N___Word, The

Among Blacks

Many American blacks and whites admit that the word nigger has remained an imprint on black bodies soaked in blood, literally and metaphorically, in American history. Although some blacks believe that they have reclaimed this word, given to them by white oppressors, there is no consensus on its use among African Americans. The word nigger still registers raw discomfort among many African Americans and retains its power to injure, intimidate, threaten, and degrade, despite the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's (NAACP) 2007 mock funeral, the organization's efforts to remove the word from dictionaries, and the many social media campaigns to abolish the word's use.

Grassroots efforts by some African Americans changed Webster's definition of the word nigger as synonymous with “a black person” in 2007. Many debate the appropriateness of euphemizing the word nigger with the more politically correct “n-word” reference.

Even as Americans are physically more integrated than ever in the workplace, in school, and in some neighborhoods, critical discussions of the word nigger and its social and political implications are uncommon. The word nigger is not disconnected from prevalent and blatantly racist behaviors, attitudes, and visual imagery, such as the animalization of black people by likening them to coons, chimpanzees, monkeys, or gorillas; 19th-century American minstrelsy and past and present blackface costuming; lynching; the 1955 murder of Emmett Till in Money, Mississippi; the 1987 Ku Klux Klan murder of Michael Donald in Mobile, Alabama; and the 1998 murder of James Byrd, Jr., in Jasper, Texas. These and other examples evidence an American history of stressed race relations between blacks and whites.

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