I have a white student, whom I shall call Josephus, who has got me entirely beat when it comes to being culturally black.  Put the two of us in the middle of Black Street USA, and his “You know what” comes out smelling like a rose, whereas everyone would probably be wondering what on earth happened to me.  There is every indication that Josephus has both the respect of and the acceptance from blacks.  Yet, this remarkably bright guy noted that when he is in a car with blacks and they all singing a song, he will press the “racially sensitive” pause button if the word “nigger” is mentioned in the song.  That is, Josephus goes silent and then picks up the song again immediately after the word “nigger” has been uttered.  He mentioned that he does this out of respect for blacks.  I believe him, of course.  I am also deeply troubled by this reality.  For the record, not once did Josephus say the word "nigger".  Rather, the expression that he used was "the N-word". 

For all of its drawbacks, age gives one an extraordinary repertoire of memories.  Once upon a time, the word “black” when addressed to blacks—then referred to as Negroes or colored people—was tantamount to what the Supreme Court has referred to as a “fighting word”.  Suppose that you called a Negro a “mother f---ker”.  Well, you upped the ante considerably if you called the person a “black mother f---ker”.  The one thing no Negro wanted to be was black.  So whites who wanted to be verbally abusive of blacks had a choice: nigger or black. Thus, the transition from the terms “Negro” and “colored” to the term “black” is most impressive.   If, nowadays, a white wants to be verbally abusive to a black, the word “black” is simply not available to the person.  The very force of the word “black” as applied to black people was turned upside down, making it impossible for anyone to offend by using it; American blacks went from being ashamed of being called black to having pride in being called black.  An appropriation of the word "black" had taken place, which is one of the brilliant outcomes of the Civil Rights Movement.  Blacks wanted whites to use the word “black” as the term of reference, a point to which I shall return below.

This brings me to the word “nigger”.   With very rare exception, this used to be quite the offensive word, though the move from “nigger” to “black nigger” still upped the ante.  Time was when people wanted the word entirely expunged from the vocabulary.  With RAP, though, the term “nigger”, or this or that variation thereof (such as "nigga"), has been making a comeback.  The idea is to appropriate this word, and so to undermine its status as a racial invective.  Needless to say, I quite like that idea.  And this consideration brings me back to the student I am calling Josephus.

In recounting his story about singing along with blacks in a car, the one thing he did not say is that everyone asks him why he goes silent when it came to singing the word “nigger”.  Better: He gave no indication whatsoever that the blacks he is with think it silly of him not to sing the word “nigger” when it occurs in the song.  And therein lies the problem.  This is proof par excellence that blacks have not in their own minds succeeded in taking the sting out of the word “nigger”, no matter how many times this word appears in a song RAP. 

For if the goal is to eviscerate a word of its negativity with respect to blacks, then the very thing that one needs is for whites of known good will to use the world in its new sense.  If, for instance, the word “nigger” now means nothing more than “bad-ass” when said in certain contexts, then it has to turn out that in those contexts whites can use the word to mean precisely that.  True, it sometimes happens that a context is notoriously ambiguous between an acceptable use of a term and an objectionable use of a term.  But that cannot be true all the time.  It has to be that there are some clear well-defined uses of the term that are good.  So it is if blacks indeed are appropriating the term “nigger”.  If there are instances when one can be proud of being a “nigger”, then it has to be the case that a white does nothing wrong—indeed, the white does what is positively good—in acknowledging publicly that a black is a “nigger” in that particular context.  In fact, until whites can use the word “nigger” in that way, the appropriation has not succeeded.  For it has always been possible for blacks to use the word "nigger" in a positive way, as with the expression "my sweet nigger" said by a woman to husband.   

I remarked earlier that the transition from “Negro” and “colored” to “black” worked precisely because blacks wanted whites to use this as the term of reference.  White were encouraged to use the word “black”.  Alas, there cannot be a different track for the word “nigger”. 

Josephus, of course, was right to go silent on the first occasion that he was with blacks and the word “nigger” came about in a sing.  But the fact that he was not encouraged to sing along, and so to embrace the new way of using the word “nigger”, is dramatic proof that blacks are not as committed as they think they are to appropriating the word “nigger” and endowing it with a positive meaning.  Accordingly, it is no surprise that the word “nigger” can still very much be a very potent invective when used by blacks with respect to one another.  By contrast, whereas the term “black” was once upon a time an unequivocal invective when applied to blacks as a label, it is no longer that now.  To be sure, there are still awkward ways of using the term.  But anyone who really wants to insult a black these days would be far more successful using another term. 

The transformation that took place with the word "black" could take place with the word “nigger”.  So why isn’t it?  The answer, I am afraid, is a rather painful one, namely that far too many blacks still hold on to using the word in its pejorative way.  Thus, the expression “You mother f---king nigger” is still far too commonly used by many blacks to express rage towards one another.  Every black knows this; every white sufficiently familiar with the black culture knows this.  Josephus knows this.  What is more, his black friends in the car know this. 

It is not possible to have it both ways.  There is no such thing as partial appropriation.  Either the term "nigger" has a new clear and distinct meaning that anyone can use correctly and any such person can be seen as using correctly.   Otherwise, there has been no appropriation of the term.  Now, the most interesting question on the face of this earth is this: Why are so many blacks—blacks who claim to be at the forefront of black culture and advancement—not willing to allow a successful appropriation of the world “nigger”?  There is no more vividly racist word in the vocabulary of American English than this word.  Yet, the malleability of English is such that the word does not have to stay racist.  Proof par excellence is that there is an unequivocally positive use of the four-letter word beginning with “s” and ending in “t”.  The utterance “Man, you know something.  You are really the s---t” is nothing other than a complement.  If you want to criticize someone a difference utterance is necessary.  Just so, this utterance would simply have made no sense to my parents.  There is absolutely nothing I could have possibly said that would have put a positive spin on it in the eyes my parents.  Nothing!  But here we are with that utterance now having a clear and unambiguous positive spin.  So surely the word “nigger” can change for the better.  But, alas, whites will have to be a part of that change.  To think otherwise is to labor under a delusion.