Prometheus 6

"Nigga," on the other hand, is like chitlins. I understand where it came from and why it exists, but damn, can't we do better by now? "Nigga" is dirty laundry. "Nigga" is a window on the conflictedness of our people. Not that we don't have a right to be conflicted. Shit. We reserve that right.

Afro-Netizen pointed out an article on Alternet by Derek Jennings on if it's ever okay to say the N-word. That's in the title anyway...the article has more subtlety than the title would lead you to suspect. Damn good article.

I first heard the term as a child. I'm not sure exactly where I was, it may have been the playground, but I recall hearing it in a "black on black" context, as in don't "act like a nigger." I grew up in a small, mixed, but mostly African-American town in South Jersey. I remember using it my first time and being chided by my uncle, Gregory, who told me it was a bad word. "Why?" I remember asking. He told me, using a definition he'd no doubt gotten from Grammom Wilson (my maternal great-grandmother), that a nigger is an "ignorant person."

Hmm ... I didn't know a whole lot about niggers, but I'd heard that they looked like me, so I needed clarification. "Can white people be niggers?" I asked. "Yep," he said. "White people can be niggers." Made sense to me. I didn't say the word again, and my curiosity was satisfied.

My own first encounter was when I was four or five. I forget why, but the white kid who was my best friend at the time called me a nigger. Hadn't heard the word before, so I didn't know how to react, except to feel insulted.

Next time we argued, I called him a nigger. He walked off laughing.

That's when I asked my sister about it (weird...we fought all the time, but she was the one that taught me to read and write at some absurd young age and god help the older kid she say picking one me. I always asked her about stuff like this). She said it didn't mean anything except he hated me. That bothered me...I knew what hate was. I'd seen plenty of television by that point.

My friend, though. I remember asking him why, or telling him that, he hated me. Don't let anyone tell you they have precise memories from 40 years ago. He said he didn't hate me, he was just mad. I don't know what I would have made of that if I had the sophistication I have now. Maybe it's just as well.

Growing up in the '70s and '80s, in a black neighborhood, I never had to deal with that type of situation. My experiences with the word were as different from my father's, as his were from my wife's maternal grandfather, who grew up in Southern Virginia. As a young woman, when she'd walk with him through downtown Baltimore, she'd be furious at the unconscious deference that he, a proud black man and a war veteran, paid to white people. He'd avert his eyes, look down, or move out of the way, when they'd approach from the opposite direction on the sidewalk.

One day she brought up the subject. He told her that he did not do it consciously, but his parents and environment had conditioned him to do so during his formative years -- lynching was still very much in vogue in Virginia when he was growing up. His unconscious avoidance of conflict with people that no doubt saw him as a nigger, was a very necessary survival skill for a black man growing up in the South.

The memory of a people is longer than that of any person.

This was the norm no more than two generations ago. This is what the memory of our people (Black people, white people) lead us to expect. And he who disturbs the peace is blamed for disturbing the peace...even if the disturbance is cause by claiming your own entitlement to peace. This can work to your advantage; I discovered if a Black man convinces the guys interviewing him for jury duty that not only can he tell when someone is lying he will be using that skill on everyone in the room, they won't even LOOK at your ass anymore. In general, though, it's a disadvantage to the best of us.

Clearly, "nigger," in our modern context, represents the line that you do not cross. In the skit, Pryor's implied physical threat turns the existing power dynamic on its head, providing the humor in the situation. He is not doing the hiring, so he lacks institutional or economic power. However, his ability -- black people's ability -- to threaten white people with consequences for use of the word (much like my father's example) represents a profound and drastic improvement over decades past, when whites exerted overt and almost complete physical power over black people, as manifested by thousands of lynchings, and untold millions of beatings, rapes and other privations.

The funny(?) thing is, Black violence has only been a real concern for some 30 years or so. Racial violence has been an overwhelmingly white phenomenon in the USofA...check the F.B.I. crime statistics and you'll find it still is.

I just plucked a couple of things that resonated personally, proving resonating with me is not necessarily a good thing. I betcha you'll find different ones.