Niger, Nigga, Neger, Negro.
I hate that word. As a minority, every time I here it, I stop: Breathing, moving, thinking, feeling.
I completely shut down. Like a possum, I play dead because I don't know whats going to happen next. Will I react badly- niggerish and blow up? Will everyone else? It's like the world around me loses oxygen for that split second.
Everyone around me uses it. Adults, children, peers, strangers, friends and family.
I use the word.
And there's nothing I can do about it.
I feel like its embedded into my skin. A Virus. Those are incurable, right?
I remember Junior year, sitting in my AP English, being the only "Black" there and female at that. A total minority. (-and I hate that word too. Black.) Huckleberry Fin, The narrative life of Fredrick Douglas. Any old book that had the word. I was there and I had to sit through the moments, my finger prickling and skin crawling as my mind started to question every look at me as the word was being said. I was asking questions like, "Does my teacher know that when she say it- out loud to the class, that it makes me angry?" It's like, I get images of those Nigers and how they might look in my place. Are they ashamed that I sat in silence and did nothing? What am I suppose to do?
"Does my teacher really think that having me read the passage where the word is. . . does she think that will make me feel better?"
Me, a black female who is opening saying the word- reading it- to a class full of the same skin that made it up. And I know they weren't the ones who can up with the word just like I'm not the ones who suffered from it, but that's the effect it has when ever I hear it or have to say it.
Because its like I have to accept it. When I say it, its like I'm agreeing to it. And knowing that everyone else hears the word and says nothing about it. . . .
"Five seconds before that word is used, everyone in class might have been your friend. But now you're reassessing yourself, and they're reassessing you. It has a profound effect. Nothing is the same after it is used." - Danny Elmore
Its like putting me in the spotlight. Like, I'm coming out the closet, Admitting I have a disease- a contagious one at that. The disease called being black, a nigger, a slave. I am not a slave but every moment the word it said, I feel like I'm laced in chains form my own emotions and thoughts. Its easy to write the word, but to say it? No matter how soft or hard, quiet or loud I say it, it still effects me.
I do it anyway and pretend that that it doesn't effect me because I know when its said, they are all watching me (anticipating) and they all have questions that I can not answer right away. Maybe not even ever!
And its worse when i'm around family. They are hypocrites. Quick to pull the race card and use such words in jokes and insults. I'm not a nigga, only when I'm a nigga. That's how they see it.
"Used rightly or wrongly, ironically or seriously, of necessity for the sake of realism, or impishly for the sake of comedy, it doesn't matter. Negroes do not like it in any book or play whatsoever, be the book or play ever so sympathetic in its treatment of the basic problems of the race. Even though the book or play is written by a Negro, they still do not like it. The word nigger, you see, sums up for us who are colored all the bitter years of insult and struggle in America." - Langston Hughes in The Big Sea (New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 1940)
And the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Still. . . The apple has its own seeds to plant and grow. Genetics, but choice. When nigga slips from these lips, they bite the tongue that spoke. Instant regret. I feel Self-disrespect.
And it goes for anyone else who uses it. Everyone I respect will never hear such disgrace come from my mouth. I know the effects of habit and how they influence others. I started cussing in fourth grade because I meet a friend who did it and I regret it to this day. I'm eighteen.
I regret everything I am now but I decided to be apart of the color- coded life of today. There's not much I can do about it either. -Shit is pretty sad, too.
"Racism is far from over, but I'm over racism." - Its not my quote but its my thoughts at this moment.
If you guys wanna read more on thie issue and see where i got most of the material from... Cheack this link out below.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/cultureshock/teachers/huck/section1_2.html