A Divorce from Death

To Those with a Heart to Hear:

I write to you in response to and in support of an article written by a friend of mine named Jason Hendrickson. Jason’s article, “HE'S A NIGGER! LOOK! HE'S A NIGGER!”, was written in response to Michael Richard’s racial tirade and the ever-present debate on the use of the word. In regards to Richard’s remarks some have stated that it was not the use of the word nigger that was the real problem but the application of lynching imagery. Others say that it is not being called a nigger but being treated like one that is most dehumanizing. And there is always the lingering argument that the word can be re-appropriated by African-Americans and is acceptable in certain social contexts. Allow me to reintroduce myself…

Just as we cannot remove a word from its context, neither can we separate spoken language and imagery. Thus, historically speaking, lynching in the United States and the word nigger are forever intertwined. Nigger was intended as a verbal castration, a figurative lynching of sorts. An actual lynching is the physical manifestation of the hatred behind the word nigger. The term "pick-a-nigger" was used to describe social events where whites would literally pick a black person to lynch as they gathered on the grass socializing and eating food. Today we call this a picnic, save for the lynching. I hear the frustration over the use of lynching imagery but it is in vain if we do not understand that in a US context, lynching and the word nigger are like a set of conjoined twins who share the same heart. They were born out of the womb of hatred and bred in a house of slavery and oppression.

The phrase, "it's one thing to be called a nigger, but it's another to be treated like one," is a false analysis of what it means to be called a nigger and what it means to call yourself a nigger (as Jason pointed out there is no distinction between nigger, nigga, nigguh, or any other variation of the word). To be called a nigger means that the speaker believes it just for you to be lynched. Lynching in this context can be physical (murdered, castrated, hanging from a tree), social (barring people from affordable housing, good health care, proper education, etc.) or emotional/mental (lack of self-esteem, moral depravity). To be called a nigger means that the speaker believes it just for you to be killed, impoverished, homeless, uneducated, illiterate, sexually abused, and stricken with disease and disability. He or she believes it just for you to live in a dysfunctional family and lack equal opportunities. Therefore, there is no distinction between being called a nigger and being treated like one. If you believe it is alright to be called a nigger is it not a plausible inference that you also believe it is alright to be treated like one (consciously or subconsciously)?

Historically speaking in the United States, the speaker of the word nigger has commonly been someone of the European descent directing his or her hatred at someone of African descent. However, we see that even when an African in the Americas, or black person, is the speaker of the word it is not separated from its twin. Whites used to lynch blacks and still do, but the evidence lies in the fact that as the word nigger has proliferated among the vocabulary of African-Americans, so has black on black lynching. It is of no coincidence that, per capita, blacks kill each other more than any other race in the United States. As the word nigger has become more commonly accepted, so have black murder rates, black STD rates and black unemployment rates. You can argue for the re-appropriation of the word nigger all you want; the truth remains that by calling yourself by the word or by believing that it is alright for someone else to call you by the word, you agree to the terms of your own oppression, dehumanization and death.

A notorious and profuse speaker of the word for the last eight to ten years of my life, I vainly spent my time fighting injustice with lukewarm intensity. For by calling myself a nigger, I was inflicting the same oppression that I was trying to put an end to. So this past summer, I loosened the noose from around my neck, untied the knot, let myself down from the tree, and burned the rope. I’m done with the word. I have stopped saying nigger, save for the sake of this letter, in hopes that my healing and transformation will be able to help others. May God's peace be with you.