Freedom of Expression, Freedom of Speech

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
~ U.S. Constitution, 1st Amendment

Just because a white guy decides to call a group of black women "nappy-headed hoes," Russell Simmons decides that the word Nigga should not be used in Hip Hop. Just because a friend and fellow comedian screams Nigga in a comedy club, Paul Mooney decides that the infamous Nigga consistently used as a punchline for his jokes will no longer fall from his lips. Nigga this. Nigga that. Black people continue to disappoint me. I am sitting over here, I guess, an ocean removed from the sting of the word Nigga, and no I will not give our oppressors' translation "the N-word," and the word does not bother me the way it incites our "black leaders." Al Sharpton lost the presidential candidacy a few years ago and there have not been too many black outcries lately, so he always strikes up the band with any utterance of Nigga when it is not coming from our side. All of the many black issues that breed and flourish in America are repeatedly ignored by everyone. Yet, if someone says something to offend us, there is an uproar. Well I said it, Nigga, and I will say it again and again. Brothers and sisters continue to be upset with me, but I will not stop using it until we stop using it because of an internal struggle, not an outward one. Yet, I suggest you still read on.

Honestly, Paul Mooney put it best before his Nigga abandonment, "Everybody wanna be a Nigga, but don't nobody wanna be a Nigga." This one statement summarizes why other people use Nigga, they want to fit in. Black people have set the trend of what is hip, cool, in, happening, and fabulous for generations, from Cab Calloway to Aretha Franklin to Nasir Jones. However, the ushering in of the largely successful genre of Hip Hop has changed all of that. Hip Hop blurred the line of who is to use the word and who is not. However, Hip Hop has become music spit on the streets of New York, on the dirt roads of Tanzania, and even under the bright lights found in Tokyo. It is international, it slides around the world on the coattails of America's globalization efforts. Hence, Nigga ceases to belong to Blacks in America, but to an array of people worldwide of a spectrum of colors. Most importantly, the white kid from the suburbs feels just as entitled to use the word because they grew up listening to Niggaz With Attitude. This is when it hits home because that white kid cannot be cool or fit in if he does not spit all the lyrics, even if words like "young Nigga got it bad 'cause I'm brown," simply do not apply to him. That kid wants the cool privilege of saying Nigga, but he would never want to be caught in South Central L.A. with his feet spread and hands in the air while being read his rights by the LAPD.

Every so often Nigga becomes an issue and the catalyst this year was Don Imus's comments on the way the Rutgers' women's basketball team looked. It is amazing how everyone clung to the phrase "nappy-headed hoes," but did not listen to what he said afterwards, "the girls from Tennessee's they all look cute...kind of like a Spike Lee thing, the Jiggaboos versus the Wannabees." Essentially, Imus's comments demonstrate that white people really think they understand black people completely. He thought that black people would describe those women as such and he thought that Spike Lee's scene in School Daze not Do the Right Thing, was about ugly black women versus beautiful black women. In both cases he is wrong. Growing up I did hear my parents use Nigga, but I never heard them call anyone a "nappy-headed hoe." Words like the latter predominately came into existent in a 90s world where black women had already bore the pain of having to sport hair that is kinkier than others for centuries but were now hoes because they were continuously labeled gold diggers and Welfare queens. A younger generation reacting to the way black women are represented in the media and the way some women carried themselves in their community made the word "ho" a stamp of approval in Hip Hop lyrics. So Oprah and the like thought that Hip Hop was at fault for all of this, not Don Imus's racist ideals. Especially since, the first introduction of the word "ho" was from whoever he was talking with, he simply added "the nappy-headed" part. Yet in still, since all of this prompted blacks to want to revoke Hip Hop artist's Nigga card, would everyone be as passionate to take Spike Lee's poetic license from him for introducing Jiggaboos and Wannabees to America?

Since it is long after the Imus incident, readers must wonder why am I writing this? It is actually in reaction to one of my favorite comedians, Paul Mooney's article in the June Essence magazine explaining why he will no longer use the word Nigga. His epiphany came after his friend comedian Michael Richards screamed the word repeatedly at black men interrupting his show. Again black people in this case were hung up on the obvious obscenities, the word Nigga. When I saw it, what made me see that Richards had long packed away some racist emotions were what he said in the midst of his shower of Niggas. "Shut up! Fifty years ago, we'd have you upside down, with a f**king fork up your a**!" Richards even claims that what is buried away is shocking, and it was. Paul Mooney's relationship with this man inhibited him from seeing him for the racist he is, which is understandable. No one wants to believe that they are friends with a racist, and even Richards does not want to believe he is a racist. To me, there is a difference between using Nigga and creating imagery of lynching and white mob behavior against Blacks. Whites continue to hide their racist-tendencies behind the freedom of speech that should be allowed for what they must call the N-word. However, in what world do Blacks have to express their freedom of speech and use what they reclaimed as theirs?

Should Nigga be abolished? Maybe. If that day does come I want it to be because Blacks realized that this word does more harm to us because of internal issues, not ones where white media figures slip and expose that they are racist. These singular events only make us feel we should censor ourselves in an effort to help white people control their racist tendencies. So we continue to hide behind the phrase "the N-word" instead of confronting the real word that really exposes our internal scars of classism and measurements of inferiority to whites demonstrated by skin tones. This only shows that we are still slaves. When Prince had his battle with Warner Bros. he became an acronym, T.A.F.K.A.P., more so than a symbol and put the word slave on his cheek. Prince felt that he did not own the music and creativity that he poured out in every studio session for his then upcoming album; he felt he was a slave. He could not be Prince, so he became the artist formerly known as Prince, and that is exactly what "the N-word," the word formerly known as Nigger or Nigga. We keep talking around it and waiting for white people to make it an issue for us, we make Nigga purely reactionary. To me, our using Nigga for so long was black people demonstrating our agency and using the white man's words to be empowering or to make us laugh. Black people then knew you are going to be called a Nigger anyway, but when they wanted to hear it, they wanted it with love not hatred. Since most whites would not dare use Nigger, to our faces, we forget this. This is just my theory but there is a black power about that word. The reclamation of our circumstance, of our tribulation demonstrates that black power is not just making black positive, but also making what whites created to be negative for us positive as well. For me, Nigga will continue to fall from my lips. The arguments out there have not convinced me. The push for Nigga's abolishment has always been external, maybe if a riff outside of the classist realm comes from within I may change my mind. But until then, Nigga Nigga Nigga.

Furaha.

P.S. This sista is trying to pull herself out of laziness, bear with me. I will start to write more.