It depends on what kind of equality you’re looking for. Are you looking for a world where nobody can say it or are you looking for a world where you can?
No, it isn’t. It might be if you and the Black comedian were in all other ways equal, but you’re not. Because you belong to the group in power and he doesn’t. You can’t view the word* in isolation*, but only as a small bit of pushback against endemic oppression (see also “fag”).
What would you be pushing back against, if you use it? An oppressed minority’s small token resistance. What do we call people who push down on racial minorities trying to fight for themselves? Yes…
Exactly. If I’m broke and one of my broke buddies wants to make fun of my broke ass, then that’s okay. If however, my rich friend Joe Millionare wants to make fun of me (for being broke), well… that’s just not cool.
Same goes with being fat, same goes with being a red head, same goes with being female…
The list could go on forever.
Yes!
I can explain this one. African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) is a dialect of American English that is spoken, mostly, by black people in the USA. In AAVE, “nigga” can have a non-slur, non-epithet meaning. Most speakers of AAVE are also fluent in standard American English, but not vice versa (although, of course, the two are mostly mutually intelligible). And “nigga” in standard American English does not have a non-slur, non-epithet meaning.
So, basically, if you’re a native speaker of AAVE, and fully understand the use of the word in that dialect, than you’re probably free to use that word with other native speakers of AAVE. If you’re NOT a native speaker of that dialect, and virtually all non-black Americans are not native speakers of AAVE, then you should not use that term, no matter who you’re talking to, because it’s likely to be taken as the slur/epithet use of the word.
In keeping with the original thread title (“warning signs”), no. I will say there’s something of a correlation between racists and people who whine about this a lot, but you don’t have to be a racist. I do think this complaint is sort of the classic example of white privilege because it just drives some white guys nuts. It might be the only thing that’s socially acceptable for some minorities (it’s false that all black people are OK with tossing the word around) and just about totally unacceptable for white people.
No, it wasn’t. Please don’t belittle the people who got murdered for civil rights like voting by saying you deserve a license to be use nigger/nigga as a social issue. It’s just bullshit and the self-importance can’t be overstated.
Become a great comedian and maybe you can get away with it. I didn’t see it but I know Neal Brennan talked about this in his standup special, and as writer/co-creator of Chappelle’s Show who knows how many times he wrote it in standup specials. In the meantime: context matters and people will have opinions on what you say. Film at 11.
Just to be clear, iiandyiiii, as I’ve said many times on this board, not all Black people, or even a subset that speak AAVE (which plenty of people can codeswitch in and out of depending on context) find that word acceptable. Even Black people need to be careful using it, because not everyone thinks it should be used in ANY context. Some Black people find it MORE problematic when Black folks use it about other Black folks.
MrDibble sort of got to this point upthread, but there’s a lot of false equivalency about race and prejudice. I know a lot of folks don’t want to acknowledge the role of White supremacy in our collective worldview and social structure, but it’s undeniable. So sure, anyone can hold prejudices and individually harm people with them. But at least in the U.S., there isn’t legislative, economic, or intergenerational forces that can reify and codify prejudice.
And the reasons for prejudice aren’t the same. Why might a Black father pre-judge a White suitor for his daughter? Well, there’s a nasty long history of White men raping Black women, or creating odd fetishes about Black women’s bodies. Or having sex with Black women but not acknowledging them as partners or as the mothers of their children. From Thomas Jefferson to Strom Thurmond. He might also worry about the White man’s friends and family who might create problems or disapprove of his daughter and her family because of her race. Is he prepared to take all that on, in addition to doing all the things that a good boyfriend/fiance/husband needs to do?
Is it problematic that a Black father might feel that way? Perhaps. Is it understandable in the context of a society imbued with White supremacy? I believe so.
I assume if you find this hypothetical black father’s concerns “understandable” based on Thomas Jefferson and Strom Thurmond, then you would find a comparable white father’s concerns similarly “understandable” based on current crime stats.
Correct me if I’m wrong about this.
Thanks for adding. Other than that, is my explanation a good one?
And I definitely agree that such feelings are often understandable (in some way), but they still fall under the category of “racist” feelings, from my understanding of the term.
Yes to the following:
Sometimes people get unjustly accused of racism.
For the same reason as above
There are at LEAST two standards.
With that said, I think I am racist (or have some racist reactions) but knowing is half the battle. Its easier to identify racisms in yourself once you know that you can be racist.
For example, I might be a little more alert walking through a group of black teenagers than I would be walking through a group of similarly dressed, similarly loud white teenagers.
It helps that my parents were very racist despite the fact that my friends were black growing up (I lived in a black neighborhood so most of my friends were black).
What stats would those be?
