This isn't really a fair highlight of the article; it contains little or none of his argumentative reasoning and is moreso a few things that I read and found interesting or "wow" worthy. Read 'til the end of the highlights, at least. Even if you don't approve. It pretty much makes me nauseous.
Though I agree with his overall message (no, it's not appropriate), I actually *have* seen instances in which friends will refer to each other as "my nigga" during seemingly "wholesome" activities. Meh.
Article
Highlights:
It is not ironic in this regard that one the best selling comedy albums in history was Pryor's 1974 Grammy Award winning album, That Nigger's Crazy. This was followed two years latter by his, Bicentennial Nigger. Many people have analyzed what they see as Pryor's genius in how he used the word "nigger" in his jokes. However, after a trip to Kenya in the early 1980s, impressed by the dignity of the Africans he encountered there, Pryor himself declared that he would never again use the word, explaining, "It was a wretched word. Its connotations weren't funny, even when people laughed. To this day I wish I'd never said that word."[2]
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In my opinion, it is difficult to associate any positive usages with the term due to what George Lakoff, and others, refers to as framing. In other words, once a word, phrase, or idea has become associated with a particular cognitive frame, using that word in any context, negatively or positively, only supports the established frame. [5] For example, now that Muslims have become so overwhelmingly identified with terrorism in this country, there is no way to break that association—working within the prevailing frame. Hence, when we declare, "Muslims are not terrorists!" It only reinforces the prevailing frame, because in the mind of the listener it reinforces the linkage between Muslims and terrorism, by evoking the dominant terms in that particular frame. All the listener tends to hear are the terms, "Muslim" and "terrorist."
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made me lol:
" It would difficult if not impossible to find anyone saying, by way of example, "I'ma go to med school with my niggas, respect my lady with my niggas, rebuild my community with my niggas…." "
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Before going further in this discussion, I will mention a few incidents that demonstrate the depth of the pain and humiliation associated with the term.
When Charles McLaurin, an organizer with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), was jailed in Columbia, Mississippi, a patrolman asked him, "Are you a Negro or a nigger?" When McLaurin responded, "Negro," another patrolman hit him in the face. When he gave the same reply to the same question, McLaurin was again beaten. Finally, asked the question a third time, he answered, "I am a nigger." At that point the first patrolman told him to leave and warned, "If I ever catch you here again I'll kill you."
As a child the playwright August Wilson stopped going to school for a while after a series of notes were left in his desk by white classmates. The notes read: "Go home nigger."
Michael Jordan was suspended from school for hitting a white girl who called him "nigger" during a fight over a seat on a school bus in Wilmington, North Carolina.
Brenda Woodford wrote that in the predominantly middle-class community where she grew up, little boys on bicycles would constantly encircle her, chanting, "Nigger, nigger, nigger."
On the verge of breaking Babe Ruth's record for most career home runs, Hank Aaron received hundreds of "Dear Nigger" hate letters. Here is a sampling of them:
Dear Black Boy,
Listen Black Boy, we don't want no nigger Babe Ruth.Dear Mr. Nigger,
I hope you don't break the Babe's record. How can I tell my kids that a nigger did it?Dear Nigger,
You can hit all dem home runs over dem short fences, but you can't take dat black off yo face.Dear Nigger,
You black animal, I hope you never live long enough to hit more home runs than the great Babe Ruth… [6]
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