That we have commonly substituted the phrase “the n-word”
for the word itself – the word “nigger” -- is testimony to its awesome negative
power; its anger, its poison, its snarling ugliness. When we’ve wanted or needed to refer to it in speech or print, because
of its malignant toxicity we’ve recoiled in disgust from saying it aloud or
putting it in print, and instead substituted a kind of juvenile code-speak. Talk about
putting lipstick on a pig.
But
these days, apparently…not so much.
Hold the lipstick…behold the pig.
The
suspension of professional football player Richie Incognito for, among other
things, tossing the word around all too freely, has unleashed a surprising (to
me, anyway) and regrettable outpouring of affection and support for it, along
with the depressing realization that its full-monte use, disdained by all but
slack-jawed, vacant-eyed mouth-breathers (or so I thought), has enjoyed an
apparent resurgence. Little did I know
that its use in athletic locker rooms was as common as we now know it to be,
and that it had so many enthusiastic defenders, among both blacks and whites, as
evidenced by comments from Charles Barkley, Michael Wilbon, Matt Barnes, Paula
Deen, Shaquille O’Neal and others.
Maybe
it’s fortuitous that this new debate about the appropriateness of the word
“nigger” raises its ugly head at about the same time as we celebrate the 150th
anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. In it, Lincoln refers in the very first sentence to the
“proposition that all men are created equal” a phrase, and a sentiment, that
Americans purportedly hold dear and take seriously, and which, by itself, gives
lie to the notion that it makes sense to lump an entire class of people
together with one dismissive and derogatory word.
But
there are other parts of the Gettysburg Address that are even more
on-point. Much that follows that first
sentence speaks to the deaths that resulted from the Civil War – 10,000 at
Gettysburg alone.
“We have come to
dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here
gave their lives…”
“The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here…”
“…that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause
for which they gave the last full measure of devotion…”
“…that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died
in vain.”
The message that Lincoln’s words conveyed so elegantly
and eloquently, and sorrowfully, was that so many people died in this
awful conflagration, and for what? What
cause was worth such upheaval and carnage? What principle was the confederacy
defending that justified the unutterable misery, destruction, and death the
Civil War brought -- the south sent to
war and thereby brought about the deaths of 258,000 of its own sons and 360,000
of its adversary’s?
What was it all for?
Answer: The defense and preservation by southerners of a
system by which they enriched themselves through the use of free labor to
produce their goods and services – free labor they availed themselves of by
enslaving hundreds of thousands of their fellow human beings; a system that
treated blacks as a sub-human species, to be bought and sold as if they were
cattle or furniture, to be kept in chains, to be capriciously and forever
separated from their kith and kin, to be understood as possessions, not people,
to be whipped, shot, beaten, maimed, and slaughtered; to be not cared for and
loved but owned; to be literally worked to death.
And the word of choice for these southerners to identify
the people to whom they did these things and whom they perceived not as people
but as commodities: nigger.
That, in a nutshell, is the history and provenance of
that awful word, and it has been used ever since as a way to forcefully and
without equivocation convey hatred and naked contempt. Its use has accompanied, among other things,
vilification and denigration, total denial of basic human rights, economic
oppression, unspeakable brutality, rapes, hangings, and lynchings. It
contemptuously lumps together people tall and short, young and old, male and female,
rich and poor. smart and dumb, handsome and ugly, strong and weak, talented and
talentless, skilled and unskilled, educated and ignorant, athletic and
ungainly, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, uncles and aunts --all as one thing – dark of skin and
therefore valueless.
That is some strong and potent – and dangerous -- word.
Nor has the word “nigger” lost any of its malignant
potency over time. It’s never funny or cute, or an ironic term of endearment, a
usage Barkley and others think older folks and the hyper-sensitive can’t
comprehend. As columnist Jason Whitlock put it: “The N-word is a not a generational issue. The N-word was never a
fad. It was a primary tool in the enslavement, disenfranchisement and cultural
destruction of a race of people.”
In some African-American circles, use of “nigger” is
embraced and defended, in an exquisite irony, on the grounds that refraining
from using it constitutes being told what to say and what not to say by The
Man; or that it’s used only in a jocular way; or that’s it’s used only to
describe a certain type of person; or that it’s long-since been stripped of its
toxicity. Thus, this reasoning holds,
it’s certainly okay for black people to use it if they want to, and it’s even
okay, in certain circumstances, for whites to use it. And whites who are so
inclined will see that as a license to join in the fun. But make no mistake. When a white person
uses the word “nigger,” without exception he is using it in exactly the same
way white people have always used it.
You can’t ban a word.
The only hope is that the people who toss it around so freely and who
keep ginning up excuses for it will come to see it for what it is: crass and
insulting terminology that carries a boatload of ugly baggage and is an
important facilitator of the racial stereotyping that continues to bedevil
African-American everywhere.
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