Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America(39)
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The use of nigger has been eerily consistent in the culture, especially with the presidency of Barack Obama stoking resurgent white panic and the emergence of Donald Trump amplifying white paranoia and racial belligerence. But black folk haven’t stood by passively. A great many of us have tried to rob the word of its essential viciousness by reappropriating it, though, to many black folk, the effort smacks of internalized racist self-hate. They feel the effort is futile, and tips our caps too eagerly to a word that should be banished from the culture. A nigger is a nigger, or a nigga, they say.
Beloved, many of you don’t understand why black folk ambushed the word nigger and made something strangely beautiful of it. What’s more, you often appear upset that we appropriate this term while denying you the pleasure of helping us to reshape its use. We strictly forbid you the privilege of participating in our fierce disputes about the word. As for the attempt to make the word palatable in our arenas, you don’t have to know a lot of social theory to know that powerless people often fight power with their words.
Black people have been lying in wait to murder nigger from the start. (Except for those who seek to become the nigger you feared in their rebellious or wayward existence, but that is something to explore another time.) We quietly fumed at the way the word caricatures our humanity. For a long time we couldn’t make you stop using it so we gave it a go ourselves. Jay Z explains in one of his songs the mechanics of how the word went from nigger to nigga. Jay warned on the song “Ignorant Shit” that artists often use exaggeration to make their meaning clear. He boasts we “shoot niggas straight through the E.R.” That is, he lopped off the “er” at the end of nigger and replaced it with the “ga” to make it nigga. Thus an offensive word became to many black folk an affectionate one.
Nigger is the white man’s invention; the gender is deliberate here, since this was a white male creation even as white women shared the culture of derision too. Nigga is the black man’s response since black men were most easily seen as nigger. But black women bore an even greater burden with a double portion of slander when they were called “nigger bitch.” Nigger taps into how darkness is linked to hate. Nigga reflects self-love and a chosen identity. Nigga does far more than challenge the white imagination. Nigga also captures class and spatial tensions in black America. Nigga is grounded in the ghetto; it frowns on bourgeois ideals and spits in the face of respectability politics. That’s why an incident in the last year of Barack Obama’s presidency resonated so widely.
“Yo, Barry. You did it, my nigga.”
Larry Wilmore fired a rhetorical shot across the bow of blackness with these words at the 2016 White House Correspondents’ Dinner. The Nightly Show comic made an appearance before the group to tell jokes following President Obama’s final standup routine. Referring to the president by his youthful nickname was one thing. Referring to him with a vernacular offshoot of nigger was something altogether different. Letting that be his last word about Obama at a gathering the world paid attention to was beyond the pale.
The fallout in black America was swift and heated. Black social media was atwitter with Wilmore’s comments, supporting or lambasting him with equal passion. Black journalists and civil rights leaders chastised Wilmore for breaking black code and saying nigga in mixed company. They believed that Wilmore should have observed the informal rule that you don’t say that word around white folk. But that rule was from before rap albums gave the term currency far beyond the hood. Wilmore’s black critics reprimanded him for his poor choice of words and for insulting the most powerful man in the world. They also blasted him for disrespecting the black journalists in attendance. Others saw the debacle from both sides. Obama was unfazed by Wilmore’s utterance. The smile on the president’s face said that he enjoyed this spontaneous moment of racial intimacy. Obama returned Wilmore’s “peace out” double fist pump to the chest and embraced him after his performance.
On the surface, the Wilmore controversy appeared to be little more than a skirmish between black elites over the use of politically incorrect language. In truth we got a glimpse of something far older, far bigger, and far more intense: the fierce battle to define black identity—indeed blackness itself—that has raged in black quarters since black folk set foot in the New World. The word nigga captures that tension.
Nigga often sounds organic and sensual in the mouths of black folk. Its meaning is shaped by the circumstance in which it’s said. It is a term that works best when spiced with humor and slang. It is a greeting. “What up nigga?” It is a direct object noun. “You my nigga if you don’t get no bigga.” It is meant to emphasize or celebrate. The set up: “Hey man, I just got into Harvard.” The celebration: “Nigga!” It is an imperative suggested by a change in tone. “Hey, bro, my doctor just called and said I’ve got to get some blood work.” The speaker is urged to comply with the doctor’s wish in a responding voice that slightly stretches the first syllable: “Nigga!” It is laughter. “These girls never give me any play and I drive a Mercedes, as in Mercy ‘deez payments killin’ me!” The humorous response, with hand over mouth: “Nigga!” It is a sign of approval: “My nigga!” It is a sign of disapproval, said sternly with squinting eyes: “Nigga.” It is an expression of disbelief spiked with a smirk: “Nigga, please!” It expresses self-hate, much like nigger does, with a scalding, scolding tone: “Niggas.” And it signifies a love for one’s folk even as one acknowledges their flaws, largely in a light-hearted vein: “These niggas.”