Why Do Blacks Still Refer To Themselves As Niggers?
Few weeks back, there was a news making rounds in America. I shared a link of the story as reported in the New York times on my wall here on Facebook. It was of an 18 year old Caucasian American whose admission to Harvard University had been withdrawn in the advent that some racist texts he sent to his friends few years back was unearthed. He was an exceptionally brilliant student, who despite being involved in some rigorous activism in his high school days, still managed to finish second in his class with an over 5.4+ grade point, a pretty colossal feat by any measure. The boy was devastated at his admission by Harvard being withdrawn and many people were infuriated about how such a bright boy could be disqualified on the ground that he used the word 'Nigga' several times as a sixteen year old (an age where several youthful mistake could be allowed for or forgiven as the case may be).
But he was disqualified! This is the high standard to which the prestigious institutions in countries like America hold their candidates, to be reformed in learning but also in character, as a prerequisite to qualification to becoming their representative. This being reformed in character includes being rid of any trace of anti-semitism or racism. And so this young man was disqualified from Harvard because he used the word Nigga.
But I am miffed! I do think the boy deserves to be forgiven because he showed remorse for using such a word which 'black people use on each other everyday!' As part of the remorse he showed, he had made a correspondence with the school authority asking about things he could do to prove he had changed and was now a better person.
As a child, having been exposed to the hip hop culture, I didn't even know the word, 'Nigga (or Nigger)' was originally a racial slur. This was until I began to read and read somewhere about how calling a black person Nigger could be offensive. I remember going to the dictionary and looking out for the real meaning of the word. And I remember vividly what I saw was "A very bad word for a black person."
I have remained puzzled over the years how come, black people are permitted to use the word Nigger on themselves if other people aren’t allowed to use it? If it is deemed condescending and denigrating for other races to address you as Nigger, why then does the hip hop culture (a predominantly black thing) encourage the use of such a denigrating term as an item of solidarity. So deep reaching are the effects that black Africans including supposedly educated Nigerians now fling the word around for sports?
It is as though the position of things boldly states that as the world tries to move beyond the plague of racism, every other race is held to a high standard of upholding the black community in a high esteem, while the black community are at leisure to keep themselves in the cesspool of racial denigration.
If it is wrong to be addressed as a Nigga by a whiteman, so wrong that he loses his much merited admission into the most prestigious college in the world, why then should it be acceptable to be addressed as such by a fellow Blackman?
Follow me on Twitter Michael Chiedoziem Chukwudera
