CULTURAL OBSCENITY OR BADGE
HONOUR?
DAVID DUNKLEY GYIMAH explores the
myriad meanings of a forbidden word
LANGUAGE - NEW HUMANIST
JULY/AUGUST 2004
Left to right:
Reverend Run of
Run DMC
Russell Simmons,
Kevin
Lile, president of
Def Jam
“Ma niggaz is
one thing and
the nigger that I hire is something else,"
asserted Russell Simmons , the man widely
regarded as the king of rap: the man who,
through his label Def jam, has done more
than any other to steer urban music from the
streets of the ghettos to international
recognition. "The hip hop industry is a
coded industry in terms of language. It's a
question of semantics. A lot of the words
(like niggaz) that we use, we use as a term
of endearment."
Simmons was responding to a question in
a heaving auditorium of students and staff at
the University of Westminster, where word
had got around that one of the most
distinguished ambassadors of black music
was on campus.
"Rap has been responsible for condoning
the word nigger," his questioner had said.
"Don't you think for the sake of the next
generation, for respect, that black men
should stop calling black men niggers and
black women bitches?" Both the question
and the response caused a momentary hush
in the crowd. A fuse had been lit. That
six-letter word, the pus of racial epithets,
which dare not be aired in public, had been
pulled out on naked display.
What Simmons was saying had so many
resonances - for those who use the word for
effect, in defiance, perhaps to invert its old
meaning and reclaim it as a badge of honour,
as well as for those who just accept it as the
new ghetto cool. I could see his point, was
fully aware of all the nuances. So why did I
suddenly feel so uncomfortable?
Vulgar,
repugnant,
derogatory,
unsayable. . . that's been the established and
accepted response to the N-word among
liberals ever since the civil rights movement
in the United States took hold in the 196os
and spread its influence across the western
world. Yet when I was watch~ ing BBC4's
The Race Age recently, I was poignantly
reminded how frequently the word was used
in 60/70s Britain.
Since then, racially abusive epithets
especially that epithet - have thankfully been
expunged from the mainstream, except
possibly at BNP rallies, at a Bernard
Manning after-dinner speech, or, most
recently, in the unwittingly broadcast stream
of consciousness of football commentator
Ron Atkinson directed at Chelsea's Marcel
Desailly. Even those who routinely condemn
as 'political correctness' any attempt to rid
our language of what might be disrespectful,
hurtful or offensive would not these days be
likely to defend that word with all its
shameful connotations.
Yet in recent times it seems to have been
creeping insidiously into popular youth and
black culture, sometimes as a knowing challenge
to its earlier meanings, sometimes ironically. But
often, just because it's the new street cool. It's
this casual adopting of such a highly charged
word that concerns me -that the word nigger has
been plucked from the annals of history and its
hideous associations and reduced to a style
statement.
Much of the blame is attributed to rap music,
ably abetted by the new wave of American black
comics and the odd star film maker: In the 80s a
US West Coast hip hop group incurred the ire of
many, brazenly calling itself Niggaz With
Attitude (NWA); stand-up comic Chris Rocks'
insouciant act was a confetti show of the word although decades earlier Richard Pryer was
unabashed at its use. In just one scene of
Tarantino's Jackie Brown the black actors Sam
Jackson and Chris Tucker uttered the word
nigger some 38 times - 38 too many for black
film-maker Spike Lee, who made a celebrated
attack on Tarantino for appropriating and then
abusing it.
Richard Phillips, a 19-year old student from
South London, is fairly representative of a
generation of black British youngsters raised on
this strange blend of machismo and masochism.
He has taken on the language without a hint of
guilt or remorse: 'When I say 'wassup niggaz' to
my home boy, it's like I'm saying 'wassup dude'
or 'like bro'." The N-word for the millions of
Richards and their chums has become a term of
endearment, a new badge of the urban
brotherhood.
At last month's inaugural Prince's Urban Music
Festival, Channel 4, who have been criticised in
the past, apologised in advance for the strong
language ahead. Jay Z, a Def jam artist and
arguably one of the most influential rap stars
around, littered his lyrics with 'nigger' while his
flock of fans, black and white, sang in unison.
