Nigger__Friend_or_Foe

Fred Jackson Jayne Harding Eng. 111-College Composition 1 26 October 2011 NIGGER: FRIEND OR FOE The N-Bomb is one of the most problematic terms in modern America and the rest of the English speaking world. We are all familiar with the never ending debates about who can say it and who cannot. Is it a racist term or does it actually stands for friendship as some people like to claim' Is it equivalent to the term dude or is it a derogatory term for an African American' When I first decided to do this paper I knew what I was getting myself into but I have been hearing and using the word most of my life. So I decided to find the truth behind the word and why this particular word sparks so much fire. When I was growing up I was told that the word meant an ignorant person, and then later I was told it was a reference to blacks in slavery days and now in present day it is being use as a different way of saying friend. These were the definitions I grew up on, so I decided to find the true definition of the word and most read, ‘extremely offensive toward blacks’ which was something I already knew. Then I came across this, the word was originated as a term used in a neutral context to refer to black people, as a variation of the Spanish/Portuguese noun Negro, a descendant of the Latin adjective Niger, meaning the color “black”. This gave me better understanding of the word but I still needed to know how this word was turned into chaos if it was never meant to be negative. Now I had to give myself a little history lesson. In the Colonial America of 1619, John Rolfe used negars in describing the African slaves shipped to the Virginia colony. Later American English spellings, neger and nagger, prevailed in a northern colony, New York under the Dutch, and in metropolitan Philadelphia’s Moravian and Pennsylvania Dutch communities; the African Burial Ground in New York City originally was known by the Dutch name “Begraafplaats van de Neger” (Cemetery of The Negro); an early Us occurrence of neger in Rhode Island, dates from 1625. An alternative word for African American was the English word, “Black”, used by Thomas Jefferson in his Notes on the State Of Virginia. Among Anglophones, the word nigger was not always considered derogatory, because it then denoted “black-skinned”, a common Anglophones usage. Nineteenth-century English (language) literature feature usages of nigger without racist connation, the Joseph Conrad novella The Nigger of Narcissus’ (1897). Moreover, Charles Dickens and Mark Twain created who used the word as contemporary usage. Twain, in the autobiographic book Life on the Mississippi (1883), used the term within quotes, indicating reported usage, but used the term “negro” when speaking in his own narrative persona. I also discovered that blacks were not the only ones being called nigger, in fact nigger denoted the dark-skinned (non-white) African and Asian (i.e., from India or nearby) people colonized into the British Empire, and “dark-skinned foreigners”-in general. That’s crazy right. That just goes to show that if you weren’t white in those days you were considered a nigger. In a 1926 Dictionary of Modern English Usage, H.W Fowler states that applying the word nigger to “others than full or partial negroes”. Then later states in later editions of Fowler’s Dictionary that the word is “felt as an insult by the person described, & betrays in the speaker, if not deliberate insolence, at least a very arrogant inhumanity”, but this anti-racist note was deleted from the Dictionary. Now by the 1900s, nigger had become a pejorative word. In its stead, the term colored became the mainstream alternative to negro and its derived terms. Abolitionists in Boston, Massachusetts, posted warnings to the Colored People of Boston and vicinity. Writing in 1904, journalist Clifton Johnson documented the “opprobrious” character of the word nigger, emphasizing that it was chosen in the South precisely because it was more offensive than “colored”. That’s why people from the south get more offended by the word than people from up north. Established as mainstream American English usage, the word colored features in the organizational title of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), reflecting the members’ racial identity preference at the 1909 foundation. In the Southern United States, the local American English dialect changes the pronunciation of negro to nigra. Linguistically, in developing American English, in the early editions of a Compendious Dictionary of the English Language (1806), lexicography Noah Webster suggested the neger new spelling in place of negro. By the late 1960s, the social progress achieved by in group in the United States such as the Black Civil Rights Movement (1955-68), had legitimized the racial identity word black as mainstream American English to denote black-skinned Americans of African ancestry. In the 90’s, “Blacks” was later displaced in favor of the compound blanket term African American. As a compound word, African American resembles the vogue word Afro-American, an early- 1970s popular usage. Currently, some black Americans continue to use the word nigger, often spelled nigga or niggah, without irony, to either neutral effect or as a sign of solidarity. Even, I am guilty of using the term Nigga which I consider to be a term of endearment or a symbol of brotherly love or respect among black males. “There’s a certain rhythmic seduction to the word. If you speak in a sentence, and you have to say cat, companion, or friend, as opposed to nigger, then the rhythmic presentation is off’, says Cornel West as he addresses the usage of nigger by black people. Rhythmic language is a form of historical memory for black people. Famous comedian Richard Pryor went to Africa and decided to stop using the word onstage, he would sometimes start to slip up because he was use to speaking that way. It was the right word at the moment to keep the rhythm of his sentence together. This could be the reason why I can help but to say the word because it just feels right