The Resurrection of "Nigger"

The Resurrection of "Nigger"

Five years ago, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and other leaders of the black community staged what had to have been one of the most fatuous exercises in the history of language: They “buried” the word “nigger.”

As with anything buried alive, the word has scratched and clawed its way to the surface once again proving that premature burial is usually not permanent or productive.

It was a selective internment anyway since most African-Americans never participated in the funeral and hip-hop “artists” never ceased using “nigger” as well as “bitch,” ”ho,” and other less-than flattering terminology toward women in their “art.”

At the 2007 ceremony in Detroit, Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick gravely intoned, “Today we’re not just burying the N-word, we’re taking it out of our spirit. We gather burying all the things that go with the N-word. We have to bury the ‘pimps’ and the ‘hos’ that go with it. Die N-word, and we don’t want to see you ’round here no more.”

Perhaps Kilpatrick wasn’t the ideal spokesman for the obsequies. He wasn’t exactly a role model either before or after he became Detroit’s mayor, what with a plethora of corruption, perjury, obstruction of justice, bribery, extortion, and fraud scandals and serving time in federal prison.

The first evidence that nigger was making a comeback fortunately didn’t happen on FOX News which would have been castigated by the left wing media had someone on FOX employed the term.

Last month, CNN special investigator Drew Griffin was reporting on an alleged hate crime in Mississippi and cited a cell phone call by one of the suspects: “At the end of this, Deryl Dedmon is laughing with his friends and actually called on a cell phone and, pardon my language but there’s no other way to say this–‘I just ran over that f—ing nigger.’ ”

Of course, there were myriad other ways of saying it but none had nearly the shock value of Griffin’s usage of a buried word.

Likewise, there were various other ways for Susan Candiotti, a CNN correspondent, to report on the recent Tulsa shootings than by quoting a Facebook entry by one of the accused on Easter Sunday: “And it reads like this: ‘Today is two years that my dad has been gone, shot by’–and please excuse the language, it’s very sensitive–‘Shot by a fucking nigger.’ “

Apologies were duly accepted for both the use of the F-word and the N-word . . . (Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=21297.)

The Story of the N-Word

The Story of the N-Word

Shakespeare’s Juliet rhetorically asked, “What’s in a name?” We may all ask, and not rhetorically, What’s in a word, especially a certain word?

Words have meanings and have different meanings for different people. That’s not a very profound statement, I know, but it’s more relevant today than it ever used to be although it depends on the nature of the word.

President Bill Clinton notoriously played with words back in 1998 during his grand jury testimony. He veered into existentialism by painstakingly parsing the third person singular, president indicative of the verb “be:” “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is. If the–if he–if ‘is’ means is and never has been, that is not–that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement. . . Now, if someone had asked me on that day, are you having any kind of sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky, that is, asked me a question in the present tense, I would have said no. And it would have been completely true.”

Amazingly, he wasn’t thrown out of office on the basis of that gobbledegook alone!

Since then, others have fared much worse, not for their misuse of the word “is” but because of their use of another word deemed not merely offensive but damned as so vile it no longer qualified for inclusion in either the spoken or written English language.

Wikipedia provides the history of “nigger:” “The variants neger and negar, derive from the Spanish and Portuguese word negro (black), and from the pejorative French nègre (nigger). Etymologically, negro, noir, nègre, and nigger ultimately derive from nigrum, the stem of the Latin niger (black) (pronounced [niɡer]“

In the last decade, that emotionally-charged word has taken on a life, and death, of its own.

To my knowledge, “nigger” is the only word ever to be consigned to language oblivion–except for black rappers and for any other blacks of a mind to use it–and is widely regarded as so offensive that even usage of words that sound like “nigger” have earned the users eternal ignominy.

Also, to my admittedly limited knowledge, “nigger” is the only word ever buried–by the Philadelphia NAACP Youth Council in 2007– and is one of the few words that can in and of itself constitute a hate crime.

Back in 1999, white staffer David Howard of black Washington, D.C. mayor Anthony Williams learned the message of word associations the hard way when, in his ignorance, Williams demanded Howard’s resignation because Howard had used the word “niggardly” in a staff meeting. It didn’t matter that “niggardly” meant “stingily” and had nothing to do with race or color.

Meanings and common sense aside, niggardly sounded like a racial slur . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=3324)

Dr. Laura, the N-Word, and P.C.

Dr. Laura, the N-Word, and P.C.

Dr. Laura Schlesinger, the liberal-turned-conservative talk/advice show hostess who admits on her blog that she “preaches, teaches, and nags about morals, values and ethics” is no stranger to controversy. However, she bit off much more than even she could possibly chew yesterday when she used the dreaded and verboten N-word on the air.

She not only used the word, the only word in the English language that is forbidden to be written, spoken, or even thought about throughout the vast expanse of the United States of America, she used it 11 times, 8 times with a black woman caller and 3 more following the call.

Although she was curt, as she often is, she wasn’t rude to the caller, who was married to a white man and had called for advice on how to deal with racial comments made in her presence by a neighbor and others. One racist comment that disturbed her dealt with, “How do black people think about doing this . . . or that,” which Dr. Laura didn’t perceive as racist but rather as an instance of hypersensitivity on the caller’s part.

She upset herself so much she was barely able to finish her show and shortly after the word hit the fan, she apologized on her blog: “I talk every day about doing the right thing. And yesterday, I did the wrong thing. I didn’t intend to hurt people, but I did. And that makes it the wrong thing to have done. I was attempting to make a philosophical point, and I articulated the “n” word all the way out - more than one time. And that was wrong. I’ll say it again - that was wrong.”

However,she wasn't wrong at all . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1841)

What's in a Name? Sticks and Stones? Part One

What’s in a Name? Sticks and Stones? Part One

Names can designate individuals or entities. They can also refer to names used in a derogatory sense, such as in schoolyard use of name-calling.

An instance of the latter, not confined to schoolyards, has stoked any number of protests of late because it is associated with slavery, bigotry, jim crow laws, and other negatives in America’s social history.

The word, of course, is nigger which Dictionary.com says, “is now probably the most offensive word in English. Its degree of offensiveness has increased markedly in recent years, . . .”

On its face, the term is indeed vile and has been labelled so offensive that the media dare not even use it in print or otherwise, resorting to references to “the N-word,” instead.

I can readily understand the offense taken at the word. I can’t understand efforts to ban it from the English language simply because nigger is no more defamatory than dozens of other words in the language.

Efforts to strike it from the English lexicon are foolish, in that no one, not even governments, can forbid use of a word and any attempts to do so would be as fruitless as was outlawing booze under the Eighteenth Amendment.

Worse, officially prohibiting use of a word would open up a very large can of very wormy problems.

For example, would we then be forced to expurgate the over 200 uses of “nigger” in Twain’s American classic, Huckleberry Finn and in countless other literary works, or do we toss Huck and any other novel that uses the word into a massive book-burning pyre?

Then, too, should nigger be consigned to the scrapheap, America’s schools and media would–and should–be inundated with demands from any number of ethnic and racial groups demanding that derogatory terms they consider offensive be banned and expurgated.

. White Americans might object to crackers and honkies.

. Italo-Americans might take up arms against wop and guinea;

. Irish-Americans might protest mick and paddy;

. Jewish-Americans might demand the abolition of kike and hebe; . . .

(Read the rest at http://genelalor.com)