Is the 'N-Word' Dead?
By Jamese Lewis,
The Gazette
Is the N-Word dead? No. Is it nefarious, self-deprecating, archaic, and counterproductive to the goals and aspirations and spirit of the African-American people? Yes.
I have bad news: The N-Word is not dead. The N-Word has been on its deathbed for the past 40-60 years, and only we have our hands on the cord to end the livelihood, impact and longevity of it on our living possibilities.
Each time we hide behind the notion of it as an affectionate and indiscriminate term of endearment, we breathe life and antibodies into what should be a defunct and comatose implement of Black degradation. What should be dead we resurrect with the enunciation of each letter of the word. We fail to realize that each of us internalizes the subconscious reverberation of this word's role in an era of oppression and marginalization of Black people.
We cannot, until we hold ourselves first accountable, denigrate the use of the word by the white man when our actions and dialogue profess the contradiction. When a person suffers from the violation of a rock in their shoe, with the advance of time, one soon becomes desensitized to the pain of its impact. Ironically, when the rock changes position and from another angle imposes distress we take notice and experience a peak in our attention to the source of our discomfiture. Similarly, we spend in general a disillusioning proportion of our conversations referring to each other as the N-word and then go about in rebuttal, dissecting superficial differences of the uses of the word among Blacks, its spelling, its pronunciation, the imaginary distinction between its use in white and Black mouths, neglecting the fact that a tomato is still a tomato even if you change the pronunciation.
We need to stop defending this word, stop embracing this misnomer, stop making it appear synonymous to what our friends, confidantes, neighbors, acquaintances, "boos," "girls," "boys," "homies," and other loved ones mean to us. We need to take a proactive stance against this term's fallacious, acrimonious hold on our society's progress; stop embracing the tools of our destruction, understanding that weapons formed against us in time past do not lose but gain momentum as we perpetuate them in our community. You cannot bring a bomb home and expect because you decorate it, that its effects will be ameliorated. Its obliterating impact to the African-American spirit and self-concept only contribute to our digression as a culture.
I think we have forgotten that it was those who share our bloodline that formed the geometry necessary to construct the pyramids, that invented many of the foundations of contemporary medicine, that first navigated by the stars and taught others all these things. We forget that Aristotle and his contemporaries voyaged to US in Timbuktu and Mali and Cairo to attain an education. I'm not talking about the bloodlines of our mothers' violators during slavery that promulgated and gave roots to the firsts of our culture's single parent homes. We forget that we virtually invented family ties in our communal villages where it took "a village to raise a child,"-not because our fathers didn't want to be there, but because back then we realized the value of community investment in our posterity . . . because back then-before those necrophilliac ships with their diabolical, exploitative missions arrived at our shores-that though we had our problems as any nation does, we knew the value of family, the value of the next man as he related to our life's path and we didn't leave our children behind. Back before we addressed each other as the N-word…
Did you know that the word nigger comes from the Hebrew word "necr" for "cursed"? Did you know that each time you fix your lips to utter that word you not only chip away a piece of your own and addressee's spirit, you erode yours and their sense of self-efficacy, the very core of the concepts that constitute both parties' sense of self worth? No, no one stops in their tracks to register a physical sensation in response to the word, but your spirit does and each of us with Black blood flowing through us should recognize a need for self-censure. Some introspection should take place; you should look inside you at the motivation for the use of the word. Did you mean to call your sister "cursed one"? Did you really mean to tell your "road dog" that you don't really mean him any good? Did you mean to tell your educated, phenomenal, progressive, strong, historically fortified, surviving, striving, resilient brother that everything he touches will come of no good? Because that's what you mean when we refer to one another as "nigga."
We need to be edifying each other, building each other up, removing from our language the arsenal of our enemies. The white man is no longer our enemy when it is illegal or at least socio-politically incorrect to say it. When our own vocabulary reflects a propensity to spread hate among ourselves, it is us that are our own worst enemies. The white man did an even better job tearing us down if he was able to train us to do it ourselves. We used to get upset when someone yelled out "jigaboo," "darkie," "picaninny," "tar baby"…. "nigger." And now we pretend all is well as long as we are the ones using the language, forgetting these words' design as tools to convey our captors and oppressors' concept of our inferiority, even to their barbarism. They rape our land, our mothers, our spirit, and somehow we think we can divorce our use of the words from their original intent. We're wrong.
