Can Anyone Say the N-Word?
By Yoji Cole
December 13, 2006
I was sitting with a couple of white friends having evening drinks on the patio of a Los Angeles bar where most of the patrons are black, when it happened. The N-word was used.
It was said quickly, lit the air, and then disappeared, leaving a searing scent. Who said it? Two black guys standing behind us. They were talking about another friend of theirs that I assume was black as well. It went something like, "Yeah bruh, I called that [insert N-word here]."
I was in mid-sentence when they said it and I audibly hiccupped. I didn't know if my friends heard it. But I heard it. Should I address it? Should I make a joke about Michael Richards? Were my friends thinking, "Why can they say it and Michael Richards can't?" Did I want to even have that conversation right now?
Michael Richards has done the nation a favor by forcing all people, but I hope particularly blacks, to question the use of the N-word.
At the time, I wasn't in the mood for a prolonged discussion on race relations or linguistic semantics. The day had been a long one and I simply wanted to relax and reminisce with friends I hadn't seen in months. So I said nothing about it. Why should I have to broach the subject? It's not my responsibility, is it?
But with the uproar over Michael Richards, the pending litigation by the two men he called the N-word, the subsequent national debate over the N-word and how it is used by blacks and whether whites are permitted, this is a legitimate discussion. Yet I chose to say nothing. Maybe that's because to broach the topic would have given my friends license to say things I didn't necessarily want to hear them say.
I'm on the fence when it comes to whether or not people should use the N-word. When among my black friends, I hear it all the time and most of them are college-educated professionals. They use it as a term of endearment. Yes, I have used it too, with my closest, dearest friends, men I consider family—isn't that oxymoronic? Why would I call my dearest black, male friends the N-word, although we all put that "a" on the end of it?
I think in a way it's a method of us saying we're "keepin' it real," to use a common hip-hop phrase. I think we're saying to each other, without verbalizing it, that the black struggle continues. But why demean ourselves when we struggle at work and throughout our daily lives? For all people, and especially black people, I think the struggle is as much within as it is without.
We're members of the hip-hop generation. Our hip-hop sensibilities tell us we've taken control of the word, that we've changed the very meaning of the word by replacing the "er" with an "a". That the word is now ours! We want to believe that as a people we dictate who can say it and who can't and that power demonstrates collective strength and control.
But do we as a people have such control, or is it an illusion? Many successful hip-hop artists are those who espouse the "thug life." Thuggish lyrics receive the most play on hip-hop radio stations and most of the people who buy hip hop are white. Those white patrons therefore literally and figuratively buy into the stereotypes rappers talk about on CDs.
Shows like Dave Chappelle's, of which I was a fan, don't help the situation either. I've heard more white people say the N-word, albeit with the "a" tagged to the end, after the debut of "Chappelle's Show" than ever before. But when they said it, they were saying Chappelle's words, not their own.
So I guess I'm saying that we black people are as culpable as anyone. We give license by not demanding a more respectful level of thought amongst ourselves. Yes, Bill Cosby is right. And we must remember that for there to be a white ruling class, there has to be a black underclass, and the only way we will truly be able to break the chains of poverty that still bind us as a group is by freeing our minds of self-stereotyping.
Yoji Cole is DiversityInc's Los Angeles bureau chief.
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