I don't often use the word. If I do, it's intentional and pejorative. Frankly, there are too many lovely words expressing affection--"darling," "beloved," "honey," "boo," and "pookie," to name a few--to bother with the contortions involved in transforming a negative into a positive.

Nor am I OK with being called the N-word. I'm happy to say that my friends have other names for me. People who have called me this word at various points in my life have received a) a verbal tongue-lashing, b) a punch in the face, c) a slap in the face, or d) all of the above.

I wasn't particularly surprised by "comedian" Michael Richards's repeated use of the word to attack Black patrons who allegedly heckled him at a comedy club--only that he apparently felt comfortable letting his politically correct screen collapse in such a public way. But why did Paul Mooney need his friend Richards's racist diatribe to realize that the word is hurtful and offensive? Mooney, an often hilarious and political comedian, has pledged to no longer use the word (and has thrown in "bitch" as well), but didn't Richard Pryor--whom Mooney knew well and wrote for--figure that out and announce the same conversion decades ago?

Still, the uproar that followed Richards's tirade serves merely as a distraction. More dangerous than anything he could ever say is the wasted energy focused on his words, distracting us from the real outrage: the steady turning back of the political tides in this country that threatens to return us to a time when we were all treated like n---ers.

Amid these political realities, maybe it's some small consolation that Damon Wayans's effort to trademark the word "nigga" for use on a clothing line failed. As a people, we may not be free, but our right to use the word designed to diminish and oppress us is.

And we, it seems, have built a cottage industry around determining whom we recognize as having this right. Would that we expended as much energy absorbing the news, which provides clear evidence of the myriad ways in which the society we live in treats us as far less than full citizens, regardless of what we're called:

• Shortly after the midterm elections in November, Congressman Trent Lott of Mississippi was elected minority leader by House Republicans. Lott had been forced to step down as House majority leader in 2002 after he said that the United States would have avoided "all these problems" if segregationist senator Strom Thurmond had won his 1948 presidential bid.
• On November 21, an elderly woman, Kathryn Johnston, was shot and killed in Atlanta by three police officers. Armed with a no-knock search warrant, they broke down the door to her home in search of drugs. Johnston was killed after she fired at the men in self-defense. According to a police informant, after Johnston was murdered, he was instructed by the police to lie and say he had previously purchased drugs from her home.
• In the early morning of November 25, undercover members of the New York City Police Department fired some 50 shots into a car in which three unarmed men--Sean Bell, Joseph Guzman, and Trent Benefield--were preparing to leave a club after a bachelor party. Bell, who was to have been married later that day, was killed. His friends were seriously wounded.
• In early December, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in two cases involving school districts--one in Seattle and the other in Louisville, Kentucky--that could well signal the end of the goal of school integration heralded 52 years ago in Brown v. Board of Education. The Supreme Court's decision to hear the cases--even though lower courts had upheld the school districts' right to refuse to admit White students in order to voluntarily achieve integration--signals the court's likely intention of declaring unconstitutional even voluntary desegregation.

The list goes on. Unfortunately, for the most part the conversation does not. Too many of us are too busy chattering about some privileged, mediocre White comedian using the N-word to recognize and take action against the ways in which we are still being treated as such.

What do you think of the outrage over the N-word? Does it matter who is using the word--or how it's spelled? Do you use it? Finally, do you agree with Jill that the public debate is a distraction from far more important issues? Add your voice to the conversation in the comments section below.

On the Verge columnist Jill Nelson's latest book, Finding Martha's Vineyard: African Americans at Home on an Island (Doubleday; $27.50), is in stores now

Published on: 12/12/2006







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