final draft for section 1 Few words have as much emotional impact on any one group of people as does the mother of all racial slurs, nigger. It is a fairly simple word with its roots in the Latin for black, niger. In old French it is nègre, in Spanish negro, in old English it appears as neger and in the late 17th century started to be pronounced and spelled nigger in North America. One can suppose, when the northern American continent was first being settled, the word nigger or any variation in its pronunciation and spelling was but another term in the lexicon which denoted a color and therefore used to describe a specific physical racial characteristic; the color of one’s skin. We know that the Portuguese explored and circumnavigated the African continent long before the Americas were settled. While setting up trading ports along the African coast they came to know Black people and learned of ways the African tribes were engaging in warfare and the victors were enslaving their captives. As the Europeans and Spanish began to settle the Americas the idea of slavery and indentured servitude came along. Primarily, it was black Africans which were enslaved by white people. It stands to reason that when the Spaniards introduced their black slaves to the Europeans, they would refer to them as niger, and it would be logical to deduce that the Europeans repeated the word pronouncing it wrong or different. Hence, the North American settlers adopted the word as colloquialism and the N-word was coined. Man communicates with words. We use language, many different languages and dialects, different accents, most can be written or depicted with characters of some kind. Words are used to denote and differentiate any and everything in existence. It is no mystery that there are a number of different races and ethnicities on Earth and they are, for the most part, easily distinguishable according to physical characteristics and culture. Some appear white, some black, some brown, some yellow, and some red. Surely, every language has some verbiage to denote colors. We, as modern day Americans, use slang and colloquialisms to denote different groups of people such as; homies, peeps, dudes, fellas, sistas and yes even niggas. Every word in every language has its origin, whether from an ancient tongue or modern jargon, and every language has its roots, many of which have crossed paths significantly throughout history. The English, French and Spanish were exploring and inhabiting the Americas around the same time. Friend or foe, they coexisted and communicated, surely there were those who learned some or all of one another’s dialect. As would happen to anyone learning a new language, words were mispronounced, misspelled and spelled phonetically. French and Spanish, both Romance Languages, have their roots in Latin. Therefore, they look and sound very similar. Since very early in recorded history, English has borrowed and assimilated many terms from them both. When the Spanish began to adopt and implement the slavery of African captives they would refer to them as blacks or nègres. The African diaspora saw a tremendous upsurge in the population of Black people in the West Indies and North American continent as a result of the employment of slave labor. The English and the Spanish often traded and bartered slaves which were primarily captive African men and women. They were commonly referred to as nègres, a word which began to appear as nigger in the 17th century. It didn’t take long before the N-word was forever etched in our vocabulary as an American English epithet. Naturally, as human beings, we associate words with things they are meant to describe or messages they are intended to convey. We use inflection and tonality as well as rhythm and body language to deliver verbal messages. Some words are collectively regarded as having negative or positive connotations depending on the context. A word does not necessarily have to originate as demeaning to later be used as such, shit is a good example with its roots in the Germanic for diarrhea. When an individual or group is repeatedly degraded and abused, a resulting condition is the association of environmental factors, perceivable by any of the five senses, with the unpleasant experience. Therefore it would be easy to see how the population of African American folk would ultimately come to detest being called niggers. As history rounded the later part of the 20th century, the world underwent drastic demographic changes; new nations were formed, languages morphed and people acculturated - at times by choice, often by force. Assimilation became an inevitable routine by immigrants to the United States, a country that had recently survived a revolution and civil war, whose citizens were developing their own traditions and identities while struggling with an evolving society that had been severely scarred by racist separatism. From the days of all out slavery to the segregation of Blacks under Jim Crow and Separate but Equal policies, the N-word was consistently used and contemporarily acceptable in reference to Africans. However, it is well documented that most White slave owners and racist White folk alike did not say the word in a polite and flattering manner. Instead, it came to be regarded as an awful and pernicious thing to be called by anyone, so much so that one would not even have called a White individual that unless you meant to insult them to a very high degree. During the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s, prominent Black community leaders tried to come to consensus over which term would be better suited to refer to people of Black African descent, for example; colored people, African American and negroes were among the contenders; of which the latter is of Latin origin same as the N-word. Invariably, this word (which originally denoted the color black and was used simply to differentiate a genetic trait) became a racial slur that has proven to be more detrimental to a particular group than any other put-down, “F___ your mother” included. More recently, the N-word has taken on different forms. While it is still clearly considered an insult to end all insults by the majority of Black and White people and it is certainly still expressed as the single most derogatory name one can call a Black individual, amongst the Black communities it has been adopted as an almost exclusive term of endearment with few Whites privileged to have earned implicit permission to use it as well. Of course, just like its predecessor, it has also undergone a change in pronunciation and variations in its spelling. The most notable of which would probably be nigga, first exposed on a mass public scale by the group N.W.A. (Niggaz Wit Attitudes) via their debut album Straight Outta Compton in 1988. In the inner cities and predominantly Black suburban neighborhoods, Black youth began to embrace the N-word and use it in place of bro, home-boy, my man, etc. Even some White people, who lived in and around Black areas and had befriended and integrated quite serendipitously with their Black neighbors, were becoming accustomed to using it in an amicable manner; especially the White kids who were growing up in highly integrated schools and adopting Hip Hop culture and Black mannerisms and speech as their own. Rap music played a pivotal role in perpetuating everyday casual usage of the word nigga. By the mid 1980’s it seemed to be a very common colloquialism thrown around as loosely by Black youth as dude was by young White kids. Certainly by the time Rap music went completely mainstream in the 1990’s, not only was it an everyday norm throughout Black communities, the FCC took measures to censor the word along with several other vulgar terms commonly expressed in Rap lyrics. Although the FCC’s primary focus was on banning obscenity, many radio and television stations listed the N-word amongst their list of no-no’s. The N-bomb, as it has come to be known by many, also started to appear in Hollywood films like Boyz N The Hood, Juice, Do The Right Thing and Menace To Society. Actors like Ice Cube and Tupac depicted realistic characters in roles closely related to their real life experiences and observations. Mainstream White America was exposed to Black “ghetto” speech very blatantly and forcefully in their face at the movie theaters. White people began buying more Rap records, listening to the music and learning and repeating the lyrics. Implied permission to use the N-bomb, as long as it was spelled n-i-g-g-a, was inadvertently extended to White kids who listened to Hip Hop and “acted” Black. It was especially acceptable if you were White and grew up in predominantly Black neighborhoods and had mostly Black friends, as I can attest to. Very rarely has any one, Black or White, flinched at my casual, almost involuntary, inclusion of the term in my vernacular. Of course, there are exceptions and most certainly scenarios where I would go out of my way to squelch my own usage of the word and I will explore that in another part of this paper.
Posted on: Fri, 10 Oct 2014 12:34:07 +0000
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