So Which cunt closed Red Pheonix thread

[Skidfingers McGonical]

So if he is offended by it, why do you think that is?

 

Its because he has been brought up to learn he should be offended by it, not really rocket science is it.

 

I`m not going to discuss it any further though unless someone actually answer the question I have asked, why is it offensive other than the fact we have been brought up to think that way.

 

Its not a big deal to me, I dont use the word myself, I just find it interesting to look at why things happen and put them into a context.

 

And how are you putting into context?

[setreal]

Yes seriously.

 

Why dont you explain whats so dangerous about the word, the word "niger" comes from the latin language and it means black.

 

 

I cant be arsed to write a whole sermon here because this is after all a footy forum, so just this:

 

Words (=language) have massive structural and normative functions in society. It is utterly naive to claim that a word is just a word when the whole system of power, morals and beliefs is conveyed through them. I find it hard to believe you can have studied history without coming across the concept of connotative meaning, "signifier" and "signified". Words shape reality and the "N word" has got a whole history of bell-end-ism attached to it.

[Code]

I cant be arsed to write a whole sermon here because this is after all a footy forum, so just this:

 

Words (=language) have massive structural and normative functions in society. It is utterly naive to claim that a word is just a word when the whole system of power, morals and beliefs is conveyed through them. I find it hard to believe you can have studied history without coming across the concept of connotative meaning, "signifier" and "signified". Words shape reality and the "N word" has got a whole history of bell-end-ism attached to it.

 

I think you will find I have touched upon that in one of my earlier posts.

[23_Carra_Gold]

Not at all, but I think I should be allowed to ask why.

 

In the Norwegian language we have the word "neger" (negro) and "svart" (black), the interesting thing is that I would feel it was much more offensive if someone called someone "svarting" compared to "neger".

 

There are a few other Norwegians on here, I`m sure they will agree on the last point.

 

The point here is the word 'Nigger' in the English language. I am not Norwegian, nor do I speak the language so I have no clue what words mean what or how offensive they are.

 

The word 'Nigger' was used to belittle slaves and in modern times is an offensive word filled with hatred used when speaking about a black person. In America we see them try to take the sting out of the word by using it as a greeting for eachother. Anybody with a decent understanding of social mechanisms will understand why its offensive to call a black man a 'nigger'.

 

If I ever say the word I feel wrong. Like I shouldn't be saying it.

[philyhamann]

We should does what Rashid does or Momo does and re-register under a different name. Maybe Black Phoenix.

[philyhamann]

WTF did I just write

[Magic Sponge]

We should does what Rashid does or Momo does and re-register under a different name. Maybe Black Phoenix.

 

Thats not funny.

[setreal]

I think you will find I have touched upon that in one of my earlier posts.

 

Because we were brought up that way? You said it yourself, thats trivial and doesnt prove anything. Most here were also probably brought up so that they dont rape and plunder if they feel like it. Im sure you will agree thats a good thing civilization has brought. But just because you happen to be no "Nigger" or "Homo" that other stuff dont matter to you. Wild guess: your probably a white hetero male between 18 and 50? Put that into perspective then.

[Joe Le Taxi]

When reading his thread was I the only one who thought:

 

[zigackly]

Yet again Code drives straight past the obvious point and puts himself on a pedestal where almost everybody else in the entire world must be wrong.

 

Except this time Code it's not just exasperating, it's verging on offensive.

 

My advice is to give up on this line of reasoning and back away from the thread.

[Code]

Because we were brought up that way?

 

No not that, when and why it became known as a racist word.

[Code]

Yet again Code drives straight past the obvious point and puts himself on a pedestal where almost everybody else in the entire world must be wrong.

 

Except this time Code it's not just exasperating, it's verging on offensive.

 

My advice is to give up on this line of reasoning and back away from the thread.

 

But this is not about wrong or right for me Zigackly.

 

I just wanted to look behind the standard norm and why its gone from being a common word to now 40 years later being the most dangerous word in the modern language.

 

And I want to pull out but I keep being pulled back in.

