Derek Jennings: The N-Word. Is It Ever OK to Say?

Without question, this is the most loaded word in the English language. Six letters. Say it three times and you've got the number of the beast. Forged white-hot in the fires of hell, that word has, for half a millennia, been seared into the collective psyche of black people in America. N-I-G-G-E-R. Though buried under layers of keloidal scars, those letters still ache and throb like a recent burn, a painful, disfiguring memento of our past -- an unhealed wound on the souls of black folk....

I first heard the term as a child. I'm not sure exactly where I was, it may have been the playground, but I recall hearing it in a"black on black" context, as in don't"act like a nigger." I grew up in a small, mixed, but mostly African-American town in South Jersey. I remember using it my first time and being chided by my uncle, Gregory, who told me it was a bad word."Why?" I remember asking. He told me, using a definition he'd no doubt gotten from Grammom Wilson (my maternal great-grandmother), that a nigger is an"ignorant person."

Hmm ... I didn't know a whole lot about niggers, but I'd heard that they looked like me, so I needed clarification."Can white people be niggers?" I asked."Yep," he said."White people can be niggers." Made sense to me. I didn't say the word again, and my curiosity was satisfied.

My father had a, shall we say, more pragmatic approach to the N-word. By the time I was in junior high, he added to my knowledge of the N-word. He grew up in Columbus, Ohio, in a black neighborhood, but attended an almost all-white Catholic high school. He played several sports, and often found himself to be only one of two or three black people in the gym or stadium, let alone the court or field. He'd hear the word thrown at him by opposing fans and players, and would take out his frustrations using the game, itself, affirming his right to exist via a stiff elbow, a crushing block or punishing tackle.

My dad grew up in the late '50s and early '60s, and white folks was bold. A few made the mistake of calling him a nigger to his face, on the street. His response to the challenge was direct:"You see a nigger? Then kick his ass," he'd tell them, fists clenched and ready to connect with someone's jaw. Whether the confrontation led to a fight or not, it always ended with the offending party rethinking his terminology.

Growing up in the '70s and '80s, in a black neighborhood, I never had to deal with that type of situation. My experiences with the word were as different from my father's, as his were from my wife's maternal grandfather, who grew up in Southern Virginia. As a young woman, when she'd walk with him through downtown Baltimore, she'd be furious at the unconscious deference that he, a proud black man and a war veteran, paid to white people. He'd avert his eyes, look down, or move out of the way, when they'd approach from the opposite direction on the sidewalk. ...