An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States

For example, in July 2007, in Detroit, Michigan, at the NAACP’s Ninth
Annual Convention, a funeral ceremony was held to actually bury the N-
word. A march preceded the funeral; led by NAACP chairman Julian Bond
and now-disgraced former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, hip-hop icon
Curtis Blow and R&B legend Eddie Levert, it extended from Cobo Hall to
Hart Plaza. Addressing the N-word, Kilpatrick proclaimed, “We don’t want
to see you around here no more.” Even former Michigan Democratic
governor Jennifer Granholm participated in the procession, holding forth
with some white-woman liberalism, proclaiming, “We can plant the seed to
a new word, the ‘A’ word. All—all our people. We’re all in this together.”
To her credit, Granholm followed that up by suggesting we end forms of
structural racism, including predatory lending and the end to affirmative
action. 22 Whether she actually believed it, her policies said otherwise. (I
don’t have much more to say about this, but y’all NAACP niggas need to
go on somewhere and go back to your roots!) In other words, Black people
hold many opinions about the word.
It can be used positively, negatively, or be neutral. If someone says,
“That’s my nigga” or an elongated “Myyyyyy nigga,” then that is positive.
If someone says, “Fuck that nigga,” then that is negative. Neutral would be
something like, “Niggas is wildin.” That could refer to people in general,
Black people, white people. I have friends and family who apply “nigga” to
a variety of people, regardless of race. The neutrality of “nigga” in the
sentence means that if I took it out, the meaning of the sentence—that
someone or some people are acting a fool—would not change. “Nigga” is
here to stay, and I’m okay with that, even with its pervasiveness.
Black folks use “nigga” as a term of endearment or greeting. The late,
great rapper Tupac Shakur stated that “nigga” stood for “Never Ignorant,
Getting Goals Accomplished.” Again, Geneva Smitherman has long written
about the use of “nigga,” writing:
It’s a fact that nigga is from the lexicon of the counter language that
African Americans have created over the centuries, turning the White
man’s language upon its head, transforming bad into good. The
impact of words depends on who is saying what to whom, under what
conditions, and with what intentions. Meanings reside in the speakers
of the language. 23