[zigackly]

I just wanted to look behind the standard norm and why its gone from being a common word to now 40 years later being the most dangerous word in the modern language.

 

Context.

 

The word has been associated with slavery and racial hatred for more than a century.

 

The multi-cultural society we now live in finds the use of such a word unacceptable, whereas society forty (or whatever) years ago was different.

[setreal]

I fell into the trap

[Paul]

The FF does GF? Pfff.

[old skool tom]

[Magellan06]

When reading his thread was I the only one who thought:

 

 

 

Yes!

[Sangria]

When reading his thread was I the only one who thought:

 

 

He really should be a Chelsea fan, he probably is for all I know.

[zigackly]

That's an awful tie.

[Sangria]

That's an awful tie.

 

It stinks of no taste whatsoever, fucken shocking, although it goes with his head it must be said.

[Joe Le Taxi]

It's Parry's.

[Anubis]

I thought I'd post a series of articles I remembered from The Grauniad in 2002, when Randall Kennedy's book Nigger was released. I think these articles give some insight into how black Britons view the word.

 

 

Gary Younge: Not while racism exists | Politics | The Guardian

 

Not while racism exists

 

The launch of a book, titled Nigger, will spark a new row about whether the term can ever be inoffensive

 

o Gary Younge

o The Guardian, Monday 7 January 2002 02.41 GMT

o Article history

 

Standing at a hotel bar in Freetown, Sierra Leone, a few years ago with an unreconstructed Afrikaner and a white Briton whose racial politics I trusted even less, I was approached by a local, black hustler who put his arm around my shoulder, smiled and asked: "How's my nigger?" I turned swiftly, pointed my finger in his face and said: "Don't you ever ever, call me that again." He walked away looking both baffled and upset and leaving me feeling both conflicted and annoyed.

 

Had I been on my own, or in all-black company, I might have asked him where he learned this word and advised him not use it with strangers. But the smirks on the white faces either side of me suggested far more was at stake. He had not embarrassed me (I did not care what they thought of me) but he had compromised me. If it was left unchallenged, I would have to listen to racist people using racist language and justifying it with the pretext that a black man had said it first. A word that I usually encounter only when white people use it in hate mail was about to be sanitised for their casual delectation. That was not an indignity I was prepared to endure.

 

There are few words as inflammatory or as confused as the word "nigger" has become. At one extreme, it is the most derogatory term whites can use in reference to black people. On the other, it is a casual term of endearment, particularly between African-Americans. In between lies an expanse of conflict and misunderstanding. In 1993, a white basketball coach at Central Michigan university asked his black players if he could say the word as they did - to mean toughness and determination on the court. They agreed. But he was still suspended after being overheard saying it. When he unsuccessfully filed suit on grounds of freedom of speech, some of the black players offered themselves as witnesses in his defence.

 

Recently a publishing company, Merriam Webster, was threatened with a review of its business structures and hiring practices by the NAACP, the oldest civil-rights organisation in the country, after it refused to redefine the word. Bill Cosby will not use it at all; fellow comedian Chris Rock has devoted an entire sketch to the use of it. Filmmaker Spike Lee uses it, but objects to Quentin Tarantino's "excessive" use of it.

 

Controversy surrounding the word is about to deepen with the publication in the US tomorrow of a new book by the black Harvard academic Randall Kennedy. Throwing a hand grenade into the battle-scarred landscape of Amer ica's racial discourse, Kennedy has chosen the title Nigger.

 

While the issue is worthy of intellectual inquiry, the title is shamefully sensationalist and opportunistic and has already caused uproar. "The word is a bit like fire," says Patricia Williams, a black professor at Columbia law school. "You can warm your hands with the kind of upside-down camaraderie that it gives, or you can burn a cross with it. Seeing it floating abstractly on a bookshelf in a world that is still as polarised as ours makes me cringe."

 

Kennedy's defence is self-promotion: "I write a book to be read." It is clear how it will benefit him; it is not so obvious how it will help the debate. His desire not only to explore the word, but to exploit it for his own ends is yet another example of the commodification of black culture which enriches the few and impoverishes the many.

