RIP Nigga, Forever to Forever

And there lies the word nigga.

The NAACP made national news by symbolically burying the word nigga (or nigger), which is the age-old organization's way of trying to get black folks to stop using the word.

OK, let me tell on myself a bit because, to me, the only way you can offer any real, honest commentary about the word, nigga, is if you 'fess up about how the word plays out in your own life.

I use the word. Am I proud of it? Not really. I use it among friends. I can't recall a time I've used it in front of white people. My guess is that my experience and use of the word not unlike the majority of black people. Most black people of my generation feel that we've "earned" the word through various abuses and discriminations. Older black people, like my grandmother's age, hate the word with a passion. If you said nigga to my uncle, he'd cut your ass from end to end. I notice -- and it alarms me -- that younger black people use the word in front of everybody. Actually, young whites, Asians and Latinos do, too. If Fif-dee uses it, they use it.

As much as I realize it's not entirely right for black people to use nigga, I wonder if I'm being duplicitious because I feel that a) white people or anyone else that isn't black should never use it and b) its usage in the black community is something that should be decided by us. No one else.

One thing that bothered me during the Imus controversy was that the social agenda in the black community was being set by white people -- and I don't know if it was "their place" to tell us anything.

Mainstream media and most whites generally don't care about the issues and problems facing the black community. I'm not saying they mean us harm. But it makes sense that they wouldn't care. One advantage of being in the mainstream is having the culture fall in-step to how you think and feel. And when problems don't adversely affect your community, how can you care as much as the people it does affect?

For example, generally speaking, the issues affecting Latinos aren't in my personal vortex. Of course, I don't want to see other races discriminated against or go through some of the suffering that has affected minority groups as a whole. But I'm guilty of being as ethnocentric as anyone else.

It seems the only time white folks want to be in the discussion of the issues affecting Negroes is when it exonerates their white privilege. And maybe that's why this NAACP thing bothers me so much. Is this really about burying nigga? Or is this about proving credible to white people in the post-Imus climate?

Don't get me wrong, black people need to be personally responsible for a lot of things. The time for blaming white people for all our problems needs to have its own headstone next to nigga. But my gut tells me the NAACP didn't do this for the right reasons. They did this for publicity. They did this to show that Negroes were capable of taking personal responsibility.

Trust me, words are not what is destroying the black community. It's lack of education, dilipidation of the inner cities, poor health, crime, etc. I can think of 35 things affecting Negroes far worse than hip-hop and nigga, which have become convenient targets and buzz words to use to excuse the institutional racism still prevalent in this country.

As my man Talib Kweli said on the Today show duing the Imus ruckus, "But what about that white skin privilege 'doh?"

Fact is, black people may have expanded the use of nigga, but they didn't create the word and if every black person vows never to use it again, its usage won't stop. I am amused by white people who say with the straightest of faces that if we use nigga, they should be using it, too. I may say nigga, but I at least have the common sense to feel somewhat ashamed of it. I at least know that's a term not to be uttered in mixed company.

Besides, it's funny how the mainstream is able to, quite easily, distinguish how, when and to whom certain words should be used. I'm sure white guys hear women call each other bitches and sluts (in jest) all the time. But they know, unless they're rarin' for a fight, that they shouldn't call a woman that. I've heard gay people use the word "fag" affectionately in my presence, but I wouldn't dare pretend to have the cultural credit to use that word to another gay person. Even if we were mad cool. I've heard Mexicans use the word spic. And common sense has taught me that if I use that and catch an ass whuppin', it's my own damn fault.

Bottom line: I'm torn about nigga. There is a part of me that welcomes its burial. But then there is the part of me that wonders, well, would that mean songs like Mos Def's "Mr. Nigga" wouldn't exist? After all, nigga has been used creatively, to make salient points. The nigga in me feels as if, yeah, you damn right we've earned the right to use that word however we see fit. But I also don't want to give anyone an easy excuse -- even one as weak as, well they say it too! -- to degrade us.

Look, I'm diminishing my use of nigga as I get older and am trying to weed it out of my vocabularly. It's just that when I see shit like a burial for a word, I can only think of one phrase to sum up my feelings.

Nigga please!