Nigger

I come from an era in which the word was not used in any context, even when quoting someone.  It is still a word whose full spelling is avoided, so that one encounters “the n-word” or “n*****” frequently.  We feel the mere use of the word dirties our lips or our eyes, even if we are only referencing the word to condemn it.  There is a magical attachment, similar to Indo-Europeans referring to the totemic bear as the Brown One or the Honey Eater, or the refusal of the Israelites to pronounce the primary name of God aloud.  I wrote about the power of words in the context of foul language in a conversation at Avebury years ago. The takeaway point from that is that language and the power of words changes.

I completely get it.  I very much doubt I have ever typed the word nigger, or ever said it aloud, though I may have in the context of Mark Twain of Joseph Conrad.  I will be hesitating before I hit “post” I think. I just react viscerally to the word,

The acceptability of words changes, and I would cite crap and fart (another word I don’t think I have uttered or typed) as evidence. The latter was a schoolboy word when I was young, and only coarser schoolboys at that.  Adults or girls who used it marked themselves as low.  I still hate it.  Yet I felt the same way about crap at one point, but have become inured to its use now. We say never-never-never but fifty years later, never has arrived.

Use of the word nigger was a mark of not only bigotry but stupidity.  Not only were you prejudiced, but you weren’t picking up the social cue that we just don’t say that anymore. The milder insult nigra has completely vanished, I think.  It was more Southern and rural – hence unfashionable – and not electrifying enough to be picked up by black people in irony*. My grandmother was a prejudiced person, but she would never have uttered the word nigger because of its inelegance. I did once hear my mother-in-law say “we used to call that nigger pink.” But she was from NJ, so what do you expect?

When rap and hip-hop music became popular there was a great deploring of young black men using the word nigger so freely, as it was felt to be ceding captured territory back to the bigots. Whether hip-hop was the cart or the horse doesn’t matter for this discussion. We winced at the magic power of the word to induce bad things into the speakers and hearers. We had taken the general frequency of the word as one measure of our society’s racism: less use of nigger equals less racism.  Its readoption by young black men screwed up the measuring. (Note: the word had had continuous usage in the older black community in nonaffectionate reference to other blacks, as in “those niggers downtown are gonna get themselves in trouble with that,” or “that’s one stupid nigger.”  I wonder how much of the subtext of young urban blacks taking on the term for themselves and each other was an in-your-face to older respectable blacks as well as to white society.  It’s a pretty clear statement of “I’m dangerous.  I might do bad things.  Fear me.”)

All this in introduction to the idea that there has been a recent change in the force of the word nigger.  While there is likely regional and class variation, I think we can see that there is not much difference in how people over 30 hear the word. But I think I am detecting differences at age 25 and especially, younger than 20.  Who gets to say what and in what context remain the dominant forces for usage.  Yet I think those contexts are expanding in the young. Young white boys call each other niggah. The ground is different now.

I don’t call it a trend, as I have no idea where it goes from here.  But I hear discussions with football players about what has been said in the Incognito/Martin texts and other locker-room talk, and the older players – Cris Carter, Herm Edwards – are not saying the same things about it that the current players are.  NFL careers are generally short, and locker rooms young: average age under 25 in training camp, not much over during the season. Cris Carter is in clear “Dad” territory to 90% of NFL players, and Herm Edwards has moved into “Grandad” territory for rookies. My ears are theirs.  I cannot imagine not hyperventilating a bit over the word nigger.  But that’s my generation and it’s automatic.

But I think it's changing.

*Yes, the difference between negro, nigra, and nigger could be seen as merely dialectical and pronunciation differences, were one trying to explain it to a person whose first language is not English.  But it’s a great example of how such small differences can matter greatly. Think of how many of these small but enormous differences must have been lost in translating the Bible after a century or so.