 

Entire industries depend on degrading constructs of black American life, used to sell music, sportswear, fashion, entertainment and satellite stations. Social, cultural and economic deprivation has essentially been branded, marketed and sold to the highest bidder. While usage of the word is commonplace only among African-Americans, my experience in Sierra Leone illustrates that the issues it raises are international.

 

The dilemma is not new. When Carl Van Vechten, the original wigger and honorary white member of the Harlem Renaissance, brought out his book Nigger Heaven in 1926, the title was met with fury. A few of his black friends approved, but most pleaded with him to chose another title. Van Vechten insisted he had etymology on his side. "Nigger heaven" was the slang term for the upper gallery of a theatre, where black people were forced to sit in cheap seats - an image that he thought echoed Harlem's position as the northernmost section of Manhattan island. His defence was irony. But a black America in which most could not vote and many could not find work was in no mood for irony at its own expense. The book was burned from the podium of an anti-lynching rally.

 

The example is instructive. While Van Vechten understood the words, he misjudged the context. For the word did not drop out of the sky, nor is it uttered in a vacuum. It was born in a culture that was forcibly segregated and racially oppressive. It is because the races remain, by and large, separate that they have maintained their own linguistic traditions; it is because they remain unequal that such a loaded word can retain such contradictory meanings for blacks and whites. In other words, without racism both its offensiveness and its camaraderie would be meaningless.

 

I claim no consistency in my own view on it. It is not a word I use or am even comfortable around, but I have become immune to it in films and music. Being British may have a great deal to do with that. Nonetheless, I am well aware of the subversive quality of turning oppressive language on its head and using it defiantly. Such is the journey that has transformed former slaves from Coloureds to blacks and finally to African-Americans and lesbians and gays into queers. Nonetheless, the last noun that Stephen Lawrence heard before he was stabbed to death by racists is not something I wish to claim. The manner in which his case was dealt with shows that the people who think it can be just as vicious as those who say it. That is why it is hard to imagine a situation - outside of a court of law - where it would not be highly problematic for white people to use the word.

 

So long as racism exists there is no ironic or benign interpretation that cannot be miscontrued. I was in the presence of Germaine Greer last year when she referred to a "nigger in a woodpile". By the time she had tried to render a justification I was off. There is none. At least, not one that I'm interested in hearing. If white people find this restriction on their vocabulary unreasonable they need only bring forward the day when racism is eradicated - a day all black people look forward to - after which they can say what they like. Those who lurk behind the pillar of freedom of speech in their determination to use it are welcome to the right to be insensitive. But they must accept at least one basic consequence: others have the right to be offended.

 

Back in the twenties, the African-American diplomat and intellectual, James Weldon Johnson believed time would be kinder to Van Vechten than black critics had been. "As the race progresses it will become less and less susceptible to hurts from such causes." Lack of progress means the hurt is still there.

 

 

 

Doing the wrong thing | From the Guardian | Guardian Weekly

 

Doing the wrong thing

* Guardian Weekly, Thursday 10 January 2002

* Article history

 

Standing at a hotel bar in Freetown, Sierra Leone, a few years ago with an unreconstructed Afrikaner and a white Briton whose racial politics I trusted even less, I was approached by a local, black hustler who put his arm around my shoulder, smiled and asked: "How's my nigger?" I turned round swiftly, pointed my finger in his face and said: "Don't you ever . . . ever, call me that again." He walked away looking baffled and upset, and leaving me feeling tense and annoyed.

 

Had I been on my own, or in all-black company, I might have asked him where he learned this word and advised him not to use it with strangers. But the smirks on the white faces either side of me suggested far more was at stake. He had not embarrassed me (I did not care what they thought of me), but he had compromised me. If it was left unchallenged, I would have to listen to racist people using racist language and justifying it with the pretext that a black man had said it first. A word that I usually encounter only when white people use it in hate mail was about to be sanitised for casual delectation. That was an indignity I was not prepared to endure.

