Exactly which? No privacy or world changing?
:dubious:
Oh, c’mon 'george. Keep up! 
These days it seems a lot of people think of “in public” much the same way as an episode of Jerry Springer. “You don’t know me, I do what I want! You don’t like it, fuck you, kiss my ass!”
Whereas when I grew up being in public meant you conducted yourself such that you weren’t inflicting yourself on everyone else around you.
So we is in agreeishness, I think.
Both, then.
Ok.
You know how it sounds when Charlie Brown’s adults talk? That’s how most people’s conversations sound to me. Generally, that is.
Make that his teacher, I think.
If it’s a “viral misrepresentation,” who is doing the misrepresenting? Those of us who see it as reclaiming a term, or the black people who are using the word?
Reclaiming terms is actually a positive thing. You take a word that has hurt you for so many years and you say, “I can’t get you to stop calling me this, so fine. I’m a (insert epitheth here). What I can affect is what that word means. You want it to be pejorative, but I’m going to take that negative connotation away from you and claim the word back for myself. Now I’m using it and it’s lost its power over me. It’s MY word now, asshole.”
The word niggah is not the only example. You get John Leguizamo having a show called Spic-o-Rama, gays co-opting the word “queer” and women taking back the word “bitch.” Do you want to deny people the ability to negate those hurtful words? Want to keep the hateful spirit of the word “nigger” alive by keeping it taboo, a word only to be used by racists? That attitude only gives the epithets more power, whereas reclaiming takes that away and gives the labeled person the power to defuse the word.
Been catching up on my Chappelle’s Show viewage and saw the one where there’s a white family whose last name is Niggar. The black people in that skit love it that they can call white people by that word. In that spirit, I wonder what Dave Chappelle would think of the OP’s question?
Nice post, Rubystreak.
Those who see it as reclaiming a term.
Does it really ever work that way? I really don’t care what words people use (nor do I care if people are judged based on the words they use), it’s just that the “reclaiming a term” idea doesn’t make sense. Because it’s the intent of the speaker that matters, not the magic powers of a word itself, reclaiming a term would be pointless even if it did work. Which it doesn’t. All those slurs you have mentioned can still offend, despite all of the “reclaiming” people have done. Besides, slurs are just a convienience tool. Even if the term “bitch” had been “reclaimed” enough so that its perjorative meaning has been plain forgotten by everyone (which doesn’t even happen with “reclaiming”), a person could still easily convey his contempt for women using a more convential vocabulary (or by his actions).
See, I think it’s your insistence that the term “niggah” remain offensive as what’s viral. You want to keep the word locked in its racist, hurtful meaning, blocking any possibility of neutralization or reclamation. Why? You can call reclamation academic all you want, it’s just a label for a very real and observable linguistic and sociological phenomenon.
It occurs to me that this discussion might be more suited to Great Debates, at this point.
Yes. “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it” is a perfect example. Calling a gay person a queer now raises far fewer eyebrows than it used to; in fact, many gay people self-identify using the term “queer” rather than “gay” (a close friend of mine insists on it, in fact). Reclamation can and does happen.
Why pointless? Through flexibility of usage, words take on new meaning all the time. You can’t stop that process; ultimately it’s usage that determines meaning, no matter how the bastions of language purity my rail against it. The word “nigger” is in transition right now, promulgated by very popular African American musicians, comedians, and writers. I think the change will continue until the word loses some, if not all, of its harmful power.
Any word can be offensive. When I was in school, “brain” and “genius” were used as pejoratives, even though they’d seem to describe positive traits. You are arguing at cross purposes with yourself: either you believe the word “nigger” is inherently and immutably offensive, as you’ve claimed in this thread, or you believe the intent of the speaker determines the offensiveness of the word, as you claim in this post. If the OP uses the word “niggah” as a term of affection with his friends, then why should it offend anyone? If we run with your thesis that “it’s the intent of the speaker that matters,” that is.
Taking a tool out of the racists’ arsenal should be a good thing, then. Continued use by folks like Dave Chappelle and Dr. Dre and the like are doing just that–altering bigots’ lexicon. I’m all for it.
I’m not sure I follow you here. Do you expect the reclaiming of a bigoted word to somehow end bigotry? That’s a tall order and too much to put on one word. Of course people will still convey contempt for others. That’s human nature. What reclaiming does is chip away at prejudice one word at a time.
Why cling to the word “nigger” as offensive when there are clearly elements of African American culture who want to reclaim this word? Why not see it as a healthy, empowering way to break down the language of hate? I realize this is idealistic view, but it has happened in our lifetimes and there’s no reason to think it won’t continue to happen. I say, let it happen. It’s not for me to do, though-- it’s for the next generation to do, with their increased open-mindedness and greater investment in making African American culture an important part of American culture as a whole. A lot has changed in race relations and the status of African Americans in popular culture since I was in high school, and I think much of it is for the better. JMO.
Upon consideration, let me clarify this. The reclamation isn’t for me to do because I think the word “nigger” still carries a sting and a stigma for people in my generation (witness this thread for proof-- and despite all my reclamation rhetoric, I’m not comfortable throwing the word around). The kids I teach, though, have been hearing this word used as a term of affection and of African Americans self-identifying with it their whole lives. I’m sure they’ve heard it used non-offensively far more often than they’ve heard it used as an epithet. Consequently, it has lost some of its cringe-evoking power for them, and this negative reaction will continue to decrease as the word changes in meaning through usage, until the word no longer carries a racist connotation and has completely reclaimed. It takes time, is what I’m trying to say (long-windedly, I admit).
