n–bomb disposal

the great debate rages

David Driskell – Ghetto Wall #2

i recently stumbled across this note and wanted to dedicate my thoughts to a full post.

firstly: i will always respect a Black person’s wishes to not use or be in the vicinity of the word (and for that reason, i will not use the word for the rest of the piece).

---

more than anything, i find the perpetuity of the n-word argument fascinating.

i’ve had so many conversations with people about it. my perspective has shifted over time or maybe my articulation of my position has gotten more succinct.

i also recognise that the biggest fraction of its constitutional weight is concentrated to Black Americans. but the global spectacle of anti-Blackness means that Black people across the diaspora (Black brits like myself included) tend to have a relationship with the n-word and thus, the debate among and between Black people will likely exist as long as racism is flagrant in the world (and probably even after it has expired).

the most popular iterations of this discussion commonly wrestle with the inherent (im)morality of the word. but i believe it being an indication of ignorance, lack of respect or deep hatred for Black folks reduces the complexity of a word that has no equivalent, thus, there’s so much to consider within the question of whether or not Black people should say the n-word.

there’s three main things I tend to think about:

1) the historical efficacy of prohibition

banning insatiable things guarantees they’re forced underground (see: the entire history of drugs) and whether we want to admit it or not: the n-word is insatiable.

it is insatiable to Black folks who’ve sought to reclaim it.

it is insatiable to white folks who want to conserve its abhorrence.

and it is insatiable to the non-Black folks who want to gentrify the reclamation.

the question i have is – in the desire for an intra-communal ban, what does the n-word being forced underground look like? culturally? societally?

this is usually where i’d take time to speculate. but i legit don’t even have a hypothetical answer. i can’t fathom the consequences. but i think there’s lot of real-world evidence of how banning a thing does not solve the problematic presence of a thing.

2) the messy topic of reclamation

human history has lots of examples of co-opted symbols and words that have been renovated from their original meaning.

a “googol” is the numerical value of 10¹⁰⁰ but when you hear “google” you think of the search engine. possibly the most “successful” reclamation of human history is the nazi swastika – a symbol of divinity in South-East Asian cultures that is known almost exclusively in the West as the crest of great evil.

fundamentally, the n-word is just a word. a collection of syllables. to imbue its structure with the supposition of inherent evil doesn’t quantify that evil any more than divorcing it from its historical origin can imbue it with goodness.

which is why i’m actually largely unconcerned about the moral case of reclamation. mostly because it is spoken of as an act that shouldn’t be done, which denies the reality of the fact that has been done already. rightly or wrongly – a concerted effort to reclaim the n-word has happened. and i’m personally far more concerned about looking at the efficacy of that effort.

the n-word has had an etymological journey unlike any other word in existence because Black folks have had a existential journey unlike any other people in existence. reducing the n-word’s usage among Black people to an exercise of self-hatred always strikes me as a disservice to the complexities and potentialities of Blackness.

maybe there is self-hatred in it. maybe there’s imbued hatred in it, too. maybe there is defiance and pride; the sort of pride that can only come from having a blade held to your neck, having the cunning/brute force of snatching it from your captor and turning the same knife on them. maybe the attempt to take the weapon has failed miserably. maybe there is shame in it. maybe it is all of those things, or a bunch of other things, or none of them, or some of them, or cycled through one at a time, on different occasions and out of different mouths. but it is never only one thing.

i can’t help but think about reclamation as an ancestral practice. the greatest Black cultural creations are products of reclamation. the saxophone probably wouldn’t exist as a cornerstone of jazz music without its complicated ostracisation from orchestral music. hip-hop was borne from of a fusion of soul/jazz and drum machine sampling. reclamation is such a fundamental part of being Black and Black being.

i mentioned that i’m largely unconcerned with the moral case for reclamation. i’m more concerned with tactical implications.

the obvious: a recirculation within Black lexicon, one that uses it as a term of endearment, pointed towards kinship, or gives it a bunch of other usages evolving that with varied inflections and deliveries, paints different colours to the cosmos of the Black experience. Simply put: it tried to remove its sting and made something new.

a consequence of reclamation is the concrete demarcation of intention. 

you can tell the structural difference between a Black person saying the n-word in kinship and a white person saying it out of spite. its lead to the cultivation of a palpable threat of violence if white person does say the word in either context. that is the true utility of the n-word’s linguistic reclamation, imo.

as a human phenomena, its somewhat inevitable. words evolve over time. they compound meaning and it is possible to remove something from one context and give it an entirely new one. 

3) the collateral of the contronym

lastly, even if the n-word’s reclamation isn’t as culturally ubiquitous as the nazi swastika or as absolute as the saxophone’s imperativeness to jazz; even if the only utility of reclaiming the n-word has been removing the sting in its tail and marking an audible barrier between -A and -ER so that racist trespasses have starker clarity – it is okay for a word to mean two things. ‘sanction’ can mean ‘to allow’ and also ‘to ban’.

this is personally how i meet the word where it is, how it exists within Black culture and outside of it, without strong need to impose ideological prohibition or morally campaign for its usage.

it took an act of unimaginable violence for the world to recognise the swastika as a symbol of hatred. i believe it would take an act of great violence for the n-word to be completely reclaimed. but the way it exists now, between two states, a supercritical fluid of human linguistic history, is fascinating and incomparable to anything else in the entire world. and maybe that’s all it needs to be, all it is. maybe that’s the best we can hope for of it.

---

what do you think?