# Is it time to lift the taboo on nigga? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 1, 2016, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-to-lift-the-taboo-on-nigga/761497 "2016-08-01T21:12:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2016, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-to-lift-the-taboo-on-nigga/761497/41 "2016-08-02T15:55:36Z")
So I’m the only person here who never heard this term before reading it on this thread? ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2016, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-to-lift-the-taboo-on-nigga/761497/42 "2016-08-02T15:55:55Z")
> [@Ranger\_Jeff](#): > > I recall when someone had their ass handed to them for properly using the word “niggardly” and the OP is talking about the “free” use of “Nigga”? > > I recall in boot camp during a class on Field Sanitation, one recruit decided to tweet our D.I. by claiming to be offended by the use of the word “chigger”. He went through the rest of his basic training being called “Cheegro” by everyone, training staff and recruit alike. Aren’t chiggers those small biting nat things?? 😕 ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2016, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-to-lift-the-taboo-on-nigga/761497/43 "2016-08-02T15:56:52Z")
There are still plenty of people who use the word to express its original, non-ironic, non-term-of-endearment, hateful meaning. Usually when only certain people are listening, but [not always](http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/michael-richards-my-racist-outburst-in-2006-was-a-reality-check-20152310). Until this stops, then no, the taboo isn’t going away. That said, if you want to use the word, use it. It’s a free country. You may get some stink eyes. Maybe someone will tell you off. But you won’t be thrown in jail. And really, that goes for anything you say. No one gets to say whatever they want without paying the social consequences. Why should “nigga” lovers get a pass? ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2016, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-to-lift-the-taboo-on-nigga/761497/44 "2016-08-02T16:01:56Z")
I don’t think there should be ab absolute ban requiring the silly “n-word” circumlocution. If you’re going to criticize a white supremacist for referring to the president n racist terms, you should just say “David Duke called Barack Obama a nigger.” Otherwise you’re treating the word as if it had some magic power ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2016, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-to-lift-the-taboo-on-nigga/761497/45 "2016-08-02T16:14:44Z")
I take the Africa-American use of nigga/nigger to mean something along the lines of “we’re both in this together”: using a depreciating or moderately depreciating term to express sympathetic brotherhood, like the way military cadets call each other “Brother Rat”. So being white, I would _ **NOT** _ presume to use the term. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2016, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-to-lift-the-taboo-on-nigga/761497/46 "2016-08-02T16:23:48Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > I take the Africa-American use of nigga/nigger to mean something along the lines of “we’re both in this together”: using a depreciating or moderately depreciating term to express sympathetic brotherhood, like the way military cadets call each other “Brother Rat”. So being white, I would _ **NOT** _ presume to use the term. It’s contextual… “Nigger, please,” means “what you just said is silly.” When I called my fri friend whose wife threw him out for cheaing on him with their son’s boyfriend a nigger, I was calling him a damn fool who needed to be punched. If I were to call my best old ex-friend Ray my nigger, I would mean “we’re very close friends.” I do not believe a white person can use it to a black person and have it percieved as benign. And my very fair-skinned wife, who thinks of herself as black, does not use it because it’s too open to misinterpretation from her when she’s talking to anyoone but me. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2016, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-to-lift-the-taboo-on-nigga/761497/47 "2016-08-02T16:38:17Z")
Obviously it’s OK to use the word nigger when we’re talking about the word nigger. And no, you can’t go calling people nigger and expecting them to grin and shake your hand. How do you expect this to work? Hey, if you have your one black friend and you call him nigger and he grins and shakes your hand, then good for you. Keep on keeping on. You can call people nigger if you like, but what you can’t do is control how people think of you when you call them nigger, or how how onlookers react when they see you calling someone a nigger. Obscenity is contextual. In 2016 people constantly use blasphemous language that would have shocked polite company 100 years ago. So in 100 years will people be shocked when you call your one black friend a nigger? Maybe not. Or maybe they’ll be more shocked. Up to you whether you want to pull that trigger. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2016, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-to-lift-the-taboo-on-nigga/761497/48 "2016-08-02T16:47:57Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Obviously it’s OK to use the word nigger when we’re talking about the word nigger. Yes, although I usually don’t because there are some white people who seem to enjoy talking about the word “nigger” specifically **because** it gives them an excuse to say “nigger”. Like the white creep who ostentatiously reads Dick Gregory’s autobiography _Nigger_ on public transportation, with the volume carefully positioned for maximum visibility of the title. “N-word” is a silly euphemism but it’s good enough for me. