N-Word

The always interesting tidalgrrrl has just posted John Lennon's Woman Is The Nigger Of The World as the first installment of Friday Feminism. She also posted the lyrics, but bowdlerized "nigger" to read "n****r" because she dislikes the word, and then wondered about the nature and implications of this self-censorship.

"Nigger" is a word I've thought about a lot. Setting aside its earlier usage by the British (who seemed to apply it, not just to Africans or their descendants, but to dark-skinned peoples generally), its primary existence in this world has been American. In America, Nigger has always been used as a peculiar kind of word: derogatory slang whose purpose is to scornfully disempower a particular segment of society. Americans of African descent have been systematically and unrelentingly disadvantaged since the first slaves were brought across the Atlantic, and that evil tradition continues. America is a profoundly racist society.

(Some years back, I worked in a shipyard. The level of dumbfuck blue-collar racism was pretty high, and I couldn't resist schooling my coworkers from time to time. At one point they were dumbfounded when I said patiently that really there were hardly any "Niggers" in Africa. "'Nigger' is a putdown used on a group of Americans. A Nigger is an American. By definition," I explained. For a while after that I would catch a few of them staring off into space, frowning and moving their lips a little.)

When society decides to squash a group of people, a simple well-known derogatory term is enormously effective and efficient. It's code for "You have no hope of fully belonging, no hope of fair treatment. We will arbitrarily attack or imprison or impoverish you, and there is no recourse. The worst of us will be given preference over the best of you. You're not really fully human, and you have a place among us -- you have a life -- by our sufferance only."

That's what Nigger means. Fantastic semantic compression, really, when you think about it: the great big poison grenade of sneering arrogant disdain, and even really stupid and inarticulate people Get It.

When there's a word like that, one of the most effective and indispensable strategies for the oppressed is to take it as your own, own it proudly, own it defiantly, shove it in their face, so it means something you want it to mean; until one day that entire freight of compressed hatred is just so last year.

Those of us who are dykes, fags, queers, nerds, geeks, freaks, bitches and even Liberals have all benefited from such reclamations (I leave speculation about my membership in those individual categories as an exercise for the reader; on the Internets nobody knows you're a ________). But Nigger, despite a lot of smart, sincere effort by a lot of smart, sincere people over the years, still resists efforts to make it all right. No less stalwart a personage than Richard Pryor publicly renounced the use of Nigger in his stand-up routines, saying (IIRC, ain't got no citation handy) that "yeah, you tell yourself a lot of lies" -- lies about how "Nigger" was an empowering, rather than hurtful, word.

Nigger is an ugly word with an ugly history, and apparently lots of ugly staying power. It's both sad and fascinating that tidalgrrrl is so repulsed and conflicted by it that she first censors herself, then calls attention to the censorship. This from a forthright and expressive woman who doesn't flinch from fuckshitpisscuntcocksuckermotherfuckerandtits when they are called for.

I don't censor my writing, except for concern about whether a term or concept will work for specific audiences. When I'm writing analytically, or when I'm expressing an imagined rightwing opinion (e.g., "Yeah Earl, I know, the war on drugs is a pain in the ass, but it helps keep the niggers down so that's good") I won't hold back.

But I do not and will not use Nigger as a pejorative. And I don't trust it as irony, because there is too much chance of perpetuating memes that I want to see extinguished, or else behaving like a fucking idiot (no, Jonah didn't say that. Tbogg put those words in his mouth, but damn how plausible).

I sincerely hope that one day Nigger will be reclaimed for real. That one day everybody will snort with amused derision whenever someone tries to resurrect the old meanhearted power of Nigger as a putdown, kind of the way people today stare in puzzled semi-bafflement when someone tries to use "fairy" as a homophobic insult.

But I think that day is a long way off. As long as African Americans are singled out, with unrelenting stupid persistence, as permanent inferiors, and as long as there are strident Confederate motherfuckers out there with a desperate need to know they can reliably look down on somebody no matter what, Nigger will remain a cruel word.

Loaded words are like loaded guns. Don't play with them in the livingroom.