"Eenie, meenie, minie, mo, snatch a bullet from an AK-47", is my son's contribution to the debate on the use of the word "nigger". Not that he shoots anybody physically; the bullet comes from his bulging eyes, along with molten lava from a volcanic tongue.
Professor Randall Kennedy, a Harvard University law professor, is the author of a new book, published in the US, called Nigger. He says the word is permissible only in certain circumstances, which he defines as humour and poetry.
The book tries to rehabilitate the most abusive term in the history of racism and thus in the relationship between white boss and black slave. You may ask: "Isn't the author black?" Answer: no. He is brown: a mestizo, a mulatto who may proudly boast of his ancestry as Irish. The word nigger originates, through negro, from the Latin niger, meaning black, wholly black. The nigger was the most lowly in slave society. He or she was not lightened by sexual contact with the master. The sayings upon birth abound: he is black as the ace of spades; he is black like tar.
Later, the word gathered a larger meaning - "the nigger is bad"; "a bad nigger". These were references to the uncompromising revolutionary on whom nothing of white civilisation rubbed off. He was murderously hostile to everything white, a relentless escapee from the plantation. James Brown idealised him in the song: "Say it loud,/I'm black and I'm proud."
This hierarchy of colour has hindered the unity of blacks. Those of lighter skin were favoured for educational opportunity and cultural advance; they were brought in from the field to decorate the master's home. Some rose even higher in cultural and artistic achievement than the master. Always lurking somewhere in the distance was a white sponsor. I am sure you could find one in Randall Kennedy's climb to the top.
Had a white person used the word, rejection would have been immediate. Now white society can always point to Kennedy and say that a negro advanced the view that "nigger" is acceptable. His trashy book will validate the use of the word by, let's say, one's boss. But in a humorous or poetic way.
Look at the pictures from Guantanamo Bay and see whites in army uniform, legs splayed, looking down on black-skinned men kneeling, their heads bowed. All that is missing is a placard round the prisoners' necks, of the same design as Kennedy's dust jacket, which has "Nigger" against a stark, black background. Remember that George W Bush won the presidency because, in Florida, his brother, the state governor, used police to keep blacks away from the polling stations.
America is returning to the era before civil rights; a precondition for this is the rehabilitation of the word nigger. But it ain't going to be that easy. The nigger is bad.
