What The Hell Is The N-Word?

What The Hell Is The N-Word?

by

Jonathan “WydeOpen” McMillan

What The Hell Is The N-Word?

Neophyte?

Nazi?

I’m being facetious.

I know good and well what the n-word is.

Anyone above the age of nine knows what it is.

It’s supposed to be a euphemism ; An agreeable or inoffensive expression substituted for one that may offend or suggest something unpleasant.

Kind of like asking a child if they went “poop” rather than if they took a shit.

That expression in this case is the word nigger.

Some time ago during the past 30 years some probably well meaning person made the decision that whenever the media would report a news story where the (dare I say “inappropriate”) use of the word nigger was intrinsic to the story, white people could sanitize the word by abbreviating it, somehow rendering the word less offensive or unpleasant.

Apparently using the phrase “n-word” supposedly neutralizes the toxicity of the word nigger  - defuses the volatility and most importantly assuages any indignation that any black person who normally would be offended upon hearing the actual word.

My problem with that is the media’s use of the politically correct term “n-word” to make nigger more palpable for the general public is an attempt to avoid acknowledging the emotional and spiritual pain that the word nigger historically carries for millions of black people in America.

Reporting that some politician, entertainer, athlete, celebrity chef or reality TV star said “n-word” or removing the word nigger from classic Americana such as Huckleberry Finn or Roots is deceitful and disingenuous. It is an insult to the intelligence and disrespectful to the heritage and the experience of Black people in America.

Black people know they are still called nigger behind closed doors or in their absence.

No one believes that it was coincidental that the supposed “one time” Riley Cooper said nigger was captured on video. There is no doubt that this is a word he familiar with and uses with enough regularity that he had no hesitation using it in a casual environment amongst not only friends buy also the general public.

He’s also not the first nor the only and probably not the last person in a NFL locker room to use the word with regularity.

I know very few Black people who were actually shocked that Paula Deen, a 60+ year old white woman from the Deep South used the term nigger in casual conversation with her husband.

To be incredulous when these instances come to light is at best extremely naive and at worst connivingly disingenuous about the state of race relations in America. .

It Is What It Is and What It Always Has Been

Nigger is an intentionally hurtful word used purposefully to disrespect, demean, and diminish Black peoples worth as a humans. It has been used by cruel and abusive white people for hundreds of years to put black Americans “in their place” since the first one of us stepped of the slave ships that brought us to this country.

When “properly” used nigger is uttered with contempt and hatred to invoke memories of the deadly, violent, and dehumanizing treatment of black people that was so woven into the American fabric that legally we were considered property less valuable than cattle.

Somehow “n-word” just doesn’t have the same effect, To casually exchange the two phrases as though they are practically the same is trivializes the insulted party’s humiliation and/or rightful sense of disrespect.

The use of the word nigger is considered taboo because how uncomfortable and unpleasant it makes people feel, as it should in what we claim is a civilized society. . It is one of the most hurtful insults in the English language and the intent of anyone who uses it is immediately known.

So for those who still callously refer to Black people as niggers are making a conscious concerted effort to show their contempt for the race.

Don’t Shoot The Messenger

Last year controversy erupted when CNN correspondent Susan Candiotti quoted from a Facebook page that belonged to a murder suspect.  The post, which she read verbatim, contained the word nigger which said and CNN didn't censor by way of bleeping or muting. Candiotti latter said she “deeply regretted” quoting someone else’s words.

In the wake of the controversy CNN anchor Don Lemon commented “I hate saying 'the n-word.' I think it takes the value out of what that word really means. Especially when we're reporting it. And I don't care what color the reporter is. I think someone should say, that person called someone 'nigger,' instead of saying 'the n-word,' because I think it sanitizes it."

I understand that media outlets like ESPN fear reprisal from outraged viewers if their newscasts suddenly began to accurately report what athletes like Philadelphia Eagles Riley Cooper actually said rather than being purposefully vague and misleading. Yes, technically Cooper did utter a “racist comment”  but more accurately he said “nigger”.

He didn’t say “I’ll jump over this fence and beat up any n-word that gets in my way.”

That would’ve been ridiculous. It wouldn’t even had made sense.

No, Cooper said (and meant) he would beat up any nigger who got in his way.  

The fact of the matter is, it’s not the duty of the networks to spare the feelings of their viewers or to mitigate the consequences of the actions taken by people who are the subject of their news stories.

By withholding facts or committing deception by omission, news organizations fail to uphold their journalistic integrity when they influence or manipulate their audience’s emotions. If the general public is shocked or offended by the fact that a person has chosen to use nigger as part of their vocabulary, the shock and outrage should be directed at the offender, not the messenger.