 

There are few words as inflammatory or as confused as "nigger". At one extreme it is the most derogatory term whites can use in reference to black people. On the other it is a casual term of endearment, particularly between African-Americans. In between lies an expanse of conflict and misunderstanding. In 1993 a white basketball coach at Central Michigan university asked his black players if he could say the word as they did - to mean toughness and determination on the court. They agreed. But he was suspended after being overheard saying it. When he unsuccessfully filed suit on grounds of freedom of speech some of the black players offered themselves as witnesses in his defence.

 

Controversy surrounding the word is about to deepen with the publication in the United States this week of a book by the black Harvard academic Randall Kennedy. Throwing a hand grenade into the battle-scarred landscape of the US's racial discourse, Kennedy has chosen the title Nigger.

 

While the issue is worthy of intellectual inquiry, the title is shamefully sensationalist and has already caused uproar. "The word is a bit like fire," says Patricia Williams, a black professor at Columbia law school. "You can warm your hands with the kind of upside-down camaraderie that it gives, or you can burn a cross with it . . . Seeing it floating abstractly on a bookshelf in a world that is still as polarised as ours makes me cringe."

 

Kennedy's defence is self-promotion: "I write a book to be read." It is clear how it will benefit him; it is not so obvious how it will help the debate. His desire not only to explore the word, but to exploit it for his own ends is another example of the commodification of black culture.

 

Entire industries depend on degrading constructs of black American life, used to sell music, sportswear, fashion, entertainment and satellite stations. Social, cultural and economic deprivation has been branded, marketed and sold to the highest bidder. While usage of the word is commonplace only among African-Americans, my experience in Sierra Leone illustrates that the issues it raises are international.

 

The dilemma is not new. When Carl Van Vechten, the original wigger and honorary white member of the Harlem Renaissance, brought out his book Nigger Heaven in 1926 the title was met with fury. A few of his black friends approved, but most pleaded with him to choose another title. Van Vechten insisted he had etymology on his side. "Nigger heaven" was the slang term for the upper gallery of a theatre, where black people were forced to sit in cheap seats - an image that he thought echoed Harlem's position as the northernmost section of Manhattan island. His defence was irony, but a black US in which most could not vote and many could not find work was in no mood for irony at its own expense. The book was burned from the podium of an anti-lynching rally.

 

The example is instructive. While Van Vechten understood the words, he misjudged the context. For the word did not drop out of the sky, nor is it uttered in a vacuum. It was born in a culture that was forcibly segregated and racially oppressive. It is because the races remain, by and large, separate that they have maintained their own linguistic traditions; it is because they remain unequal that such a loaded word can retain such contradictory meanings for blacks and whites. In other words, without racism both its offensiveness and its camaraderie would be meaningless.

 

I claim no consistency in my own view on it. It is not a word I use or am even comfortable around, but I have become immune to it in films and music. Being British may have a great deal to do with that. I am well aware of the subversive quality of turning oppressive language on its head and using it defiantly. Such is the journey that has transformed former slaves from coloureds to blacks and finally to African-Americans, and lesbians and gays into queers. None the less, the last noun that the black teenager Stephen Lawrence heard before he was stabbed to death by racists in south London in 1993 is not something I wish to claim. The way his case was dealt with shows that the people who think it can be just as vicious as those who say it. That is why it is hard to imagine a situation - outside of a court of law - where it would not be highly problematic for white people to use the word.

 

So long as racism exists there is no ironic or benign interpretation that cannot be misconstrued. I was in the presence of the academic Germaine Greer last year when she referred to a "nigger in a woodpile". By the time she had tried to render a justification, I was off. There is none. At least not one that I am interested in hearing. If white people find this restriction on their vocabulary unreasonable they need only bring forward the day when racism is eradicated - a day all black people look forward to - after which they can say what they like. Those who lurk behind the pillar of freedom of speech in their determination to use it are welcome to the right to be insensitive, but they must accept that others have the right to be offended.