This N-word has got to go. Its wheezing, straining against the covers, feeding through a tube. Its heart monitor is giving off a weak emasculated signal. Its breath is thin and hardly perceptible. It wants to die. Are you keeping it alive?
I have bad news: The N-Word is not dead. The N-Word has been on its deathbed for the past 40-60 years, and only we have our hands on the cord to end the livelihood, impact and longevity of it on our living possibilities.
Each time we hide behind the notion of it as an affectionate and indiscriminate term of endearment, we breathe life and antibodies into what should be a defunct and comatose implement of Black degradation. What should be dead we resurrect with the enunciation of each letter of the word. We fail to realize that each of us internalizes the subconscious reverberation of this word's role in an era of oppression and marginalization of Black people.
We cannot, until we hold ourselves first accountable, denigrate the use of the word by the white man when our actions and dialogue profess the contradiction. When a person suffers from the violation of a rock in their shoe, with the advance of time, one soon becomes desensitized to the pain of its impact. Ironically, when the rock changes position and from another angle imposes distress we take notice and experience a peak in our attention to the source of our discomfiture. Similarly, we spend in general a disillusioning proportion of our conversations referring to each other as the N-word and then go about in rebuttal, dissecting superficial differences of the uses of the word among Blacks, its spelling, its pronunciation, the imaginary distinction between its use in white and Black mouths, neglecting the fact that a tomato is still a tomato even if you change the pronunciation.
We need to stop defending this word, stop embracing this misnomer, stop making it appear synonymous to what our friends, confidantes, neighbors, acquaintances, "boos," "girls," "boys," "homies," and other loved ones mean to us. We need to take a proactive stance against this term's fallacious, acrimonious hold on our society's progress; stop embracing the tools of our destruction, understanding that weapons formed against us in time past do not lose but gain momentum as we perpetuate them in our community. You cannot bring a bomb home and expect because you decorate it, that its effects will be ameliorated. Its obliterating impact to the African-American spirit and self-concept only contribute to our digression as a culture.
I think we have forgotten that it was those who share our bloodline that formed the geometry necessary to construct the pyramids, that invented many of the foundations of contemporary medicine, that first navigated by the stars and taught others all these things. We forget that Aristotle and his contemporaries voyaged to US in Timbuktu and Mali and Cairo to attain an education. I'm not talking about the bloodlines of our mothers' violators during slavery that promulgated and gave roots to the firsts of our culture's single parent homes. We forget that we virtually invented family ties in our communal villages where it took "a village to raise a child,"-not because our fathers didn't want to be there, but because back then we realized the value of community investment in our posterity . . . because back then-before those necrophilliac ships with their diabolical, exploitative missions arrived at our shores-that though we had our problems as any nation does, we knew the value of family, the value of the next man as he related to our life's path and we didn't leave our children behind. Back before we addressed each other as the N-word…
Did you know that the word nigger comes from the Hebrew word "necr" for "cursed"? Did you know that each time you fix your lips to utter that word you not only chip away a piece of your own and addressee's spirit, you erode yours and their sense of self-efficacy, the very core of the concepts that constitute both parties' sense of self worth? No, no one stops in their tracks to register a physical sensation in response to the word, but your spirit does and each of us with Black blood flowing through us should recognize a need for self-censure. Some introspection should take place; you should look inside you at the motivation for the use of the word. Did you mean to call your sister "cursed one"? Did you really mean to tell your "road dog" that you don't really mean him any good? Did you mean to tell your educated, phenomenal, progressive, strong, historically fortified, surviving, striving, resilient brother that everything he touches will come of no good? Because that's what you mean when we refer to one another as "nigga."
We need to be edifying each other, building each other up, removing from our language the arsenal of our enemies. The white man is no longer our enemy when it is illegal or at least socio-politically incorrect to say it. When our own vocabulary reflects a propensity to spread hate among ourselves, it is us that are our own worst enemies. The white man did an even better job tearing us down if he was able to train us to do it ourselves. We used to get upset when someone yelled out "jigaboo," "darkie," "picaninny," "tar baby"…. "nigger." And now we pretend all is well as long as we are the ones using the language, forgetting these words' design as tools to convey our captors and oppressors' concept of our inferiority, even to their barbarism. They rape our land, our mothers, our spirit, and somehow we think we can divorce our use of the words from their original intent. We're wrong.
This N-word has got to go. Its wheezing, straining against the covers, feeding through a tube. Its heart monitor is giving off a weak emasculated signal. Its breath is thin and hardly perceptible. It wants to die. Are you keeping it alive?