warp & woof,

[Thomas Eckhardt]

Thanks for providing the links, Terrance. Interesting stuff.

You quoted:

> nigger (noun)
>     ++  black person  This is probably the most explosive
> and volatile word in
>     the English language, even more so than "mother fucker."
> It is commonly
>     used by Blacks amongst themselves, as in, "Hey!..little
> nigga..wazzzup?"
>     However, it is a VERY, VERY strong word when used by any
> non-black
>     person toward any black person.

That's what I thought.

> "Furthermore, the "nigger" of   hip-hop has qualities which
> transcend any particular ethnicity or racial barrier."
>
> http://www.revolutionaryjudo.com/newniggas.shtml
>
> While this is indeed the case, that racial and ethnic
> barriers  do not proscribe the use of the hip-hop sense of
> the word, the history of transcending these barriers is
> older than hip-hop and is not even exclusive to the minority
> communities, Latinos, Native Americans, Asians, but is and
> has been in common use in white America and other groups as
> well.

Hmmm, I still find it hard to conceive that it could be perfectly
acceptable for both sides when a white boy - in the spirit of good
hip-hop or street comraderie, of course - addresses a black boy as
"nigger". They may be friends and completely trust each other, and the
black boy may be sure that the last thing his friend has in mind is a
racial slur, and yet...

Surely US-American students are aware of the traditional meaning of the
word?

For racism in pop culture, by the way, see Lester Bangs' brillant essay
"The White-Noise Supremacists" in his highly recommended "Psychotic
Reactions and Carburetor Dung". Bangs wrote this in 1979, and he mainly
had in mind the punk rock and new wave crowd of the day. Nevertheless I
believe his observations may still be of interest. I'll give you some
excerpts:

"I figured this was all in the Lenny Bruce spirit of
let's-defuse-them-epithets-by slinging-them-out - in Detroit I thought
absolutely nothing of going to parties with people with people like
David Ruffin and Bobby Womack where I'd get drunk, maul the women, and
improvise blues songs along the lines of "Sho' wish ah wuz a nigger/Then
mah dick'd be bigger," and of course they all laughed. It took years
before I realized what an asshole I'd been, not to mention how lucky I
was to get out of there with my white hide intact."

"Ivan Julian (the black rhythm guitar player in Richard Hell's Voidoids,
TE) told me that whenever he hears the word "nigger", no matter who says
it, black or white, he wants to kill. Once when I was drunk I told Hell
that the only reason hippies ever existed was because of niggers, and
when I mentioned it to Ivan while doing this article I said, "You
probably don't even remember -" "Oh yeah, I remember," he cut me off.
And that was two years ago, one ostensibly harmless little slip. You
take a lifetime of that, and you've got grounds for trying in any way
possible, even if it's only by convincing one individual at a time, to
remove those words from the face of the earth."

"Another reason for getting rid of all those little verbal barbs is that
no matter how YOU intend them, you can't say them without risking
misinterpretation by some other bigoted asshole; your irony might be his
cup of hate."

Thomas

P.S. Thanks also for your latest posting, Terrance, which has just
arrived. Actual examples are very important because, of course, I only
can put forward assumptions based on hip hop lyrics and literature about
the way these words are actually used among young people in the US.