 

In the 1920s the African-American diplomat and intellectual James Weldon Johnson believed that time would be kinder to Van Vechten than black critics had been. "As the race progresses it will become less and less susceptible to hurts from such causes." Lack of progress means that the hurt is still there.

 

 

 

Leader: Weighing words that only some can use | From the Guardian | The Guardian

 

Who said that?

 

Weighing words that only some can use

 

* Leader

* The Guardian, Thursday 10 January 2002 02.40 GMT

* Article history

 

Some words are better not uttered. One is nigger, another is Paki. In normal use, both denote a nasty racism that modern society loathes. However, in one dialect, black-American English, nigger is a term that can signal not abuse but acknowledgement. One only has to listen to New York rapper Jay-Z's Jigga that Nigga, take in a Spike Lee movie, or read Black Harvard academic Randall Kennedy's new tome, entitled Nigger, to realise that some African-Americans are comfortable to use it among themselves.

 

The true meaning of words, it seems, depends upon the person who is speaking them. Into this cultural and linguistic minefield has stepped George Bush, who in the middle of trying to resolve a possible nuclear crisis in south Asia referred to convincing the "Pakis" of not going to war. The president has a reputation for using English as if it is a foreign language, but given the diplomacy required when stroking and soothing nuclear powers, this counts as a gaffe.

 

Most Britons will instantly associate the word Paki with "bashing", with gangs of skinheads who beat up people because of the colour of their skin. In a nasty reminder of the prejudice of yesteryear, some claim that the word originates with English racists in the 1950s who tried to blame smallpox in England on Pakistani immigrants. But like nigger, one of the few places you might hear the word Paki today is in the company of non-white people. In that context, the word is still offensive and used derogatorily to describe those of Pakistani origin. Sometimes the slur is subverted: for example last summer's cricket matches between Pakistan and England saw Asian youths with banners proclaiming "Paki Power".

 

Perhaps such use will transform racially pejorative terms. But this is unlikely until the bigotry that gave rise to such terms has been fully erased. Until that happens, English speakers might benefit from choosing their words a little more carefully.

 

 

 

Race & language: the battle of the N-word | Education | The Observer

 

The battle of the N-word

 

A black American academic has used the most explosive of racial epithets as a book title. In his first British interview, he tells Lawrence Donegan that he won't apologise to critics who say he is cashing in on controversy

 

* Lawrence Donegan

*

o Lawrence Donegan

o The Observer, Sunday 20 January 2002

o Article history

 

There are many things that could be said about Randall Kennedy's new book. It has 226 pages. It is published by Pantheon Books. It costs $22. It is written in the arid, academic prose one might expect from a Harvard law professor. It is heavily annotated. It is - depending on the reviewer you read - provocative, mild-mannered, misguided or dull.

 

Yet by far the most notable feature of the book, which was published in the United States last week, is that no one cares about any of the above. What they care about is that Kennedy's book is called Nigger.

 

It sits on bookshop shelves, the title in stark, white type against the black dust jacket, drawing disbelieving glances and sparking awkward, self-edited exchanges between staff and customers. 'I'm looking for a book.' 'Which one?' 'The Randall Kennedy one.' 'Oh the Randall Kennedy one. It's over there.'

 

Some, like Erroll McDonald, Kennedy's editor and one of the few black senior executives in New York publishing, have found humour in such conversations. 'I think it is pretty funny,' he told the New York Times, when asked to imagine the scene at his local Borders store. 'Can I have one Nigger, please? Where are your Niggers'? I am not afraid of the word "nigger".'

 

Others are less sanguine, not least several of McDonald's colleagues, who refused his request that they should say the word in unison at a pre-publication meeting. The reaction of African-American academics and commentators to Kennedy's choice of title can accurately be described as outraged.

 

'To those of us in the United States who are black - especially post-11 September - Kennedy's act is a sad, coarsely obvious sojourn in the greed that delights in shock and profits, while leaving the black majority miserable,' says Houston Baker, professor of English at Duke University in North Carolina. Julianne Malveaux, an economist and newspaper columnist, describes Kennedy's title as self-serving. 'I think he is cynically exploiting a hateful word, which is why he has it on the cover.'

