Regarding the "Double Standard" of Who Gets to Use the "N-Word"

Originally posted at Too Sense:

The supposed double-standard that surrounds the usage of the word "nigger" is an issue that has been coming up more frequently in recent times. I have some very vivid memories about this topic, and now seems like a good time to share them.

As I've mentioned before, I went to Francis W. Gregory Jr. High in New Orleans, a school that was roughly 99% black at the time. There were about 1,100 students total, from 7th to 9th grade, and only 9 or 10 of us were white. Prior to attending Gregory, I had never heard anyone use "nigger" in any kind of a positive or affectionate context. Make no mistake, I had heard that word many, many times before, but only from racist whites talking about black people. Racist whites like my paternal grandfather, who used to keep a machete under the seat of his truck "in case any damned nigger sticks his arm inside my window." My parents raised me to never use the word, and to see it as the most vile and repulsive insult imaginable (how you go from my grandfather using "nigger" as a daily invective to my father forbidding its usage I'm still trying to understand...but, thanks, Dad). So between my parents' lessons and my grandfather's very direct example of how hateful the word was, I treated "nigger" like plutonium.

My elementary school had plenty of black students, probably 55-60% of the total. But I'd never heard any of them call anyone a nigger, or refer to themselves as niggers. At Gregory, it was different. Instead of a word that was never used, "nigger" was a universal catch-all, second only to "fuck," which remains possibly the most versatile word in the English language. Dumb nigga; smart nigga; punk nigga; bitch nigga; ignant nigga; crazy nigga; nigga, please; nigga, you must be jokin'; nigga, I know you didn't say that shit to me; nigga, don't play; my nigga; for real, nigga; holla, nigga; hold on, nigga; nigga, fuck you; nigga, back the fuck up; nigga, don't hold me back. I never knew it meant so much, in so many different contexts.

And I'd never been called one, either, much less called anybody one.

So I was in the locker room before P.E. class, dressing out for my daily suffering (our coach liked to do things like hum heavy brass key-rings at our heads, or yell out "what the fuck did you say?!?" when she heard some student curse). I was talking to this kid I knew, not really a friend but someone I had a handful of classes with. He was throwing "nigger" around the way some people do, talking about that crazy nigga over there, that nigga that needed some god-damned Speed Stick, the usual. But one thing was different: he was using the term on me, too. Things like "Damn, nigga, you dress slow" and, even better, "Damn, nigga, you are so white. You need some sun." (No shit, really?)

That's when I did it, made the worst mistake any white kid in a room full of fifty brothers can make: I said "Nigga, please."

You know how in the movies sometimes you'll have a scene where someone says something and all of the sudden you hear the sound of a record needle scratching across vinyl, followed by total silence? Yeah, it was like that. Only it wasn't silent for long. The kid I was talking to ran to get the coach, and everybody else started surrounding me. My life started flashing before my eyes, which doesn't take long for a thirteen-year-old. Then the coach came and grabbed me, yanking me into her office.

She read me the riot act, yelling about how that word made her blood boil, and how dare I call somebody a nigger (like most teachers at Gregory, she was black). I tried to explain that I wasn't calling him a nigger like she thought I was, I was just saying "nigga, please." I tried telling her that the kid had just called me a nigger several times mere seconds before I said it. None of that made any difference. The other kids were lined up outside of her office, listening to the tirade, but at the same time chanting "white meat, white meat." I think I wound up in the principal's office, but honestly I'm not too sure. Things get hazy after the "white meat" chant started up.

Needless to say, I was terrified. Scared that as soon as I left the coach's office, I was going to be splattered like a bug underneath somebody's shoe. Or several somebodies. Many, many somebodies. But more than that, more than mortal fear, I was ashamed. Mortified. I knew that I had crossed the ultimate racial and social line, even though I didn't intend to. I knew that I had branded myself as a racist, even though nothing could have been further from the truth. And I was sick to my stomach because of it. I couldn't believe I'd been so stupid.

