As you may have noted from my post a couple of days ago, I have few qualms about openly using the word "nigger." I know this can be surprising to some people, so I would just like to take a couple of minutes and/or paragraphs to explain this for the future.
Personally, I find the word itself to not be offensive at all. Offense comes from its intended usage and context. In my post about the vitriol hurled at Mia Love, I used it purely in an "academic" context, in that I used it to explain something rather than to insult or offend.
I remember a professor of mine who really enjoys nineteenth-century American literature. Of course, the problem with this literature (for example, Frederick Douglass's My Bondage and My Freedom) is that it is a commonly used word. Unfortunately, my professor (and no offense intended to him by this remark), rather than be bold enough to just say the word in our classroom discussions, tended to twist and dodge around using the word.
Not that I blame him, mind you, yet at the same time, it would not be a word used to offend, but rather used purely for the sake of understanding.
There are only two times I find the word offensive. One is obviously when it is intended to insult people, as in the case of Mia Love. The other is when it is used in total ignorance, as it is used in hip-hop culture and by so many black youth in general (at least, as far as my personal experiences have shown me).
I fail to see how it is uplifting for black people to call each other "nigga" or "nigger." You can't take back a word that was never originally yours to begin with, now can you?
It is my hope that, one day, the word "nigger," along with so many other racial slurs, will only be heard in classrooms as relics of a bygone era.
No comments:
Post a Comment