 

Perhaps a silent majority supports the author and the central thesis of Nigger: that the word is, in certain circumstances, no longer the vile racial epithet it once was. However, so far they have chosen to remain silent.

 

Kennedy, in his only British interview, appeared unconcerned, both by this apparent isolation and by the fuss. 'I write 200 pages about the word - why be evasive about the title,' he says. 'To call the title sensationalist is a tendentious way of describing what most authors attempt to do, which is to attract readers. I didn't write the book so that it could be obscure, I wanted to write a book which attracts readers and thought this title would do that. I make no apology.'

 

Finding a sub-title proved more difficult. A number of suggestions were rejected until Kennedy and his editor settled for 'The strange career of a troublesome word.'

 

Troublesome indeed. The book has already drawn fire from columnists and critics across the US. Writing in the Washington Post, Earl Ofari Hutchinson rejects Kennedy's thesis that the word can sometimes be acceptable: 'It can't be sanitised, cleansed, inverted or redeemed as culturally liberating. "Nigger" can't and shouldn't be made acceptable, no matter whose mouth it comes out of, or what excuse gets made for it.'

 

Hutchinson cites the example of comedian Richard Pryor, who used the word throughout his stage routines until he visited Africa. On his return, Pryor announced to his fans that he now found it profane and disrespectful and would no longer say it. 'And anyone who reads Kennedy's Nigger should immediately rent the tape of that concert to understand why there's no excuse for 'nigger,"' says Hutchinson.

 

Other entertainers, such as Bill Cosby, have always refused to use the word, but comedian Chris Rock will not be bound by what another American writer, Roddie Burris, calls 'Cosby's politics of respectability which counsels African-Americans to mind their manners and mouths in the presence of whites'.

 

The word famously caused a dispute between film-makers Quentin Tarantino and Spike Lee when the latter took exception to - and pronounced himself disturbed by - a white film-maker liberally sprinkling his films with the word.

 

The book has now ignited a fierce debate, with some even wanting 'nigger' banned. 'I understand where the word came from, but it's a moral issue,' said attorney Byron Gipson, a member of the Black Lawyers Association, who thinks the N-word should be avoided.

 

'It boils down to how you want to be addressed. If you hold somebody to a higher standard, then why wouldn't you want to uphold that standard yourself?'

 

Kennedy was born in South Carolina. He describes his upbringing as privileged, in the sense that he was allowed opportunities denied to most of his black contemporaries. He went to one of the best US private schools, to Oxford as a Rhodes scholar, to Harvard and to Yale Law School.

 

Even this rarefied education did not exempt him from racial abuse. 'I can't remember when I first heard the word "nigger" because it has been such a familiar part of my background,' he says.

 

'It blends into the woodwork. I was called "nigger" on the playground. I was called "nigger" at Oxford. I was called a "nigger" on my first day at Harvard, as I was travelling from the airport to the campus. I have seen the very ugly side of racism.'

 

How did he respond? 'My mother told me to ignore it. My father told me to go to war. I have done both. On occasion, I ignored it, on occasion I fought back. It depended on what I thought of my chances of prevailing in the fight,' he laughs.

 

After law school, he served as a law clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American appointed to the Supreme Court. He took up a full-time teaching post at Harvard Law School in his mid-thirties, where he remains as a professor. Colleagues variously describe him as brilliant, well-read and personable. In conversation, he speaks slowly and with precision. It is not hard to imagine him one day following Marshall into the Supreme Court.

 

Though well known and respected in legal-academic circles, Kennedy didn't reach public prominence, or face his first critical onslaught, until he began to speak out on affirmative action to raise minority representation in educational institutions and government agencies. (Kennedy is 'generally in favour, but questioning'.)

 

His 1998 book, Race, Crime and Law, was well reviewed, but its moderate, balanced approach was attacked by some African-American scholars for giving succour to conservatives and advocates of the racial status quo. 'Come home Randy,' one wrote. 'We advocates of racial justice need you on our side.'

