CAN I CALL YOU NIGGA, BROTHER?

By Nick Kaoma

“Why is it offensive if a white man calls a black man a nigger, when it is acceptable for hip-hop artists to call each other niggers?”


I love Sundays. Friends or associates of mine will tell you just how true this is. I always bother them with regular diatribe of how in my books, a lazy Sunday afternoon is verrrrry precious.

Apart from mundane activities such as doing laundry and cleaning the crib, I pleasure myself in just kicking back and listening to some soothing sounds with the Sunday papers in hand.

For some reason, I have always enjoyed columns where the likes of David Bullard and Fred Khumalo wax lyrical about whatever it is that pops into their aging, but nevertheless imaginative minds.

Mindless, irreverent, passionate, ridiculous and controversial are some of the adjectives that spring to mind when one thinks of these opinion pieces, and judging by the amount of letters they generate, I am definitely not the only one who finds them ‘soul-stirring’.

So it was with keen interest that I read Fred Khumalo’s opinion piece titled, “Loaded words that deserve extinction (Sunday Times, March 2007)”.

The valiant columnist, who, picking up on the tone in his speech, seemed elated at the fact that the City of New York has banned the use of the word “nigger”, asked, “Why is it offensive if a white man calls a black man a nigger, when it is acceptable for hip-hop artists to call each other niggers?”

I’m sure Fred was speaking on behalf of a lot people because I have heard this rhetoric countless times. African-American luminaries such as Oprah Winfrey, Rev. Al Sharpton and Bill Cosby have also occasionally come out against this “destructive habit”.

They ask, “Why would black people call each other nigger, a term that was used to degrade our forefathers?” And “how can young black people call themselves nigger when our ancestors sacrificed their lives so that that word would never be used again?”

Well I say: these are all pertinent questions, so much so that they occupy a fair share of my thoughts on a daily basis. However people can choose to look at this matter from different angles and one of the angles surprisingly underscores the stupendous power that black people have amassed over the past centuries.

It’s safe to say that in the history of mankind, no other race has had it worse than black people! We have been colonized by probably every other race; Arabs, Europeans, Asians have all had a pass at us for centuries. Despite all of this, black people found it in them to overcome slavery, apartheid and other forms of oppression to realize the liberty that every human being is entitled to.

The fact that we were able to overcome such difficult conditions without losing our essence or soul means that we are a special breed - don’t let those fools on CNN make you believe otherwise!

Now, during that exciting time of post-slavery, a phenomenon developed in the USA: black people started calling each other nigger, at first it was probably in a teasing attempt to put each other down, kind of in the same way that you’ll hear a black person in Mzansi referring to a friend as having kaffir hair or a kaffir butt.

But in due time the psychological undertone of the word “nigga” changed, suddenly it could express affection and love towards the next man. Personally it sounds very reassuring when a close friend says, “you’re my nigga man, and you know I got your back”.

I have even heard Russell Simmons affectionately refer to his friend and business associate (the very white) Donald Trump as “my nigga” (LOL).

This reversal in the usage of word has understandably confused many, but so where does one draw the line? Consider this, a popular Caucasian radio personality, Imus, unleashed a hailstorm upon himself earlier this year after he referred to black women on the Scarlett Knights basketball team as “nappy-headed ho’s”.

According to MTV, he also used words such as “jiggaboos” and “wannabes”, comparing them to fictional characters from Spike Lee’s film, “School Daze”. The aging and frail-looking DJ has been subsequently fired from his radio show by his employers CBS despite apologizing repeatedly.

The predictable American media has now decided to focus its energies on other public formats that are a catalyst for such behaviour and guess what: hip-hop is already Public Enemy No.1, again!

Speaking to MTV, self-appointed activist for the marginalized, Rev. Al Sharpton mentioned that discourse will be initiated with the hip hop community to see if consensus can be found somehow with the usage of certain emotive language. "We have for a while said to the hip-hop community that we believe in free speech, but at the same time, we also have the right to say this whole sexist, racist overuse of the word 'n---a' and 'ho' we need to deal with in our community," he said.

In this whole debacle that seems to resurface every now and again like an irritating skin rush, I concur with the sentiments aired by the Godfather of hip-hop himself, Russell Simmons. "Hip-hop is a worldwide cultural phenomenon that transcends race and doesn't engage in racial slurs," he said through his Hip-Hop Summit Action Network.

"Don Imus' racially motivated diatribe toward the Rutgers women's basketball team was in no way connected to hip-hop culture. ... Don Imus is not a hip-hop artist or a poet. Hip-hop artists rap about what they see, hear and feel around them, their experience of the world.”

“Like the artists throughout history, their messages are a mirror of what is right and wrong with society. Sometimes their observations or the way in which they choose to express their art may be uncomfortable for some to hear, but our job is not to silence or censor that expression. Our job is to be an inclusive voice for the hip-hop community and to help create an environment that encourages the positive growth of hip-hop."

Personally I feel a profound sense of victory when I or my close associates use the word “nigga”. They say great people are not great because they don’t have weaknesses, but they are great because they are able to transform their weaknesses into strengths.

When I use the word “nigga”, I bear in mind that this word was used to connote hate and demean black people and that our indefatigable nature has allowed me to reverse that psychological impact by using that very same word to express brotherhood.
So sorry Reverend Sharpton, Ms. Oprah, Fred and everybody else, I find no problem in calling my close buddies “nigga”. So big shout-outs to my niggas Jermaine and Sivu for helping make Encore Magazine a reality.

(Nick Kaoma is the publisher of theencoremag.blogspot.com – Mzansi’s premier online music magazine. Off the Wall is his favourite Michael Jackson album)