That’s all I need to know, no need to respond further.
Thanks so much for this wonderful contribution to the discussion.
It sounds acceptable to me. To be clear, I’m from a working to middle class family, and that word is never acceptable in my parent’s house (unless you’re quoting someone). I don’t love people using it around me, basically because during my teen years I had a racially mixed group of friends who thought it was okay to use it in my presence - and when I told them I found it problematic, they used the “well, Black Person X uses it! And it’s in rap!” So I think it’s better not to use it altogether.
I was with a group of Black (and one Latino) men yesterday. All had Ph.D.s save one, who is an administrator and retired HS principal. I heard the word once, when one of the men was describing a particularly annoying colleague who crossed a line of trust. Nobody was going to go nuts about it, but we had a animated conversation on a number of issues and it wasn’t sprinkled through the conversation. I think the words “fool” and “sucka” were bandied about where one might think they’d hear “nigga.”
I do think opinions about “nigger/nigga” are extremely varied among Black people - it’s hard to get consensus, but the advice not to use it around Black people unless you’ve been given approval to do so is wise. And actually, even if you get someone to say “hey man, that’s cool,” it would earn you a lot of respect if you still said, “thanks, but I’m not comfortable using that word.”
(For you First Amendment fanbois - a social collection of Black folks is not a governmental entity, and you are certainly free to exercise your freedom of speech however you wish. :))
I think I see them as prejudicial, but not racist, but we can agree to disagree.
We have had lynchings of Black men at the hands of White men in Texas and Mississippi in the past 20 years. Because intermarriage is fairly common among Black families, I (like pretty much every Black person I know) have White in-laws… and a lot of times, they’ve severed ties to their families because a family member is extremely racist. I’m not going to deny their are some Black folks who hate and distrust White folks by default, though. But again, that has a lot to do with being cheated by White bankers, treated badly by White teachers, etc. My dad went to segregated schools even though Brown v. Board occurred when he was in elementary school, and he can tell you all the abuse he received at the hands of racist Whites as a kid - however, there were also “good Whites” and of course, joining the military, my dad saw the world and fought and served among people of different races with pride.
If you ask me, it would be wise for a white person to never use it, period.
Really, I don’t get this apparent burning desire some white people seem to have to use the term “nigger”. There are a lot of other equally fine words available. Why risk hurting or alienating people over nothing?
That sounds remarkably similar to the reasons a lot of white racists have for their own racism.
I think your argument is really weak. You would have problems walking into a neighborhood of Italians and calling them Wops or Guineas, a Polish neighborhood and throwing around the word Polack, a group of Southern Baptists and calling them fundies, or your sister’s bridge club and begin referring to them as bitches, yet the people of those groups are much freer to use the slurs. It simply is not an issue of “equality” among people, but a matter of in-group and out-group dynamics. Casting the discussion in terms of “equality” merely demonstrates a misunderstanding of the situations.
It’s the entire discussion writ large. He, and lots of others, are never going to come off the abstracted, super-formalist approach to what things like racism and equality mean. If a black man’s acknowledged prejudice is “understandable,” and the understanding is rooted in an appreciation of a particular historical context, then it must be equally true that a white man’s prejudice is also, in exactly the same way, “understandable” because there is also something which can be called a historical context in which to understand it.
They don’t want to hear about how one historical context isn’t the other. It is simply not an acceptable response to these kinds of objections that different things are different – that asymmetry exists. Asymmetry is the opposite of equality, and even the suggestion of anything else, to their ears, is an admission of guilt.
I think that when people like FP refuse to engage in a discussion of different contexts for evaluating these issues, and why one may not be worth 100 cents to the dollar of the other, there’s actually a better mutual understanding of what the disagreement is over.
Okay. The thing is, from my point of view, a certain feeling/statement is racist or not regardless of the motivation or reasons behind it – there is no feeling (about a race) that can be racist for some people to hold and not racist for others, in my view. One can imagine that an individual has only met 3 people of minority XYZ in his life, and each time he was assaulted on the street for no reason, and therefore he has the feeling that minority XYZ is more violent than other groups. This might be an understandable feeling, but it’s still a racist feeling. It doesn’t make this person a monster, but it does make the person someone who has at least one racist feeling.
Similarly, even if a black person has been heavily traumatized by brutal treatment from both individual white people and a mostly white power structure, if he dislikes white people, disapproves of his daughter dating a white man, or has other negative feelings towards white people due to their race, these are still racist feelings. And, of course, it doesn’t make him a monster (or even, necessarily, a bad person) – it just makes him someone who has some racist feelings.
This is all just my point of view, of course, and based on my understanding of how the term “racist” is properly used.