 

Kennedy describes such criticism as ridiculous, though he concedes that on some issues he is outside the mainstream of modern African-American intellectual thought. 'One of the things they find disconcerting is that I ask questions. I actually question the premise of my own thinking and push my own conclusions hard. I thought that was what intellectuals were supposed to do.'

 

He defends Nigger in similar terms: 'Not everything I write, I write with the idea of advancing this or that. I'm an intellectual. I thought this was an interesting problem and I investigated it.'

 

The book is based on a series of lectures he gave at Stanford University in California two years ago, entitled 'Who can say Nigger and other related Topics'.

 

It became obvious, he says, that such a book would be an ideal vehicle for exploring the history of race relations in America, as well as the politics of a highly charged word.

 

He traces its origins from the Latin word for black - niger - through its emergence as a term of racial abuse in the early nineteenth century and on to terrible, often murderous events thereafter. However, it is Kennedy's version of the word's most recent history - which he calls its 'de-fanging' - that many find so offensive.

 

The approach is 'classic Kennedy', say critics. He sets out to debunk a received wisdom - in this instance, that there are no circumstances in which it is acceptable for anyone to say 'nigger'; caricatures his opponents (he describes those who would see the word expunged from the vocabulary as 'eradicationalists'), and charts a course the white, mainstream media describe as 'moderate' but black activists call a sell-out.

 

Kennedy responds by saying that it would be counterproductive if he were to be upset by the word. 'It would be bad if it was able to deeply wound me. I'm glad I'm able to to talk about this word with a fair amount of equanimity and to be able to hold it at a distance, look at it and turn it over and examine it for what it is.

 

'I don't deny the word is powerful. The question is - is this word, in all circumstances, powerful and destructive? There are some people - the comedian Chris Rock, for instance, and certain rap artists - who use it in a way I think is imaginative and productive.'

 

In conversation, though not in the book, the author lists three circumstances in which he would defend the use of the word, even by a white person: 'documentary use' - where a teacher is talking about racism and the language of bigotry; 'satirical use' - where a comedian is doing a satirical skit about racism; and in the case of someone such as the rapper Eminem, who is embedded in the culture of hip-hop. 'Would I object to him using it in his rap, like his friends? No, I would not.'

 

In fact, Eminem has publicly stated he would never say 'nigger', which makes Kennedy's 'consent' to his using it a moot point. This also focuses the argument over the book on the issue of 'permission': by writing and publishing Nigger has Kennedy implicitly granted people permission to use the hated word in polite company? One academic, Houston Baker, says he is proud to be an 'eradicationist', adding: 'There are no circumstances in which such permission should be granted.

 

'I believe his arguments for [the de-fanging] of "nigger" through its use by black comedians, or de-fanging through spelling the horrific word as "nigga" are deliberately misleading. "Nigger" in use is a word that does real harm. Eradication is the answer - not titling a book Nigger and circulating that word through crafty corporate means.'

 

 

 

The n-word: black Britons speak | UK news | The Observer

 

The n-word: black Britons speak

 

The Observer asked leading black Britons for their view of the debate over the word "nigger" in the United States. Send us your views at letters@observer.co.uk

 

* Interviews by Paul Harris

* The Observer, Sunday 20 January 2002

* Article history

 

David Oyelowo, leading black actor at the Royal Shakespeare Company.

 

'I think it might make a certain sense to try and recapture the word nigger and make it less offensive, but that does not make it right. It is a question of what it means to different people. It will always remain offensive to a section of society. I don't think it would ever be possible for black people to accept that word.

 

I think it is double standards for black people to use it amongst each other and then not expect white people to use it. You can't find something offensive when one set of people say something and not when a different set of people say the same thing. Being black in the 21st century is a positive thing and there is something insidious about trying to make this word inoffensive. What is the point?

