FWIW – What The ‘N’ Word Says About Us

It was bound to happen. Nick Nolte downs too many beers, goes boppin’ down the PCH at about 400 mph and the next day there’s his picture on the front page looking like 60 miles of bad country road. Then Glen Campbell swigs a few too many and plays ‘bumper cars’ with another driver near his compound in Phoenix. Presto! There’s his mug on the front page of the local rag like he’s saying, “So there, Nolte! I can look stoopid too!” Then, it starts to get ugly. Mel Gibson not only goes over the line with the wine, but he goes into anti-semite overdrive! You’d think that it would be next to impossible to top the rant that made Tinseltown blanche.
But, you’d be wrong. Michael Richards is trying to make a comeback at some ‘Open Mike’ night (pardon the unintentional pun). ‘Cosmo’ just had to have been knockin’ back some righteous Sam Adamses. How else could he have made a reference to one of the more ingenious uses of a fork? I wish my cell phone camera could record with the clarity captured that fateful evening! Of course the cable networks fell all over themselves playing and replaying (and replaying, and…you get the idea) that rant that appeared to go on forever. Maybe that was the point. Maybe they reveled in that moment of delicious human meltdown. Who knows? Can you tell me what purpose was served by playing that video clip over and over for some two and a half days? Was there any conscious person who had not witnessed that clip during those days?
Fast-forward a week or two as red hot emotions cool off a little. I’m not going to use the ‘N’-word from now on, one black comedian asserts. He urges others to abstain as well. And, to be honest, there is real merit to such a choice.
The ‘N’-word, nigger, is, of course, derived from the word niggard or niggardly; pertaining to a person or personal behavior that is excessively lazy, slothful, indigent, irresponsible, etc. It came into wide use in this country during the early years of the Union, when slavery was still legal. Stripped of any vestiges whatsoever of human self-respect by slaveholders, treated as little more than chattel, black men who, in Africa, might have been chieftans or healers or family heads found themselves to be of no value save for what they could lift or cultivate or pick for their “Masters”. Shackled and/or chained together, those who toiled for little recompense did, indeed become niggards, behaving niggardly. Those who sought to escape were either successful (very few and far between) or unsuccessful (usually caught, then beaten savagely, if not hanged). We need not dwell further on this disgraceful aspect of our own history, only to understand the origins of ‘nigger’.
Probably the most perceptive and, in my humble opinion, funniest of today’s black comedians, Chris Rock, not long ago said, “I love Black People!... I hate niggers”! Funny, I feel the same way. There are black people I know whom I consider dear friends and good people. By the same standard, there are white people I know whom I consider to be not worth the powder and lead needed to blow them to Hell. So that’s all just a bit subjective.
But, let’s get back to the crux. Do we really want to ban the word, nigger, from our lexicon, from our discourse? Do we want to make a word (and thus, it’s etimology) like unto a social pariah?
Here’s how the devil’s advocate in me responds: Let’s keep the word in our vocabulary. Let’s keep it there as a reminder of one of the darker aspects of our nation’s history, when humanity was of less import. Let’s remember that we once failed to acknowledge that some persons were treated not as children of the same God. Let’s not lose sight of the fact that our DNA tells us that we are all 99.9% genetically the same and that only a few different elements in that chain of deoxyneucleic acid determine the color of our epidermis, the shape of our nose, the texture of our hair. So, how much of our spiritual genesis do we wish to make invalid when we speak that ‘N’-word? Think about it.

Today is December 13th; 767 days until the end of the Bush Administration.