I’m not insisting that.
It shouldn’t.
I’m not, I already said I don’t care what words people use. I just recognize that the casual use of “nigger” (the popularity of an accent doesn’t alter its spelling in print, especially since the whole country doesn’t talk like New Yorkers) is just a bad habit, and I scoff at attempts to pretty it up by acting like it’s some conscious political movement.
Scoff away; it’s happening whether you like it or not. I think it’s a generational issue. As I said, kids I teach don’t have the same visceral reaction to the word that you and I do. The word will change no matter what our generation thinks about it, though the vanguard of this word’s reclamation seems to be people of our generation talking to the kids directly.
And yes, on some level it is a conscious political movement. I hate to harp on Dave Chappelle, but as it’s been pointed out in this thread, he’s been questioned about it and continues to use it. I’ve been watching the Chappelle Summer Send-Off on Comedy Central, so I’m getting a concentrated dose of him all at once, and I’d go so far to say that he’s deconstructing the word, questioning it, and playing with it. He’s not the only one either, and I think it’s a healthy way to defuse and neutralize a terribly hurtful word.
You do seem to be clinging to the word’s meaning as a harmful epithet, emphatically rejecting any attempt to change it. Could you explain why? I really want to understand. Fight my ignorance.
This conversation reminds me of what I noticed at my family reunion a couple of months ago.
I have relatives who live in a small town in Indiana. It’s so insulated that they have their own slang, it seems. At the fam reunion, everyone outside of of my immediate family kept using the word “nigga” as the cutesy catch-all word. As in:
“Go fetch me that nigga (e.g., fork, kleenex, sunglass, etc.) over there, nigga.”
“Hurry up, nigga! We’re gonna be late!”
“I like your earrings! Those are some cute little niggas!”
“That’s a big nigga (referring to a boat, car, person, penis, etc.)”
All the while, everyone in my immediate family was in a constant state of :eek:
These are not idiotic people, my relatives. They aren’t the most educated folks, but they aren’t “ghetto”. They are normal, middle-class people who speak “proper” English and function well in society. And they use “nigga” like it ain’t nothing but a word.
However, every time they used it, the hair on the back of my neck would stand up. Instinctively, I thought, “What if a white person hears them!” You see, my feelings weren’t hurt by the word (coming out of their mouths, mind you), but I thought their brazenness (not to mention, lack of creativity) was embarrassing. (I do have to admit that at first it made me laugh.)
It’s not like “nigger” is an archaic word from long ago. Racists still use the word in a dehumanizing way. As long as this is the case, white people need to simply choose another word when they are in public. Private conversations are one thing–but if I hear someone of the white persuasion using that word around me, they will get the evil eye.
I have a different take on this. I once asked a guy why he didn’t get upset when some white guy called him “nigger” and the answer was, " If I let this guy control me with one word, then I give him power over me. It’s crazy to let ANY person BELIEVE they utter one word and cause me to react like a trained seal."
Fuck 'em.
He didn’t like it, no more than he would like to be called stupid. Still he felt that black people allowed whites way too much power over them; especially when that power had diminished so much…but not that word… because blacks keep reacting to it, so…predictably.
I thought it was a really interesting way to see the world…
You act like kids are the first generation to ever use “nigger” so casually. Black people have been calling each other “nigger” since forever; it’s not new. That’s why I keep calling it a bad habit. And BTW, I don’t have a visceral reaction to the word - I’ve heard it a jillion times and never in its perjorative sense.
I could be totally wrong here, but it seems to me that this generation of kids really embraces African American culture and doesn’t view people of other races with as much “otherness” as previous generations of Americans did. So many kids are heavily into hip hop and R&B, which is dominated by black artists, and idolize black actors, athletes, comedians, and television programs. This is partially because the media represents black culture a bit more than it used to when I was kid, but I also think the acceptance is greater than it was.
My entire family (everyone my age and older) except me still holds some antiquated racial prejudices. Generations Y & Z, for lack of a better term, don’t seem as stratified by race. I notice a lot of interracial friendships and dating, along with a desire to emulate black culture in a way that wasn’t nearly as present in my childhood days.
The fact that a young white man like the OP wants to use the word “nigger” to refer to another white man in a positive way, because he thinks it’s cool, represents a radical shift not only in that word’s meaning but in white people’s perceptions of blacks. To me, that is good news. Annoying as hell, sure, but a sign that people’s attitudes about race are changing.
OP Date: 09-05-2004
OP Time: 03:45PM
(Marks calendar: “The day the SDMB hit rock bottom”)
According to the inner city young black man I know, there is a huge difference, ending in r is bad, a or ah is cool.
Although it is funny to me when I hear Redd Foxx use that type of language, it is probably best reserved for a select few.
Sure it does, this is the evolution of languge. It is dynamic and words fall in and out of usage all the time- times change, meanings change. I’m sure theater, music, and “pub”- lic usage of words have always served to disseminate new idioms. Personally I believe all words are acceptable and a word itself is not offensive-- the context, intention, or emotion in which a person uses a word determines its impact. “Niggah” can be offensive or endearing depending on tone, context, inflection, and direction. It’s variable.
Words are neutral. People sharpen them or blunt them depending on their purpose.