I didn’t finish it, but you saw and heard it.  Literary suicide by keyboard, but for three letters.  A symbolic stick of dynamite discharging a plethora of problems, dilemmas, social questions while poking at pop culture.  No other word has such irrational influence.  A declaration with no sense, but a thousand meanings.  Dictionary.com calls it, “…the most offensive word in English.”

A force that has the power to end a white career and start a black one.  Kryptonite in the classroom, “street-cred” in the clubs.  Six letters that can destroy a white comedian while popularizing and venerating the black one.  A remark so dangerous that it was renamed, “THE N WORD”, just so it could be discussed without actually saying or hearing it.  A reverberation so sinister that apparently ears can no longer tolerate its very sound.  Two syllables forming an expression so despised that the NAACP declared it dead, held a funeral and buried it, (apparently while still alive.)

A term of endearment in the “hood”, sufficient reason to murder somewhere else.  Hate speech if I say it, a reason to laugh from Chris Rock.  Instantly and permanently ruining the comic Michael Richards while qualifying Samuel Jackson for an Oscar nomination in Pulp Fiction.

In his 1996 groundbreaking live HBO comedy show, “Bring the Pain”, Chris Rock’s Niggas Vs. Black People routine, starts off the 12-minute rant like this:  “There’s like a civil war going on with black people and there’s two sides; there’s black people and there’s niggas and niggas have got to go.”  He goes on to say, “I love black people, but I hate niggas.” 

Rap “artist”  Bobnlarry’s hit, “Nigga,Nigga,Niggga”, has well over 8-million downloads and says, “Nigga”, 98-times in one-minute and eighteen seconds.

Could any white performer succeed doing Rock’s routine or Bobnlarry’s rap piece?

“Nigga” as opposed to “Nigger” is alive and well because its slurred deviation indicates to the black insiders the absence of malice, a term of endearment.  The hard R of nigger:  White hate speech.  The soft “A” of Nigga, the secret signal of acceptance, peace, “keeping it real”…, yea, “real dumb” according to Rock.

Without that word as a sacrosanct sunspot, would intolerance or racism end?  Without a focal point for the, “I’m empowered by my outrage” reaction this word engenders, might there be less opportunity to blame others and wouldn’t that necessitate a hard look inward?

The content of ones character rests not in our syntax, but in our souls and that word affords for many a convenient divergence from any real self-examination, a justification for being outrageous, an open “dare” to whites to repeat it.  Holding that one card over the heads of all white people, as if it magically induces some kind of super-power?  Nigga; please.