Was it fair, the situation I found myself in? No. And at the time I knew that. I knew it made no sense that someone else could call me a word that I couldn't use in return. But I also knew that fair didn't have a damned thing to do with it. I knew that the brothers in that locker room had just heard a white kid call another brother "nigger", and I knew that my coach had just been told that a white student of hers had called someone a nigger. I knew that that was all that mattered to them, all that really could matter to them at the moment. I knew that because I knew how my grandfather used the word, and that any time a white person uses it he's evoking people just like my grandfather, or worse. I knew that somehow, even if it didn't make any sense, if I got totally smacked down, I had earned it. Some things you just don't do, even if you think in all fairness you ought to be able to

I survived the incident, but I didn't stay at that school for much longer. When I was attending Gregory, prior to my super-sized fuck-up, racial tensions against white students were bad and had been getting worse by the day. There was a lot of violence, and even more verbal hostility. Pieces of my saxophone were routinely jacked from out of its case, because I was the only white kid in the band. my best friend, who was black, got snuck in the back of his head with a padlock because he had a white friend. My sister and her friend were groped just about every day, called all kinds of "white bitch." At one point (prior to "Locker-Gate"), my sister and I complained to the principal, and he told us we were imagining things. He basically said there's no such thing as reverse racism (bull.....shiiiiiiiiit!) I left Gregory in the middle of eighth grade, because things had gotten too volatile. That locker-room incident probably made things worse for me, but the truth is they were dangerous enough before that and were already getting worse. After I left, the racial situation went further downhill, to the point that the students had decided to segregate the water fountains, giving the broken fountain to the white kids and beating the hell out of any white kid drinking from the "black" fountain. One kid got his face smashed into the fountain's metal fixture, cutting him up pretty bad.

The next year, I heard that a group of white students were planning to sue the school board for reverse discrimination. I knew what I had been through (separate from the "nigga, please" incident), what my sister had been through, and how little the school administration had done in response. So I went to a meeting about the potential lawsuit. I knew all of the kids who wanted to sue, and had even dated one of the girls in that group for a while. They seemed like okay kids to me. During the meeting with the lawyers, the stories they told were very similar to my own, and to my sister's. It seemed legit. But then we took a break, and the lawyers and the other adults left the room. All of the sudden, several of the kids started talking about those "damned niggers" at Gregory, how they couldn't stand them, how they were going to get back at them.

I got up and asked them if they'd ever fucking heard of Custer. I told those kids that if they were dumb enough to go around calling people "nigger" when they were out-numbered 100-to-1 by black folks, they deserved whatever beat-downs they got. And I left the office. I wasn't about to help a bunch of racists get money for being the victims of racism. You live by the sword, you die by the sword. I had applied the same standard to myself in the aftermath of the locker-room incident. Yes, I argued to try to keep my ass out of trouble, just like any thirteen-year-old would have. But I knew that if it really came down to some majorly bad shit, it was my own damned fault. If the only reverse-racism I had experienced had been related to that incident, I never would have considered joining in the white kids' lawsuit.

I'll try to post some more expansive thoughts on the rule against whites using "nigger" later today. For now, let me just say that the basic rule is this: you have the right to own whatever epithet can be used to hold you down. If you're subject to being called a "coon-ass", you get to own that phrase, and use it as you see fit. I know lots of Cajuns who do, though in my family it was absolutely forbidden (my Cajun grandfather saw the word as every bit as hateful as "nigger.") If you are liable to being called a "queer" or a "queen" in public, it's yours to control. Gay men get to call each other "girlfriend" whenever they like. Lesbians can refer to themselves as "big old dykes" with impunity. Just like if you're Irish you get to talk about Irish drunks if you so choose (lots of my family is Irish, but we were tee-totaling Baptists by the time I came along). People have the right to assert control over the terms that would otherwise be used against them. If the term can't own you, can't be turned against you, you don't have the right to own the term.

So, to all my white brothers and sisters, unless there's a real chance that someone is going to call you a "nigger" as you walk down the street today, and use that term against you with the same force and consequences it would have if used against its normal targets (black folks), you need to just accept the fact that the word does not belong to you. You can use it, but only in its negative, racist context, only the same way David Duke or Bull Connor would. Those other layers of meaning, those other contexts, those aren't for you. That's just the way it is, folks. Deal with it.