Language, racism, Schlessinger, ctd.

I probably never would have thought that I would be writing about radio host Laura Schlessinger twice in a mere five days, but here goes.

She has come under recent scrutiny for saying the word “nigger,” with the “I” fully in place more than 10 times while talking about the use of the word with a black caller on her show. The two were having conversation, at times, a heated one, on the use of the word “nigger” in black culture and how “nigga” is quite different than “nigger.” ((http://emptysuit.wordpress.com/2010/08/13/dr-laura-schlesingers-nigger-rant-transcript/)) ((http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/will-dr-laura-survive-her-racial-rant/19592675))

Nigger originated from the word, “niger,” and most likely evolved to “nigger” because of Southern slave owners’ mispronunciation of the correct word. “Niger” simple meant black person, but in the 17th century, as the slave trade got under way, it quickly came to mean slave, as there weren’t too many nigers in the colonies that weren’t also slaves. ((http://www.abolishthenword.com/history.htm))

I, for one, think all of this might be just splitting hairs a bit. Rappers and black youths freely say “nigga” in conversation and in songs without thinking twice about it, and the full enunciation of the other version isn’t banished in white nor black comedy or from neither cultures. From the comedy side, see skits from Dave Chappelle (black) and Louis C.K. (white) (The Louis C.K. skit contains mature content). Actually, C.K. said he was more offended by white people saying “the N-word” more than the actual word because “that’s just white people getting away with saying ‘nigger'” and “when you say the N-word, you put the word nigger in the listeners head. That’s what saying a word is.”

The connotation behind the word “nigger” is terrible, slavery was an awful blight on the history of not just this country, but human history, and the sooner racism ceases to exist the better. But doesn’t it say something about how far we’ve come since the dark days of the slave trade that a white person can objectively say that word without a hint of any racist connotation and not get branded a racist (Surely, some blacks folks were in attendance for the above-linked C.K. show). Further, and this applies to supposed “curse words” as well, when did words begin to hold such mastery over us. Didn’t we create language and isn’t language at our service, not the other way around? That’s not to say that folks shouldn’t be sensitive to those connotations because, as Chappelle said prior to the above-linked, all kinds of feelings come up when black people hear that word. But a person like Schlessinger or C.K. or myself uttering the word in, what I think is akin to honest debate about language, and not in any racial context, seems unexceptionable.