So to mitigate offended viewers which equals lost revenue, networks have tried to rationalize the use of the phrase “n-word” over than the word nigger. The problem is they use the logic of a 4th grader who uses the word “ass” when they learn  it’s the technically correct word for a donkey. The context of the use of the word is what holds the most value regardless of the semantics. To argue otherwise is as, if not more insulting to those actually affected than the word itself. It's as if the belief is "Using ‘n-word’  is

a clever way to outsmart reasonable, intelligent people. They won't know we're saying what really saying."

Over the past few years as the moderator on the ABC Television talk show The View, Whoopi Goldberg has frequently spoken out about her dislike of the sanitized version of the word nigger. She often ruffles co-anchors, producers and viewers feathers by refusing to used the prefered euphemism and actually saying the word nigger. Each time she does, network censors either bleep or mute the word so that it isn’t audible during the actual telecast.

To me, this is as comical as the scene in the Mel Brooks classic movie “Blazing Saddles” when the town drunk declaration of the new “sheriff is a nigger!” is repeatedly  interrupted by the chime of the clocktower bell. The townsfolk mistakenly believe the man is shouting “The sheriff is a’ near!”

In a recent interview with the Eric Deegans of the Tampa Bay Times, comedian Tim Allen recently took heat for essentially making the same stand against the use of “n-word”.

"[The phrase] 'the N-word' is worse to me than nigger...”  Allen said basically making the point that the toned-down phrase's very existence runs counter to how any meaningful conversation about race can even occur.

After telling a story demonstrating the hurtful power of words even when used as weapons by unsupervised siblings he surmised his point succinctly “...if you’re around a word to be problematic for you and low intellect or uninvolved people find that out, they’re gonna call you nigger all day long ‘cause they know you don’t like it”

Two Different Words in Two Different Worlds

The elephant in the room is that America is really not this “post-racial” society that many would like to believe. America is not the great melting pot that the brochures describe. The murders of Dr. Martin Luther King jr and Robert Kennedy did wonders for the Civil Rights Movement and the end of racial segregation arguably more than any civil disobedience but their deaths did not ensure the end of racial discrimination, bias or hatred.

Some people, both black and white, would like to bury their heads in the sand and pretend that President Barack Obama is proof that racism in America is no more than a relic of a time long since passed and not relevant to the everyday life of Black people in America.

And while it's impossible to not acknowledge that, as a whole, opportunities for Black people are more plentiful than ever before in history, to surmise that racism has totally been eradicated, or to imply that Black people should simply get over it, is completely ludicrous.

.

The fact of the matter is while racism, over the past 50 years or so,  may not have been as overt and blatant as it was during segregation, it still has continually been America's dirty little (not so) secret and is only growing less subtle everyday.

The New Generation of Racist

The election of Barack Obama as President of these “United States” has painfully peeled away the Band-Aid that was covering the festering wound that is the American racial divide for over 40 years. Coinciding with his election is the rise of social media and the ultra-partisan 24 hour news cycle on cable TV, Internet and radio that cover the what seems to be the increase of overt racism, especially in younger generations.

Case in point; immediately after Obama was re-elected a California woman named in her early 20’s named Denise Helms unapologetically tweeted:

“Another 4 years of this nigger. Maybe he will get assassinated this term.”

When questioned about her comment by a local TV station, she actually took offense to being referred to as a racist and said she was simply stating her opinion.

But she wasn’t alone in that opinion.

Dozens of students were forced to defend their Twitter and Facebook posts that described the President of the United States of America as a nigger and/ or monkey. And no, they did not call him “n-word”.

The day after the election.A student at a Brooklyn Catholic high-school tweeted

"No nigger should lead this country!!! #Romney"

His (now deleted) Twitter timeline had the repeated use of the word nigger preceding election night but not one instance of the term “n-word”.

My point in mentioning these stories is to reiterate the vitriol that the word nigger connotes that the term “n-word” cannot begin to imply. The word nigger has lost all of it’s social stigma and has found renewed power as a weapon by a generation of racists twice removed from the era of segregation, lynchings and burning crosses. Young white people are no longer afraid to say it freely because it has become more impactful as a consequence of society providing a sterile alternative in the phrase “n-word”.

Poop Or Get Off The Pot

Until there is an opening of minds and willingness to have a real, serious, mature discussion about race relations in America, nothing is going to improve or advance.

That conversation will be unpleasant and difficult because it will require tools many do not possess when it comes to analyzing their core beliefs; maturity and empathy.

Both are tantamount in order to even acknowledge the emotional and spiritual weight the word nigger carries and understand that pain does not cease to exist just with the attempt to substitute a word some feel is more agreeable or less offensive.

Because in simplest terms, as mature adults, we all know the difference between poop and shit.