when I’m talking. The word is kind of seductive as Mr. West stated and it is a part of our American culture. In fact the word nigger is used in famous books, music, and movie just to catch the audience eye. Historically, nigger is controversial in literature due to its usage as both an insult and common noun. The white photographer and writer, Carl Van Vechten, a supporter of the Harlem Renaissance (1920s-30s), provoked controversy in the black community with the title of his novel ‘Nigger Heaven’ (1929), where its usage increased sales. Due the controversy of the title Langston Hughes wrote: “No book could possibly be as bad as Nigger Heaven has been painted. And no book has ever been better advertised by those who wished to damn it. Because it was declared obscene, everybody wanted to read it, and I’ll venture to say that more Negros bought it than ever purchased a book by a Negro author. Then, as now the use of the word nigger by a white was flashpoint for debates about the relationship between black culture and its white patrons.” As in recent literature the controversy behind the Mark Twain novel ‘Adventures of Huckleberry Fin’, which is one of my favorite novels I might add. Risks censorship because of 215 (counted) use of the word nigger in referring to Huckleberry’s escaped-slave raft-mate, Jim. Then later this year the book was republished by New South Books replaced the word “nigger” throughout the book with the word “slave”. To be honest I think that people forgot the feeling and scene Mark Twain was trying to paint because he wrote the book to show how it was back then. To me I think the word “slave” is highly more offensive than the word “nigger”, that’s just my opinion. The word nigger plays a big part in U.S and U.K’s pop culture. The word if featured in branding and packing consumer products, “Nigger Hair Tobacco” and “Niggerhead Oysters”, Brazil nuts were called nigger toes. The word has even made its way to the silver screen. The movie Full Metal (1987) depicts black and white U.S. Marines enduring boot camp and later fight together in Vietnam. “Nigger” is used to by soldiers of both races in jokes and as expressions of bravado (“ put a nigger behind the trigger”), with racial differences among the seen as secondary to their shared exposure to the dangers of combat. Even music and television got little piece of the action. On the 2Pacalypse Now album, released in 1991 by Tupac Shakur, the paradoxical natural of the Hip-Hop generation is clearly displayed by the double talk of positivity and sedition in the song “Crooked Ass Nigga” when examining N.I.G.G.A. Shakur’s “Crooked Ass Nigga” directly contradicts his acronym N.I.G.G.A: Never Ignorant Getting Goals Accomplished. In the early ‘90s, a collective of DJs and MCs from Los Angeles would not only capture the imagination of young people but also re-popularize the usage of the word in their songs. Eazy-E, DJ Yella, MC Ren, Dr. Dre, and Ice Cube would form one the most controversial groups of all times just by their name, N.W.A better known as ‘Niggaz With Attitude’. The word was used for laughs as late as the 1970s in sitcoms that used race as a basis for their humor, but it was quite sparingly, and only by Black characters. It was in at least two episodes of Sanford & Son, those episodes would later be censored to remove the offending line in syndication (“Here Come The Bride, There Goes The Bride” and “Fred Sanford, Legal Eagle”). The word was also said by George Jefferson on All In The Family in the episode “ Lionel’s Engagement”, and it was said by Louise Jefferson on The Jeffersons in the episode “Like Father, Like Son”. Aaron McGruder creator of the comic strip Boondocks uses nigga gratuitously for pure shock value on the Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim program. Dave Chappelle of Chappelle’s Show produced a comedy sketch entitled “The Niggar Family”, a clever play on the slightly different spelled (but same sounding) word as applied to a white family with that surname. If haven’t seen that sketch please you tube it’s the funniest thing you’ll ever see. If you were to ask me how I felt about the word nigger, nigga, or niggah (whichever one you want say or spell). Well, one thing is sure I won’t get angry and call you a racist because it would take a lot more than a word to piss me off. Hell, I might even reply back with a “What’s up my nigga!” no matter what color you are. In way a feel sorry for the word, why' You might ask because it has had a rough life, it was supposed to mean one thing and we turned it into another and blow up into this big racial “You can’t say that only us blacks can say it”. To be honest it’s really just another in the word in the English language that just fell in the wrong hands. So to in conclude my journey for the truth about the word nigger has come to an end. I have discovered that the word was never meant to be a racial slur as we claim; instead the word was a new way of saying the color black. I have also found that black people won’t the only ones being called nigger, but Asian from India or nearby who colonized British Empire was also labeled as “dark-skinned foreigners”(Niggers as we would say). I know what you’re going to ask now. Well, if it’s just a word why can’t white people say it and why do blacks get offended by it' The reason blacks don’t want white people to say the N-word or any of its variations is that when most of us hear a white person say it, the ghost of our ancestors takes over our body and we get incredibly to strong urge to slap the living shit out whoever said it. The reason why us blacks don’t get the urge to slap a black person every time we hear them say the “N-word” is the image of them holding a whip and screaming at us to pick cotton doesn’t pop into our heads when they say it. We don’t get the image of them telling us “MY KIND” to go to the back of the bus, but don’t get me wrong it’s a lot of people that don’t like the word coming from anyone. So I guess I will end this paper like this “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me”.