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2016, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-to-lift-the-taboo-on-nigga/761497/49 "2016-08-02T16:52:24Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Now you’re the one fundamentally misunderstanding how language evolution works. It’s not that any “subset of the population” specifically **wants** the n-word “to be taboo for some people but not for others”, it’s that **at present the linguistic reality _is_ that the word is taboo for some people but not for others**. > > That’s how in-group/out-group linguistic usage works. > > […] > > And tough shit for the OP’s own impotent anger at the people he chooses to consider “trolls and creeps” for being offended by white teenagers’ use of a word traditionally considered offensive— **a word which in fact seems attractively “edgy” and daring to white teenagers precisely _because_ it’s traditionally considered offensive**. I am part of society and I consider it always offensive. Anyone who uses it is using it to be “edgy”. ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2016, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-to-lift-the-taboo-on-nigga/761497/50 "2016-08-02T16:57:45Z")
Maybe in thirty years my grandchildren will be giggling about how I never use “Hey, nigger” as a greeting, or they might look back at their youth and shake their heads at how much of a jerk they were when they were kids. I know my history, I know how I would bet. ---
**Author:** ![Rushgeekgirl](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rushgeekgirl/32/3715_2.png) [@Rushgeekgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rushgeekgirl)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2016, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-to-lift-the-taboo-on-nigga/761497/51 "2016-08-02T16:58:45Z")
> [@Ambivalid](#): > > I rarely, if ever, hear white people saying nigga. I mean, yes, it does happen but it’s far from a normal thing. IME. > > Sent from my LG-K330 using Tapatalk I have heard/seen it many times with the people in my daughter’s age range. My daughter too, in a joking manner, with black friends. I think it IS becoming more acceptable now. No need to push for advocacy or anything like that. I just think it’s happening naturally. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2016, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-to-lift-the-taboo-on-nigga/761497/52 "2016-08-02T22:38:25Z")
> [@DrFidelius](#): > > “Is it time to lift the taboo on nigga?” > > Stop and think about that statement for a moment. That is what is meant when people talk about “White Privilege.” > > Why the heck do you think that you have any valid input on whether a given term is suitable for general conversation? > > (If our kids grow up and have disarmed the word through use, and the darker-skinned people in society agree that it is no longer a trigger, then the ‘taboo’ will have been lifted through the evolution of language. This is not something we have any right to try to implement.) Are there a list of issues that one must be of a particular race or background to have the “right” to have input? What if the previous poster is indeed black, but grew up in a wealthy neighborhood and was not subject to racism growing up. IOW, does a person have to have had Bull Connor sic the dogs on him in order to comment in this thread? Then those people can decree what speech (speech!) we may even discuss using? I am not trying to be snarky because I hear this in several contexts. Unless you are a woman, you cannot comment on abortion. Unless you are gay you cannot discuss same sex marriage, etc. Where did this line of thought come from? Of course anyone most affected by any particular issue will feel the strongest about it, but that doesn’t foreclose the rest of society from having an opinion and being able to be a part of the discussion. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2016, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-to-lift-the-taboo-on-nigga/761497/53 "2016-08-02T23:11:57Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > I am not trying to be snarky because I hear this in several contexts. Unless you are a woman, you cannot comment on abortion. Unless you are gay you cannot discuss same sex marriage, etc. Where did this line of thought come from? > > Of course anyone most affected by any particular issue will feel the strongest about it, but that doesn’t foreclose the rest of society from having an opinion and being able to be a part of the discussion. Sure you can have an opinion—you know the common saying about what opinions are like and what percentage of people have them—but I think the arguments you’re asking about have to do with drawing distinctions between _informed_ opinions and the other kind. Personally, mind you, I don’t condone actually trying to silence anybody’s (politely expressed) opinion, no matter how ill-informed it is. But I do think there’s merit in encouraging people to think about how informed their opinion is before they express it. The people who are “most affected by any particular issue” don’t only “feel the strongest about it”, they also tend to be the people who actually **know** many things about that issue that other people can’t know. E.g., women are the people who know what it’s like to be pregnant. Gays are the people who know what it’s like to have their committed love denounced as “unnatural perversion”, “against God’s will”, etc. Blacks are the people who know what it’s like to be vilified by racists using the word “nigger”. So when somebody outside the most affected group comes along and announces _“Hey, I have an opinion and I should be able to be a part of the discussion!”_, they need to be aware that expressing an **ill-informed** opinion, oblivious to important parts of that group’s experience, is liable to make them look kind of stupid and/or insensitive. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-time-to-lift-the-taboo-on-nigga/761497.md?page=2)