The transmogrification of the N-word now has
white urban boys using it on each other, Ali-G
style.
Harvard scholar Randall Kennedy, in his
incisive recent book, Nigger, deconstructs the
word's legal and social usage, pointing to its
entymology and nuances within different social
strata.
Kennedy
deplores
the
blanket
condemnation of the word which obscures the
complexity of its meanings and potency:
"To understand fully, however, the depths and
intensities, quirks and complexities of American
race relations, it is necessary to know in detail
the many ways in which racist bigotry has
manifested itself, been appealed to, and been
resisted. The term 'nigger' is in most contexts a
cultural obscenity ... but to paper over that term
or to constantly obscure it by euphemism is to
flinch from coming to grips with racial prejudices
that continue to haunt the American social
landscape."
Nigger dates back to the 16th century in
Scottish and Northern England dialect in the
form of neger, originating from the Spanish or
Portuguese word negro. But its main association
is with slavery and its obscene legacies. The
more contemporary users of the word within
black culture attempt to distance it from its
negative roots with a change in spelling - to
nigga.
For me this is immaterial. As a black man, a
lecturer and a journalist I find the word highly
incendiary and deeply offensive. Paul Macey,
former features editor of the Voice, is equally
unequivocal: "No. It shouldn't be used and those
that do are misguided."
But paradoxes do exist and they fuel forms of
passionate exchange. Is there really a difference,
for example, between blacks using the word
nigger about and between themselves - and
non-blacks using it to describe black people?
And if so, should there be a distinction in law?
Joan Mitchell, a partner at law firm Fisher
Meredith, is defending a case in which her client
allegedly called another man a nigger. The
complainant is black, as is Joan - and her client
could face imprisonment if found guilty.
And what about whigger - a portmanteau US
word combining white and nigger, disparagingly
ascribed to whites adopting black urban slang
and ghetto lifestyles - or the more British slang
white honky. Do they carry the same
connotation? Do they pierce deep into the
consciousness evoking red rage? Do they carry
the weight of oppression and bur~ den through
the centuries as the n-word? I can only imagine,
I'm not white. But that said it should not be used
all the same.
Is there a justification for retaining the word
in literature from the past, when its use would
have reflected common parlance? I would argue
against the kind of extremism that would
advocate the banning of Huckleberry Finn, say,
the renaming of Joseph Conrad's The Nigger of
the Narcissus, or the cleansing of Thomas
Carlyle's Discourse on the Nigger Question. And
what about black literature, from the Harlem
Renaissance that produced James Baldwin to the
hard-hitting crime talk of Walter Moseley?
Whether by black or white writers, these works
reflect and illuminate and help us to understand
the worlds they evoke. They should not be
sacrificed on the altar of moral unctuousness.
And for me it's just as important that the new
generations of black and white kids should
understand uncomfortable truths, sacrifices and
the raw histories that have created our complex
multicultural world.
The word has now become so forbidden and
so iconoclastic that we, the editor and I, had to
debate whether to include it -fully spelt-out - in
this article at all. Herein lies a conundrum. I am
so repulsed by the word that I can’t bring myself
to write it in full, preferring instead to use 'the
N-word'. On the other hand, I think it essential to
raise it in the classroom to the millennium
generation who might otherwise have no
understanding of its ugly origins and who
probably think Jim Crow is the latest pair of
designer jeans.
Mr. Simmons defends the use of the word on
artistic grounds. The job of artists, he argues, is
to reflect where they’re from. I'm not defending
its use and I do want to promote positive images,
but I don't want to censor those who are
speaking about their realities, even if they are
ignorant.,,
But that just doesn't come anywhere near to
justifying the casual sprinkling of language so
abhorrent. To me, the N-word is synonymous
with lynchings and hangings, murders and rapes,
the savaging of generations and the continued
vicious divisions that lash our society. When a
white guy says it to me it's because he despises
me. Whenever a black guy uses it with a
flippancy that denies its potent force - it's
because he despises himself.
David Dunkley Gyimah is a television and
senior lecturer at the University of Westininster.
He can be reached at [email protected]