by Kevin Rigby, Jr.
Explaining to people, non-Black people of color specifically, why using the n-word is highly offensive and violent to me is always difficult. I find that the redundant argument that people just shouldn’t say that word is too empty to resonate with people sometimes, especially when they’re not using it in a derogatory manner. But until now, I haven’t been able to give a better reason, in part because I haven’t been able to grapple with what hearing the word from non-Black people really feels like.
I went to Hamtramck High School, where I’d say that Black students make up anywhere from 20 to 30 percent of the student body, not an insignificant number either way. An even larger percentage of the school however, is comprised of South Asian and Arab American students, as well as many white students of Eastern European descent.
Long story short; I hated it. During my first few days there I remember being pushed back in line by a white student who cut in front of me, turned and said “white niggas first, bro.” That threw me for a loop, to say the least, but it was also emblematic of the larger school culture. As I matriculated, I found that the usage of the n-word was a free for fall, and oftentimes used more liberally by non-Black people, and condoned to the point of encouragement by non-Black people in power. It was a miserable and taxing experience trying to explain to literally everyone why this bothered me so much. Eventually I stopped trying, but after a recent experience being called a nigga, probably jokingly, by an Asian man, I think I’ve figured it out.
I’d argue that the n-word isn’t a straggling remnant of a time long gone, where Black people were hung from trees and forced to sit at the back of the bus. Instead, I’d argue that, in our current socio-cultural realities, the n-word, as it is used colloquially among Black people, is a testament to the centuries-long quest for recognition as human by Black people. Today, at least in most public discourse, the n-word serves as a “hands-off” space that non-Black people do not touch.
If you’re non-Black, no matter what your opinions on the word or whose entitled to it are, in public discourse you do not say it. You also do not, regardless of your opinion, weigh in on Black people’s right to say it. Nigga is a Black word whose connotation and usage falls wholly within the realm of the Black politic. And in doing the work of recognition, this Black word is a signifier of history, continued struggle, love, and community. Indeed, that I can turn to my best friend in public space and call her a nigga is one of the most human things I, as a Black person in this world, can do. It demands of the space to recognize and grapple with the presence of, to quote Black abolitionist David Walker, “the most wretched, degraded and abject set of beings that ever lived since the world began.” Nigga, then, as a Black word, to be “moved” or employed solely by Black people, does interesting work in that it creates an indelible presence in a space, and by being a Black word, lends power to the Black people who use it, in that they’re the only ones who get to determine how and why it’s used. Put plainly; can’t no non-Black person call me a nigga, but he also can’t not acknowledge that I’m a nigga.
This right to definition and to the assertion of one’s humanity cannot be overstated in a world that consistently seeks to deny both of those things from Black people. ‘Nigga’ grounds you in a space, and keeps you there until you decide to leave it, and it’s unique because it’s something that can’t be taken from you. But what happens when it is? What happens, as in my case, when nearly every (non-Black) person around you, feels an entitlement to the word? What then becomes of the actual niggas in the space?
The nuances of this violence are particularly difficult to parse when, again as in my case, most of the people using the word at my school shared a lot of empirical realities with Black Americans. Many of the economic, employment, and educational realities for the non-Black students mirrored the realities of Black people not just in the school, but across the country. I think many of the non-Black students there, whose realities were informed by poor Black culture, mainstream hip-hop culture, and physical proximity to Black people in general, felt a sort of entitlement to the word – not in any way that hints at solidarity to be sure - but, their understanding of who and what a nigga was and the extent to which they could relate to that picture, told them that they were or could be a “nigga.” This understanding of the word however, is critically limited and in essence, very anti-Black.
To the extent that the non-Black students at my school could be “niggas”, it was with fierce certainty that it was also understood that we were not all Black people. The explicit segregation present in the school, from friend groups, to lunch tables, to honors classes, made it clear that we were not all Black people. I remember explaining to people who asked, that it seemed at that school to be: Black people, and then everyone else. To quote Paul Mooney, everybody wanted to be a nigga, but nobody wanted to be a nigga. But in understanding nigga as I’ve defined it - a fiercely human tool used by Black people to create space to assert their right to definition and humanity - when that word is taken, and that space is co-opted by non-Black people, the extent to which the Black people in the space are then exposed to subjugation and dehumanization is deafening, to say the least.
I find that there is no space in the discussion around who gets to say the n-word and why that has this kind of nuance and articulation of experience, and I’d argue that that’s by design. When the n-word is co-opted, when the human space it creates is occupied by non-Black people, by people who benefit from the exclusion of Black people from that space, then Black people – the actual niggas – are pushed past the periphery of discussion, even further into a non-human space.
Black people weren’t called niggas by the non-Black people at my school. That space was occupied. The most commonly used word for Black people in Bengali, translated most closely to monkey. In Arabic, the word I heard most often translated to slave. In the absence of the use of the space Black people have created for themselves, what was left of me - in the eyes of the non-Black students at my school - was something less than human, something so far removed from the meritorious human conditions of society as to be rendered an animal and a slave. This kind of anti-Blackness, in an environment where whiteness itself was considerably decentered, was jarring. But it was also, I understand now, emblematic of the machinations of anti-Blackness within, to quote Jared Sexton, “people-of-color blindness.”
When non-Black people, but especially other people of color, use the n-word, it isn’t just mean. It is an act of violence, of theft, and of divisiveness so severe as to render any attempts at solidarity moot. The n-word, as Black people use it today, is perhaps our best attempt at demanding our humanity and our right to define ourselves. The word encompasses our history, our current realities, and the love and solidarity we have for one another. It creates a space in which we might articulate ourselves. When that is taken from us, when non-Black people feel entitled to that space - despite the empirical similarities there may be - those rights are taken from us, and we and our Blackness are left to be defined by other people. And it is perhaps the quickest example of how far we’ve still yet to go when the names we are given to replace the n-word are still dehumanizing and violent. The n-word is an act of revolution by Black people, which when appropriated and bastardized by non-Black people, perpetuates the dehumanizing, anti-Black violence of mis-recognition that warranted the evolution of the n-word in the first place.
So, nah, you can’t say nigga.
