You Will Never Take My N-Word from Me

Let me tell you what you’re not going to do today. Or, ever. You may do it to those other folks, especially those of the fairer complexion–and indeed, you should. But you got the wrong one if you think that you’re just going to come on through and take my n-word from me. Nope.

I’m well appraised of the roots of the word “nigger” and the subsequent bastardization, “nigga.” I understand that some people believe the profuse use of this word by African-Americans in reference to other African-Americans is illustrative of an internalized self-deprecation and self-hatred.

But, as a wise man from Atlanta once said, “I just don’t give a fuck, cuz I’m all out wit’ it.”

And yes, I am all out wit it. I am a profuse user of the n-word. It has morphed into both a term to describe any person that I currently hold in contempt, as well as a term of endearment to refer to (black) people I hold in regard [funny that when I mean it negatively, it can apply to any race, but positive usage of the n-word only is reserved for black folks, but I’m not a psychologist, so]. Despite being the argumentative person that I am, I very rarely have engaged in any of the multi-dimensional and everlasting debates on the n-word, it’s subversion of our culture, the propriety of it’s use by non-blacks, or really anything else. I am not completely sure of anything except two things: white people are at the root of the entire debate around the n-word, not blacks, and, as I have said in no uncertain terms, I will never stop using the word, and nobody cain’t make me.

On the first point: when I say that white people are at the root of the debate, I am not talking about the historical derogatory use of the word by whites to refer to blacks and especially black slaves. I am talking about right now. I am talking about the fact that the entire debate truly still centers around white people and their relationship with the word, not ours.

I am not talking about that white person who automatically recoils at the thought of something they just can’t do. In a world that is theirs for the taking, that opens up like an oyster when they command it, that murders black bodies just to make their whiteness uncomfortable, there’s still that one word that is taboo for them to use–and they can’t stand that shit. But that’s beside the point of what I’m saying here.

Some black people are offended by the word. They recoil at the hate-filled history the word carries. It was weaponized by whites for use against blacks, and it’s that weaponization that many black folks understand when those two syllables are dropped. It’s those years of it being hissed through the white (or yellow, snaggletooth, redneck) teeth of white people that they hear. It’s the black bodies swaying in the wind, hanging from the ropes of white men that they see. It’s the broken dreams, the perpetual insecurity, the black child’s realization of her place in this white world after being stabbed with that word that they feel.

But, that brings me to the second point, which is that I kinda just feel like….all them years that white people stole shit from us and told us what we can’t do, and all my life I had to fight, and now I’m just not going to let anyone tell me what I cannot say because of what white people have said. Not some PC wannabe ass millennial soy milk from Starbucks feeling the Bern but black people don’t know what is for their own good ass white girl NOR ya old church lady grandma who marched alongside MLK even though she never left the state of Mississippi where she walked 5 miles uphill to school both ways everyday. On an episode of Black-ish, Anthony Anderson’s character called use of the n-word the “birthright” of black kids. I almost stood up and clapped, because he took every syllable out of my mouth. If you really want to give us free, then let me use my n-word in peace. Because I ain’t gone let years of white wearing on our souls trap mine.

I feel the privilege of being black every time the word rolls off my tongue. I simulate the high that Trinidad James must have felt when he unabashedly laid a track with a track with the bridge “Nigga nigga nigga nigga nigga,” because who gone check him? I vicariously share the fraternal regard that YG felt that compelled him to sing, “my nigga, my nigga, my mutha fuckin nigga.” These are my people, this is my word, and I’m the captain now.

In the words of Lil’ Scrappy, “b*tch nigga you will neva eva, eva eva, eva eva, eva eva, eva eva” tell me that I can’t say nigga. Nigga.