 

It is a grey area but I would say without question that anybody who uses that word with me is going the wrong way about trying to be my friend. It is very offensive for me and for where I think I am coming from. It is a word that is steeped in the history of slavery and of racism. Having said all that, though, language is a weird thing. Who is to say that it might not mean something completely different in a hundred years time?'

 

Brendan Batson, one of Britain's first black footballers and deputy chief executive of the Professional Footballers Association.

 

'For nearly all black people it is the most offensive word that they can hear. I just don't see how it can ever really be used by general society in an acceptable way. But black-on-black use is different. Then it is used as almost a normal way of speaking by some people, especially the young and in rap music. When black kids use it with each other the sentiment behind the word is completely different and that makes it less offensive. It is almost the same as saying friend. But it depends a lot on the age groups. I would never use it or allow it to be used to me.

 

But word changes have happened before. A few decades ago it was rude to be called black and people used the word coloured. Now it is not acceptable to be called coloured and the word black is a source of pride. They have swapped position.

 

But I just don't see how the word nigger can become mainstream like the way the gay community has tried to adopt the word queer. Queer does not have the same sort of offensiveness. Nigger is a unique word in the English language.'

 

Floella Benjamin, TV presenter who runs her own production company.

 

'Nigger is a derogatory word. I remember when I first came to this country and it was spat at me, really aggressive, and when you are ten years old it hurts. You go crazy. Now that I am older and maturer I can cope with it, but there is a whole generation of people in Britain who will never forget what it means, no matter who is using the word.

 

It would only become unoffensive if we had a chance to start completely again and we could just give the word an entirely different meaning. Without that, it will just always be an offensive word. How can you try and reclaim a word that started off as an insult? You could perhaps reclaim the word negro, but not nigger. If black people started using it here, then the racists would have won because it was a word invented by them.

 

In America, it is slightly different. There people like Eddie Murphy and some rap musicians use it and perhaps young people hearing that don't realise what it means. But the older generation remember. In Britain it has always been an insult and it always will be a terrible thing to say to someone. There is no point in trying to make nigger into a nice word when there are already nice words that people can call each other. We should use them instead and throw nigger away.'

[Code]

Context.

 

The word has been associated with slavery and racial hatred for more than a century.

 

The multi-cultural society we now live in finds the use of such a word unacceptable, whereas society forty (or whatever) years ago was different.

 

Personally I see the issue as more complex than that and thats why I find it interesting as well.

 

Older people will maybe take more offence of the word black and if the English speaking countries had not adopted the Spanish/latin word negro/niger it could have been the opposite now regarding slaves

 

Thats one of the reasons I see the word as dangerous and racist only because we as a society have made it become exactly that because someone wanted it to be.

 

This could easily change though but because people gets so wound up about it and is easily offended by it, it will stay this way for a while yet even if there are no real reason for those growing up today to be offended by it other than the fact they have been brought up to be exactly that.

 

But we will not get anywhere with this so I`ll leave it there with just adding one last thing.

 

When you have to think about how to adress anyone or what words to use to describe them in case they get upset about it, then I think thats a bigger problem for society and its progress than those actually being offended because they have been brought up to be.

[zigackly]

You are so wide of the mark Code that I can't even begin to address it, nor do I have any particular urge to waste my time trying. I don't even have a clue where you are coming from with this.

[Dan Vito Corleone]

Oh for goodness sake. This is degenerating into a wikipedia argument, and that's never going to be a good thing. The "N" word is unacceptable language on ANY forum when used in the context that Red Phoenix used it. His position became untenable at that moment. I think Dave is being very, very kind giving him another chance. Someone did the exact same thing on my board over the weekend. He's been chucked, and if I find out he's re-registered he'll be getting chucked again.

 

Whilst this is totally out of character for RP, he used to come on and talk an inordinate amount of bollocks when he'd been bladdered or was on the weed. This was inevitable, and I have no sympathy, because if you can't handle whatever you've been at, don't come on the forums until the morning after, because it's not your site, and if accusations get made, it's not you that has to firefight. Plus his language and attitude to RedKnight and kopitelewis was pathetic, immature and ungrateful, because both were trying to do him a favour.