough? Is the insistence on avoiding words like ""nigger"" helping to solve society's problems, or making them worse?
New York City recently banned the use of ""nigger"" and its popular variation ""nigga."" The ban is symbolic, meaning no one will be fined or go to jail for breaking it, but New Yorkers are ""encouraged"" to voluntarily cease and desist in its use.
The idea is that if people stop saying it, somehow they'll also stop racism. A black man might get shot 41 times by white cops for pulling out his wallet, but at least nobody will say ""what's up, my nigga?"" Hooray for progress, right?
It's true that ""nigger"" is still a charged word. Most times, even media outlets won't use it. They insist on referring to it as ""the n-word,"" as though by emphasizing its awfulness they will be taking out the sting. In fact, the opposite is true. With all of the focus on Not Saying the Bad Word, they only reinforce how bad it is. Keeping it taboo ensures that its power to hurt remains as strong as ever.
For many years now, a number of black Americans have been working to make the word their own, changing the meaning so that it can't be used against them anymore. The highly derogatory ""nigger"" has become culturally accepted as a generally positive (or at the very least neutral) term in the form of ""nigga.""
Imagine two scenarios. In the first, a white boy goes up to a black boy and says ""what's up, nigger?"" Pretty bad, right? But what if he had said ""what's up, nigga?""
All of a sudden, instead of using a racial slur, he is in fact demonstrating both an awareness of and some measure of respect for contemporary black culture. The white boy validates the new, more positive meaning of the word by using it as such.
So then what's the problem? Some people insist that its adoption by blacks proves that they are internalizing the racism of the society around them and therefore keeping themselves down. I'm sorry, but I thought that forcing that very same society to use the word on their terms would be empowering. That's like saying that taking the branch someone is hitting you with and turning it into a walking stick amounts to hitting yourself with it. It doesn't make sense.
The fact of the matter is that words are just combinations of sounds we make. The only thing that makes one combination ""worse"" than another is that we as a culture agree that those particular ones are going to be offensive to us. How do we decide that?
By how the sounds are intended. You can turn anything into an insult by putting derision or hatred behind it, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who has heard an insult being used as an endearment.
You want to stamp out racism? Then crack down on racist cops. Make the racial distribution on death row and in prison reflect the country's actual population. Give more money to inner-city schools and fund after-school programs in at-risk neighborhoods. Provide affordable housing for those who need it. Let more minorities into the government.
And please, oh please, stop obfuscating the issue by telling people they just can't say ""nigga.""
